Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The U.S. Public Opinion Gap isn’t Only Partisan

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alliances, America First, climate change, Democrats, globalism, Immigration, Jobs, national security, nuclear deterrence, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Pew Research Center, Republicans, terrorism, Trump, weapons of mass destruction

A recent (November 29) Pew Research Center poll on public attitudes toward foreign policy issues was a classic good news/bad news story – at least if you believe that the top priority of American foreign policy should be to promote the security and well-being of the American people.

On the one hand, that’s pretty much what the results show – that’s the good news. On the other hand, these commonsense positions prevail overwhelmingly because adults viewing themselves as either Republicans or Republican leaners hold them. That’s the bad news.  In other words, the views of Democrats and those leaning Democratic reveal a marked disregard for their nation’s self-preservation and prosperity.

According to Pew, 72 percent of all Americans say that “taking measures to protect the U.S. from terrorism” should “be a top foreign policy priority,” 71 percent would assign the same priority to “protecting jobs of American workers,” and 66 percent regard “preventing the spread” of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) with similar urgency.

But now check out the partisan splits: On the terrorism issue, fully 84 percent of Republicans and their leaners regard it as a top foreign policy priority. Only 61 percent of Democrats and their leaners agree. So much, i.e., for the idea that Americans will never forget September 11. And remember – the question only described protection from terrorism as a top priority, not the top foreign policy priority.

On protecting American workers’ jobs, 81 percent of Republicans and their leaners would treat it as a priority, versus only 65 percent of Democrats and their leaners. I’m old enough to remember when the Democrat called themselves the party of working Americans.

The exception here is preventing the spread of WMD: Fewer (64 percent of Republicans and their leaners see it as a major priority than do Democrats and their leaners (68 percent), but these results are very close.

Many of the other Pew poll findings are not the slightest bit surprising. Principally, the biggest partisan divides on foreign policy issues come on “dealing with global climate change,” “reducing illegal immigration into the U.S.,” and “maintaining U.S. military advantage over all other countries.”

But here’s what’s more surprising. The Democrats, and especially their leaders, have enthusiastically assumed the mantle of globalism champions versus President Trump’s proclaimed America First approach. And a hallmark of globalism, whether on the right or the left ends of the national political spectrum, has been international activism. Liberals and conservatives generally disagree on where to place the emphasis (e.g., emerging transnational issues like climate change and migration versus more traditional security-oriented issues), but energetic engagement is favored by all.

Nonetheless, if you look carefully at the Pew results, Democrats and their leaners would place the “top priority” label on relatively few foreign policy issues. Indeed, only one such candidate for this status reaches the 70 percent mark with these groups – “improving relationships with allies.” And only four issues are seen as top priorities by 60 or more percent of Democrats and their leaners – as stated above, WMD (68 percent), protecting American jobs (65 percent), climate change (64 percent) and terrorism (61 percent). 

Overall, then, it’s easy to conclude from these and other findings in the Pew poll that Democrats and their leaners may be globalists, but they’re globalists who don’t seem to regard overseas-related challenges with overwhelming concern. Alternatively, they’re reluctant to support zeroing in on a limited (and arguably more manageable) set of goals. P.S., the relatively low score for climate change seems especially noteworthy given the importance progressive Democrats and others relatively far to the Left have attached to the idea of a “Green New Deal.”

It’s even easier to conclude that Republicans and their leaners are more committed to an America First-type approach. And it looks like this commitment is somewhat stronger. Their highest priority foreign policy issues are the aforementioned terrorism and job protection – where their priority scores are in the 80s percent. And their next three priorities are maintaining a national military edge (70 percent), reducing illegal immigration (68 percent), and preventing WMD spread (64 percent). For good measure, “getting other countries to assume more of the costs of maintaining world order” comes in at 56 percent.

However revealing these Pew results, they still left out two of the biggest questions for politicians and others trying to surmise which approaches to U.S. foreign policy, and what specific initiatives, would garner the most and least public support. The first is how genuine political independents view these issues. The second is how high a priority is assigned to preventing a nuclear attack on the U.S. homeland.

The importance attached to halting the spread of weapons of mass destruction points to great concern about this challenge. But the strong support expressed by Democrats and their leaners for shoring up America’s alliance relations indicates an especially serious lack of awareness on their part that indiscriminately extending nuclear umbrellas over U.S. allies has greatly increased the odds of such attack (principally from the newish NATO commitments to the highly vulnerable Baltic states, and the longstanding commitment to protect South Korea from North Korea and its new nuclear capabilities).

Of course, these Americans can’t entirely be blamed for this knowledge gap, as both U.S. leaders and the mainstream media continue to work overtime to mask the – growing – nuclear war risks inherent in the nation’s alliance system. (President Trump has been only a partial exception.) Hopefully 2019 will see some explicit, intellectually honest discussion of these dangers – and well before they reach critical mass.

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Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why Mattis Shouldn’t be Missed

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alliances, allies, America First, Defense Department, defense manufacturing base, deterrence, free-riding, globalists, James Mattis, nuclear war, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, steel tariffs, Trump

Boy! Go away for a few days around the holiday season and the whole world seems to turn upside down! (Especially during the Trump era?) For the purposes of this column, I’m thinking of the resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis and his “Don’t forget to write” replacement by the President – although of course adding to the sense of tumult have been Mr. Trump’s angry tweets about the Federal Reserve and the stock market swoon that has partly resulted.

Not that the reactions of the nation’s chattering classes to the Mattis departure haven’t been entirely predictable. A prominent figure publicly chides the President, and he’s practically canonized by establishment politicians and their Mainstream Media spokespeople. The more so if he’s a former Trump official. (Google, e.g., “Tillerson, Rex.”) And major histrionics are always added when the dearly departed have been designated the “adults in the room” – i.e., familiar, experienced (and therefore automatically venerated) policy hands who supposedly are the last lines of defense against Trump-induced catastrophes.

But even at a time when Trump Derangement Syndrome has become epidemic, the Mattis-related lamentations stand out for numerous reasons. First, although Mattis’ performance as a battlefield commander has been outstanding – and deserves the respect and gratitude of all Americans – show me the evidence that he’s been a great or even OK leader of the Pentagon. Spoiler alert: There is none. In fact, in two important respects, Mattis has underwhelmed, at best.

He’s displayed absolutely no interest in strengthening the nation’s domestic defense manufacturing base – a vital challenge considering how dependent such production has become on parts, components, and material made in China, an all-too-likely adversary. In fact, Mattis badly failed the President during the early stages of developing the administration’s steel tariffs. In the Defense Department’s official memo commenting on the President’s decision (sought as part of an interagency review undertaken before the final announcement), Mattis never told his boss that Canada is officially considered part of the U.S defense manufacturing base. So levies on Canadian steel justified by national security considerations arguably made no sense.  (Unfortunately, the full Mattis memo is no longer on-line.)

Nor is there any evidence that the Defense Department under Mattis made any progress in reducing its levels of waste, fraud, and abuse. What we do know now based on an official report is what everyone knowledgeable about the subject has known for decades: the scope is massive. Mattis deserves credit for approving this report – the first audit the Pentagon has ever conducted of its own (even more massive) operations. But he served for nearly two years, and the department continued to be poorly run in too many respects.

Mattis’ performance was even less impressive as a strategist. For all his expertise in fighting wars and otherwise deploying forces once the relevant decisions have been made, he’s demonstrated no expertise in helping to figure out what conflicts and threats the nation should prepare for and what interests are essential to defend or promote. And that’s a big problem because, although the Secretary of Defense is far from the only presidential adviser responsible for providing input in the periodic process of developing the country’s official foreign policy strategy, he’s one of the principals.

Worse, everything we know about Mattis’ contributions – the essence of which was made unmistakable in his resignation letter – shows that he remained doggedly devoted to the globalist dogma that the key to America’s security and prosperity is maintaining and advancing the current international order, and especially the nation’s core military alliances. Viewed in a vacuum, these views are eminently defensible. Viewed the (essential context) of recent and present circumstances, they’re a formula for continuing to coddle chronic economic protectionists and defense free-riders, and for open-ended military involvement in hopeless tar-baby regions like the Middle East. At worst, they’re a recipe for exposing the United States to needless military risks precisely because allied free-riding (in the form of pitifully inadequate spending on their own conventional military forces) despite burgeoning aggressiveness from China and Russia has put a growing premium on America’s nuclear forces to maintain deterrence.

Which leads to the greatest irony surrounding the role of the globalist advisers President Trump originally hired and those he still retains: The globalist establishment keeps propagating the meme that they’ve been all that have been preventing a hair-brained chief executive from blowing the entire world to kingdom come. But the greatest dangers (indeed, the only dangers) that the country could be drawn into a nuclear conflict come from the globalist policy of seeking to protect allies or regions marginal to U.S. interests (South Korea, the new Baltic and East European members of NATO) from adversaries that can or will soon be able to hit the American homeland with nuclear weapons.

Only somewhat more defensible is the globalists’ determination to protect South China sea lanes from Chinese designs even though their favored trade policies have greatly enriched and strengthened China for decades – and even though most of the local beneficiary economies have victimized America’s with their mercantile trade policies.

In the process, Mattis and his fellow globalists have either utterly neglected or arrogantly savaged the kinds of America First alternatives that the President has rhetorically championed (though, as argued comprehensively in this article, not carried out consistently). In other words, he has portrayed as impractical or ignorant – along with reckless – a far superior strategy that views America’s strength, wealth, and favored geographic position as the best guarantors of its safety and well-being.

That’s the real reason for the doom- and gloom-saying sparked by Mattis’ departure. And why I wish he had never been appointed in the first place.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Paul Volcker has Just Condemned Globalism

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alliances, Barron's, Federal Reserve, finance, globalism, manufacturing, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Paul Volcker, Trade

For decades, anyone (like yours truly) who’s even intelligently argued for fundamentally new strategies for U.S. foreign policy and trade policy has been dismissed by defenders of the longstanding globalist approaches as an isolationist or a know-nothing or a protectionist (to name a few slurs). So imagine my surprise to see the other day my own critique of globalism (which decries both its national security and economic dimensions) being closely mirrored by no less than Paul Volcker. Even better, Volcker seems to agree that the mistakes made by both the main aspects of globalism are closely related.

To remind, Volcker is a former Chairman of the Federal Reserve who, as top official at the central bank, had the rare combination of economic smarts and political courage to understand that the only plausible way to end the raging inflation that began crippling the country in the late-1970s was to clamp down hard on credit. A deep recession resulted, but largely because of Volcker’s tight-fisted approach, the economy’s subsequent growth during the 1980s and 1990s was significantly healthier (though not perfectly healthy) than before Volcker hiked interest rates and curbed the money supply’s expansion.

Previously, he served in a senior Treasury Department role at a key juncture of post-World War II U.S. and world economic history (when the post-war global monetary order was falling apart, and a new jerrybuilt order was cobbled together), and as an economist at the Fed. Since leaving the central bank (in 1987), Volcker has been a highly successful advocate of Wall Street reforms and a respected voice for responsible economic policies.  (Here’s a short, handy bio.)

Also to remind, my own basic description of what’s been wrong with America’s globalist policies is that they’ve acted as if developing various types of international arrangements (including institutions like the UN and International Monetary Fund and military alliances), which have been aimed at grandiose global goals (the world’s pacification via the spread of democracy and global economic integration), were the best guarantors of achieving acceptable levels of U.S. security and well-being. (See this article for the most recent, comprehensive statement of these views.)

Consequently, globalists softpedaled efforts to create and sustain the national military and economic strength needed for the country to survive and prosper in the world as it was likely to remain for the foreseeable future: dog-eat-dog and tumultuous. In the process, they regularly sacrificed crucial chunks of the real economy (that is, its most productive sectors) – and the huge number of good jobs they supported – in quixotic efforts to bolster those institutions and to win and keep those allies. As a result, they lost sight of what should be the overriding objective of all foreign policymakers: promoting the interests of the great majority of their own citizens in the most realistic, responsible possible ways (and my definition of responsibility includes financial responsibility).

Actually, Volcker’s indictment is even harsher than mine, at least in tone. In this interview with Barron‘s last week, he suggested that the globalists’ priorities were driven by their desire that America “dominate politically and foreign policy-wise.”

But the substance of our perspectives are remarkably similar. As Volcker argued (and it’s worth quoting the relevant passages in full):

“We were willing to run these current account deficits [in order to pay the mounting costs of globalism without requiring Americans to pay for them with politically toxic higher taxes], and it was favorable for businesses—they could invest abroad, import more freely. But eventually it breaks down. During that process, you lost a lot of small American manufacturing. Now we’re getting the blowback from that. A lot of people feel left out, and they were! We took great pride in open markets, free competition, no tariffs. That pleases the scholars, it pleases big business, but it doesn’t please the people in the part of the country that lost out.

“[Interviewer] Is that an argument for protectionist…?

“Sounds awful, doesn’t it? That’s a bad word.

“Everyone wants to help the home team. We were more interested in dominating politically and foreign-policy-wise. And then we paid, sacrificing rural industry in the process.

“When I was back in the Treasury, the old Treasury bureaucrats would be like, oh God, somebody’s going to visit the president next week, what’s he going to give away? Because other country’s leaders were intent on encouraging the U.S. to buy from them, and the president would say OK, you’re part of NATO, you’re this, you’re that, all these individually small concessions.

“[Interviewer] Am I oversimplifying what you’re saying: The Nixon shock [Nixon administration policies that brought the post-war monetary system to an end] which bought us 40 more years of political dominance?

“I don’t want to overdo it, but yeah. It oiled the wheels of our foreign policy, building a whole network of allies and international institutions and so forth. That’s part of the process, it’s not the whole process. The top dog pays the price [laughing].”

Because I’ve closely followed Volcker’s career, I’m more surprised by the bluntness of this analysis, not its content. But there was one aspect I found genuinely unexpected – his description of Treasury Department career bureaucrats. For decades, in my experience, they’ve been among the truest believers in globalism, including in the desirability of neglecting the productive economy in favor of finance. It seems that in Volcker’s day, they were far more realistic.

As with any argument worth making, critiques of globalism shouldn’t need to rely on “appeals to authority” – the specious practice of insisting on the superiority of a certain viewpoint mainly because supposed experts agree with it. But who could reasonably fault any globalism critics who take pride in being in such splendid company?

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: What Does the Public Think of Khashoggi, Trump, and the Saudis?

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Axios.com, Democrats, Harris, independents, Jamal Khashoggi, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, partisanship, Rasmussen, Republicans, sanctions, Saudi Arabia, Survey Monkey, The Hill, Trump

If you follow the news, you know that there are few if any stories bigger Saudi Arabia’s killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a legal U.S. resident, and President Trump’s unwillingness to hold the kingdom’s top leaders accountable – at least according to America’s tightly intertwined national political classes and Mainstream Media.

At the same time, if anything’s clear from recent domestic political trends – especially the rise of populism – it’s that the priorities of these national elites and the general public don’t always coincide. And the polling on this issue makes pretty clear that the Khashoggi killing and the Trump reaction is one of those instances.

The sample size isn’t big (three surveys) and all of them predate Mr. Trump’s full, November 20 explanation of his final decision on Khashoggi and his Saudi policy. But none point to reactions that would even come close to justifying the amount of time and space being devoted to the issue by the political and media kingpins.

Two of the polls came out on October 24. The first, by Rasmussen, found that by a 57 percent to 33 percent margin, “likely U.S. voters” believed that Khashoggi’s (then) “disappearance and suspected murder was “important to U.S. national security. Eleven percent were undecided. Those results don’t exactly indicate the peasants were reaching for their pitchforks. Nor does the fact that 68 percent of those likely voters favored American sanctions on Saudi Arabia if the monarchy’s involvement was “proven.” After all, “sanctions” can encompass a wide range of measures.

That same day, an Axios/Survey Monkey sounding reported that 56 percent of U.S. adults polled considered the President’s “response to Saudi Arabia for the Khashoggi murder” as “not tough enough.” Just under a third viewed it as “about right” and five percent deemed it “too tough.”

Repeating a pattern often found in recent polling, opinion was sharply divided along partisan lines. A much higher share of Democrats (78 percent) than Republicans (37 percent) chose the “not tough enough” answer. Independents fell right in the middle, with “not tough enough” prevailing in their ranks by 55 percent to 32 percent.

Somewhat different results came from a posting in The Hill newspaper from a survey it conducted along with the Harris organization. Their poll found that by a 49 percent to 29 percent margin, “registered voters” favored waiting on anti-Saudi sanctions until after an independent investigation determines if the Saudi Arabian government is responsible for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi” rather than impose such measures beforehand. And 16 percent of respondents said that the United States “should not be involved in the matter.”

Nonetheless, the partisan split story remained intact, with many more Democrats (38 percent) than Republicans (20 percent) favoring “sanctions now” and somewhat more Republicans (57 percent) than Democrats (46 percent) wanting an investigation first. Twenty eight percent of independents supported sanctions before an investigation whereas 45 percent wanted to wait.

In fact, the partisan split results lend some credence to the proposition (believed by yours truly), that views of the Khashoggi murder and the best U.S. response reveal more about Americans’ views of Mr. Trump than anything else. That is, if you generally like the President or his job performance, you’re likely to at least cut him some slack on Saudi policy, and make the point to a pollster; if you don’t, you’re not.

Some more evidence for this belief: In the Hill/Harris poll, independents were significantly more likely (22 percent) than either Republicans (16 percent) or Democrats (11 percent) to back American non-involvement in the Khashoggi affair.

All of this might change when we start getting polls based on research following the President’s big Khashoggi statement – which represented an unusually blunt,  arguably narrow, and arguably cockeyed, version of realpolitik. But overall the strongest reason for concluding that this issue doesn’t – and won’t – mean remotely as much outside elite political and media circles as inside is probably this Axios/Survey Monkey finding: Only four percent of their respondents considered foreign policy “their top issue.” As I’ve repeatedly written, that’s also a leading sign of the public’s superior common sense.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why Trump Needs to Go Real America First vs the Saudis

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America First, globalism, Iran, Israel, Jamal Khashoggi, Magnitsky sanctions, Middle East, Mohammed bin Salman, oil, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Saudi Arabia, terrorism, Washington Post

Earlier this year, The National Interest published a lengthy article of mine arguing that President Trump seemed to be repeating a mistake that has doomed previous efforts to replace a failed, longstanding globalist strategy with a fundamentally new foreign policy much better suited to the country’s real strengths and weaknesses. And just this morning, this prediction was borne out by the Washington Post‘s editorial writers (best viewed as among the many unofficial spokespeople for globalist approaches that fill the Mainstream Media) in a piece they wrote on Mr. Trump’s approach to the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi authorized at top levels by the Saudi Arabian monarchy.

My article made the case that globalism would never be rejected unless the President made a clean, fully explained, break with the assumptions on which it was based. Instead, it pointed out, he seemed to have settled (wittingly or not) on an approach that might be called “globalism on the cheap.” That is, Mr. Trump’s actions appear to reflect a belief that most and even all of globalism’s supposed economic and security benefits can be realized, and supposed goals achieved (both entailing shaping the entire global environment in ways America allegedly needs in order to be acceptably safe and prosperous) while reducing its costs (e.g., subsidizing the defense of free-riding allies, and their economies with lopsided trade arrangements). The essay also explained that, because similar claims made by globalism critics in the past turned out to be literally too good to be true, numerous chances for genuine and urgently needed foreign policy overhaul have been lost.

That’s why the Post editorial is so revealing. It shows that, because Mr. Trump’s rejection of globalism has been so partial (in this case, when it comes to the Middle East), he’s made himself vulnerable to the kinds of attacks that have vanquished earlier critics and squandered a golden opportunity to stake out a true America First position that would have been strategically sound and politically popular. In fact, the Trump Saudi statements have enabled his critics to slam him in two powerful ways.

First, the Post edit writers have restated the common charge that the President was “craven” in letting Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman off the hook for the Khashoggi murder largely because of economic considerations like the kingdom’s purchases of U.S.-made weapons and its cooperation in keeping oil prices low. As the editorial puts it, Mr. Trump, “cares not a fig for American values….And if he can sell one or two more fighter jets, who cares if a journalist is murdered?”

Small wonder that his decision has been so unpopular even with many of his supporters in Congress. Just as bad, the President’s rationale is so narrow that it’s been easy to undercut on its own terms (e.g., by questioning the actual importance of Saudi Arabia’s imports to the U.S. economy).

But the editorial’s second line of attack is much more important, and is worth presenting in full. The President, according to the Post, is

“undermining the basic understanding that has worked to the United States’ advantage since World War II under presidents both Republican and Democratic.

“Those leaders all accepted that, with less than 5 percent of global population but more than 20 percent of the global economy, the United States, more than any other nation, depends on and benefits from predictable rules. It needs a world where business executives can go forth and come home without fear of kidnapping, where ships can ply the oceans without armed escorts, where contracts are honored and disputes fairly adjudicated. It needs a world where journalists can report and inform Americans on the true conditions on the ground.

“Previous presidents understood that the way to achieve such a world was to enlist allies who would live by the United States’ rules in return for protection — safe in knowledge that the United States would not use its preeminence to squeeze them for every last dollar. They would go along because the United States stood not just for itself but for rules that benefited everyone and for values they cherished, as well: freedom, human dignity, the rule of law. By championing good — albeit imperfectly and inconsistently — the United States did well.”

As my National Interest piece explained, this by-now-standard defense of globalism has the decisive sources of U.S. security and prosperity exactly backward. Far from depending on a placid world largely knit together by alliances and institutions dominated by like-minded countries, the real guarantors of U.S. power and wealth are America’s…power and wealth – i.e., its own assets – along with an unmistakable willingness to use them when advisable.

Further, this power and wealth have been indispensable both in instances when unilateral action has been desirable or unavoidable, and in ensuring that the specific forms taken by various cooperative (“multilateral”) ventures advance American interests – an outcome globalists wrongly take for granted.

These America First-supporting conclusions, by the way, are so valid that it’s become routine for even globalists unknowingly to acknowledge them – as did the Post’s editorialists when they (rightly) accused the President of failing “to see that Saudi Arabia is far more dependent on the United States than the reverse.”

But Mr. Trump’s own failure to recognize the real U.S.-Saudi power balance is far more frustrating for backers of new America First foreign policies. And in a Middle Eastern context, it’s manifested in much more than his views on the Saudi market for American arms exports.

For example, it’s also apparent from his conviction that keeping world and U.S. oil prices relatively low depends on Washington making nice to Riyadh – whereas the Saudis have learned that overly expensive and/or skyrocketing oil prices hurt them (badly) as well. After all, until recently, they’ve reduced American and worldwide economic growth, and therefore reduced the oil revenues on which the kingdom is completely reliant economically. More recently, because of the U.S. energy production revolution (a development vigorously – and correctly – championed by the President), the higher global oil prices rise, the more American oil and natural gas come on stream to the world market, and take market share from the Saudis and other Middle Eastern and foreign exporters.

And, as I’ve written repeatedly, the President’s partial America-First-ism is clear from his belief that it’s vital for U.S. national security to support Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Muslim countries (along with Israel) in order to contain Iran’s regional ambitions.

So what would a real America First approach to the Khashoggi murder have been? Nothing less than the long overdue beginning of a U.S. strategic withdrawal from the hopelessly violent and dysfunctional Middle East based on the (equally long overdue) understanding. This decision would be described an explained in high profile presidential speeches and other declarations that, with the following points, would put the globalists on the defensive for a change: that the United States no longer needs the region’s oil nearly so desperately; that terrorist threats originating in the Middle East are best met by securing America’s own borders, rather than by battling jihadist networks all around the world; and that any Iranian threat to the U.S. homeland is eminently deter-able with U.S. nuclear forces.

P.S. For those concerned about Israel’s security (and that includes me), the Jewish state is more than capable of protecting itself through a combination of its own military strength, its own emerging alliance with the Sunnis – which will also contain any possible headaches from Palestinian radicals – and continuing military and economic assistance from Washington.

In the process, Mr. Trump should announce some painful and specific slaps at the Saudis – like expelling, say, half of their staff from their embassy in Washington and imposing painful so-called Magnitsky sanctions on the personal finances of bin Salman and others at the most senior levels of the Saudi leadership. For nothing is more central to the concept of America First than that, barring truly vital strategic interests to the contrary (the reduction of which itself is a high America First priority), no one gets away with harming American citizens or legal residents (Khashoggi’s status) unjustly.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Saudis May Be Killing Globalism as a U.S. Strategy, Too

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Council on Foreign Relations, Financial Times, globalism, Jamal Khashoggi, Mohammed bin Salman, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Richard Haass, Saudi Arabia

Here’s the latest noteworthy indication that (1) the globalist approach that dominated U.S. foreign policy during the pre-Trump decades is dissolving into not only incoherence but transparent virtue-signaling; and that (2) the apparent murder of Saudi journalist (and legal U.S. resident) Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of thugs linked to the Saudi monarchy is turning into a big contributor:  It’s a Financial Times essay from no less than Richard N. Haass, who is nothing less than the President of the Council on Foreign Relations, which is nothing less than the world’s premier globalist think tank.

For good measure, Haass has also held senior positions in both Bush administrations and, if a mainstream, pre-Trump-style Republican ever wins the White House again, would be a likely Secretary of State or national security advisor candidate. (Full disclosure – he also preceded me at Roslyn High School on New York’s Long Island by two years, but we moved in different circles.)

Haass’ subject was no surprise. The Mainstream Media and bipartisan globalist national foreign policy establishment evidently views the Khashoggi affair as the most important story of the day. And week. And month. And possibly year.

What was striking, though, was the completely confused nature of Haass’ recommendations, and in particular, how he struggled – ultimately unsuccessfully – to reconcile the peer pressure he obviously felt to urge a (seemingly) tough U.S. response to Khashoggi’s demise, and his own convictions as a card-carrying globalist that because of the United States’ still-vital interests in the Middle East, Washington has no choice but to view Saudi Arabia’s ultimately as one of those distasteful regimes that the United States nonetheless needs as an ally.

In fact, Haass explicitly recognizes the dilemma thereby created:

“The choices facing the US and other governments are not easy. They are the latest example of the foreign policy predicament of having to deal with flawed leaders of important countries. Principle and interests inevitably collide, as they often did during the cold war and when it came to dealing with the Shah’s Iran in the 1970s.”

And he tries to make the case for “doing something” significant in coolly unsentimental terms:

“The war in Yemen, arguably Saudi Arabia’s Vietnam, is a humanitarian and strategic disaster. MbS’s [Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman] effort to destabilise Qatar has weakened a country that is home to the principal US military base in the region. There was also the bizarre kidnapping and detention of Lebanon’s prime minister in 2017. And the Saudis failed to bring Israelis and Palestinians together. Moreover, the fate of Mr Khashoggi will make it much more difficult to line up international support to pressure Iran. Riyadh will appear to many to be at least as much of a problem as Tehran.”

But what is the “something” that Haass believes will thread the policy needle and make clear to the royal family that “US and western support for [MbS] cannot be taken for granted?” “Distinguishing” between MbS and the rest of the Saudi monarchy. Dropping him from any White House invite lists. A “reconsideration” by American businesses of (all? some?) “partnering” with the government in Riyadh as long as MbS is in charge. “Constraints on the [Saudi] use of American-supplied military equipment and intelligence” especially for the “misguided war in Yemen.” But on efforts to counter Islamic extremists? The Iranians? Heaven only knows.

Additionally, Haass wants Western governments to press publicly “for an independent and unconstrained investigation of what happened in Istanbul.”

Sadly, however, these measures either amount to transparent bupkis, or steps that – if Haass’ words are taken at face value – could easily endanger interests that Haas and nearly all other globalists have long regarded as crucial for the United States. But it’s far from clear that these proposals should be taken at face value, or anywhere close. In fact, Haass himself argues that President Trump is correct in noting that Saudi Arabia

“is an important and valuable ally that buys significant amounts of arms, is helpful in Syria and in the fight against terrorism, and is a partner versus Iran. Saudi Arabia still produces about one out of every 10 barrels of oil in the world. Its investments are large and important to a number of businesses and projects.”

Hence this point which, for all the above analytical meandering, seems to be Haass bottom line: “[I]t could prove counter-productive and risky to call for the departure of [MbS], who enjoys broad popularity at home. The alternative to him is not clear. Broad instability would serve the interests of no one.”

Of course the Saudis will focus on these sentences above all others. But at least Haass – like other posturing globalists – has achieved the only objectives that could logically explain this exercise in internal contradiction: He preserves his globalist-in-good-standing status. And he’s signaled his supposed virtue.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Fair-Weather U.S. Allies?

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alliances, allies, China, East China Sea, Eastern Europe, France, Germany, globalism, internationalism, Japan, NATO, North Atlantic TYreaty Organization, North Korea, nuclear deterrence, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Pew Research Center, Russia, South Korea, Soviet Union, United Kingdom

Establishment analysts and commentators have looked at the results of the Pew Research Center’s recent survey on overseas attitudes towards U.S. foreign policy under President Trump and decided that their most important findings are that his America First approach is costing America valuable influence on the global stage.

Even if you don’t find those conclusions transparently self-serving – since the vast majority of these analysts and commentators are staunch supporters of a more traditional globalist or internationalist approach – consider this alternative interpretation: The Pew survey strongly suggests that the globalist strategy, which has been in place for decades, has failed miserably in a crucial respect. Even though its core principles have required that the United States accept enormous cost and risks (including nuclear) on behalf of allies all over the world, the Pew researchers have found that even under President Obama – a pretty run-of-the-mill globalist – the populations of these same allies had little appreciation for these American burdens.

For me, the most glaring example is South Korea. As RealityChek readers know, for years I’ve been noting that the rapid recent progress of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program means that the United States’ longstanding commitment to use nuclear weapons if necessary to defend the South from a northern invasion or simply to deter such an attack is now qualitatively more dangerous than in the past. For if North Korea has not already developed the means to launch a nuclear strike that could take out an American city – or two or three – it’s not far from achieving that goal.

The North’s progress was glaringly obvious in 2013, when Pew last asked South Koreans if they believed that “In making international policy decisions, the U.S. takes into account the interest of countries like ours a great deal/fair amount.” Yet that year, only 36 percent of South Koreans answered “Yes.” This year, only 24 percent of South Koreans gave that answer.

Japan is also protected by an American nuclear umbrella – at least in principle. As with the case of South Korea, it hosts large American military forces whose presence aims to bolster the credibility of that promise. And North Korea has actually fired missiles over Japanese territory – meaning that the threat it poses to Japan and to those U.S. forces is anything but merely theoretical. (If only because the American forces in Japan that defend the islands are supposed to help their comrades-in-arms if war breaks out on the Korean peninsula.) Japan is also alarmed by Chinese encroachments in the East China Sea.

But in 2013, only 38 percent of Japanese agreed that American foreign policy takes their interests into account even a fair amount. This year, that number is down to 28 percent.

The security situation in Europe is not nearly as fraught. But Russia has certainly taken actions that arguably threaten the security of new members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that used to be part of either the old Soviet Union or the Soviet bloc. And as NATO allies, these countries are also entitled to nuclear protection from the United States even though their fates had never before been considered vital American interests and even though Russia retains nuclear forces more than large enough to devastate the United States many times over.

Yet although the new NATO members either border Germany (like Poland) or are located pretty close by, and even though Germans presumably would not want to see Russia reestablish dominance, even in 2013, only 50 percent of Germans believed that Washington takes their interests significantly into account in its foreign policy. The 2018 figure? With Russia at least as menacing? Nineteen percent. And the Germans are anything but outliers, as Pew found roughly the same trend in France and in the United Kingdom (although the share of their populations detecting any meaningful American regard for their interests in 2013 was a good deal lower than in Germany – just 35 percent and 40 percent, respectively).

A common retort by globalists and by allies is that allied populations have no reason to be especially grateful to the United States because these alliances serve crucial American interests, too. But what they forget is that populations (especially from countries whose governments have been champion security free-riders) that don’t believe the United States cares much about them aren’t likely to be populations likely to support the American military when push comes to shove in their regions – as opposed to calling for some version of accommodating the aggressors.

Not that I’m criticizing allied populations. At least in their initial stages, any conflicts will take place almost exclusively on their territories. And P.S. – these kinds of strains were troubling alliance relations for decades before Trump. But the by the same token, the Pew results underscore two truths about U.S. alliances that should be disturbing globalists more than ever.

First, the nuclear risks they still appear to be entirely satisfied with are being run for stakes (the security of relatively small, unimportant countries, as opposed to Japan and the entirety of Western Europe) that are less rationally justifiable than ever. And second, when the United States needs to lead the resistance to aggression, it may have fewer followers than ever.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why the Khashoggi Incident Really Matters

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Al Qaeda, America First, arms sales, Cold War, energy, globalism, globalists, Iran, ISIS, Islam, Israel, Jamal Khashoggi, jihadism, Middle East, oil, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, September 11, terrorism, Trump

Important though it is, the most important question surrounding the possibility that Saudi Arabia’s monarchy has killed Jamal Khashoggi is not whether the United States responds or how it responds if the kingdom did murder the dissident journalist – who happens to be a legal resident of the United States.

Instead, the most important question is really two-fold. First, do the many U.S. foreign policy traditionalists calling for severe punishment understand how such a move could undercut the decades-long approach toward the Saudis that they themselves have strongly supported? Second, and even more intriguing, do these globalists understand that the Khashoggi affair is simply the latest in a long string of signs that it’s well past time for the United States to adopt a genuine America First approach and leave the hot, dysfunctional mess that is the entire Muslim Middle East?

Given the prominence of maintaining good relations with the Saudis in the strategies of American globalists across the the board, it’s nothing less than jaw-dropping to see how many of them – liberal and conservative alike – are calling for strong counter-measures if Khashoggi is in fact dead at Saudi hands. Here’s a representative example from no less than former CIA chief John Brennan – who’s gone on Never Trump rampage in part because he views Trump’s foreign policy views as anathema. My astonishment, however, is justified even if much of the outrage is no more than outrage-signaling – posturing assumed to be safe because the Trump administration will eventually not upset the felafel cart.

After all, since World War II, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Persian Gulf region has been valued as a prime source of the oil desperately needed for the world economy to function acceptably in peacetime, and crucial to prevailing over ruthless global enemies in hot and cold wars alike. Once the Soviet threat disappeared, the region’s oil retained all of its perceived importance, and the critical mass of the foreign policy establishment gravitated toward seeing first Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and then Iran’s theocracy as the prime threat to the world’s unimpeded access. Crucially, not even evidence of (unofficial?) Saudi support for the Islamic extremists of Al Qaeda who launched the September 11 attacks ever truly threatened the U.S.-Saudi connection. 

Indeed, in recent years, even far left-of-center American politicians joined widespread calls for Washington to create a Middle Eastern-dominated coalition to handle most of the fight against ISIS (a successor group to Al Qaeda). And one of the anchors of this arrangement was expected to be none other than Saudi Arabia.

As I’ve argued for years now, none of the arguments for a close, if informal, U.S.-Saudi alliance holds any more water. North America possesses all the fossil fuels needed by the United States, and thanks to the shale/fracking-led energy technology revolution, the Persian Gulf’s role as key global oil supplier is greatly diminished as well. The terrorist threats likely to keep emanating from the region are best dealt with through much stronger U.S. border controls, not repeated American military interventions or fantasies about the Muslim Middle East’s decrepit (and highly compromised) regimes becoming a strong, reliable bulwark against jihadism.

And those claiming that Israel’s security warrants continuing America’s Middle East policy status quo need to remember that Israel and Saudi Arabia (and most other Sunni monarchies) have now created a tacit alliance to counter Shi’ite Iran. Moreover, Washington can always keep selling or simply giving the Israelis all the weapons they need.

The situation has changed so much that the most compelling argument against steps like cutting off or suspending U.S. arms sales to the Saudis has been advanced by President Trump: a boatload of revenue and jobs would be lost by the American economy, and the Saudis could always turn to alternate suppliers (like the Chinese and, more credibly – because their military equipment is still better – the Russians). In addition, don’t forget this irony: Consistent with its anti-Iran goals, Israel and its own impressive defense-related technologies could also partly fill the vacuum left by a U.S. withdrawal from the Saudi market.

At the same time, there’s no shortage of countries living in dangerous neighborhoods that would remain or could become massive buyers of American weapons. And as pointed out here, the Saudi military has relied on so much U.S. equipment for so long that changing its complexion would be as complicated as it would be expensive. Not to mention the years it would take for a regime that faces imminent threats to complete this task.

As a result, even if Khashoggi miraculously reappears one day, or even if he doesn’t but the Saudis are innocent, here’s hoping that the uproar over his disappearance triggers some major rethinking of America’s Middle East policy. After all, to paraphrase a famous recent remark about governing, a policy firestorm is a terrible thing to waste.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Did Obama Embolden Beijing in the South China Sea?

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Barack Obama, China, East Asia-Pacific, Jonathan W. Greenert, National Bureau of Asian Research, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, pivot to Asia, PLA Navy, South China Sea, The National Bureau of Asian Research, Trump, U.S. Navy, Wu Shengli

Here’s a shorty but a goody that I read about recently but haven’t been able to post on due to the rush of Kavanaugh-related news. And I can’t write about it tomorrow because both the new monthly U.S. jobs and trade figures come out. So without further ado here’s the gist: China’s aggressive efforts lately to expand its control over the South China Sea – whose waters and key shipping lanes the rest of the world consider to be international – may have been encouraged by the Obama administration’s feeble responses to its initial moves in the area.

Where’s the evidence? An August report written for the well-regarded National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) by no less than a recently retired U.S. Chief of Naval Operations – the Navy’s senior-most officer – Jonathan W. Greenert.

Greenert never explicitly blamed the former President for coddling China in the region – which also boasts abundant energy resources. But he did write that at the start of the latest phase in China’s campaign to interfere with freedom of navigation in the South China Sea – turning a series of reefs and other geological features into small-scale but full-fledged islands that could host military facilities – other regional countries:

“perceived the United States’ slow and politicized response to Chinese activities as having been insufficient to address the challenge. Indeed, there is evidence that Chinese leaders were prepared for a more robust reaction from the United States and might have recalibrated their activities as a consequence. When there was no such response, the island-building campaign continued apace.”

And his evidence was first-hand:

“In my interactions as U.S. chief of naval operations with the PLA Navy commander, Admiral Wu Shengli, Admiral Wu made clear that he thought the United States would have a more forceful reaction when China began its island-building.”

Since Greenert served as CNO from 2011 to 2015, these interactions obviously took place during the Obama years.

As RealityChek readers should know, I favor a change in U.S. strategy in the East Asia-Pacific region that would feature a military pull-back (mainly because of the increasingly dangerous nuclear threats from China and North Korea), and a reliance instead on America’s economic power to defend and advance the United States’ essential interests in the region – which are economic. Here’s a recent, comprehensive statement of this position.

But of course, I’m not in charge of America’s Asia policy! And since President Obama stated his determination to keep U.S. Asia strategy on course – even announcing a “pivot” of American military forces and broader strategic focus to the region from the Middle East that turned out to be far more bark than bite – that strategy’s viability demanded that China’s adventurism meet a much stronger U.S. rebuff. Indeed, the results of the “talk loudly but carry a small stick” Obama strategy are becoming alarmingly clear – increasingly brazen challenges by China to the American position in East Asia that could easily trigger a conflict.

President Trump has (rightly) complained that Mr. Obama’s neglect of the North Korea nuclear threat wound up dumping that mounting crisis into his lap. Before too long, he may be making equally justified complaints about his predecessor’s record in the South China Sea.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: More Globalist Fantasies from The Times’ Friedman

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Africa, China, climate change, Cold War, democracy, Europe, global norms, global order, global warming, globalism, human rights, international institutions, Italy, migrants, migration, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, The National Interest, The New York Times, Thomas Friedman, World War II

Thomas Friedman’s New York Times column today shows that the uber-pundit continues to perform a crucial dual public service. He both articulates as clearly as possible the usually unspoken assumptions underlying the globalist foreign policy approach pursued by the establishments of the two major American political parties for decades, and (unwittingly, to be sure) he reveals how childish they are. 

In his discussion of the African migrants crisis faced by Italy and other countries of southern Europe, Friedman once again credits “global cooperation and rule-making” with making “America, Europe and the world as a whole steadily freer, more stable and more prosperous since World War II.”

As I’ve pointed out, these successes owed not to any institutions-based “liberal global order” but to the American power and wealth that underwrote the defense of Western Europe, Japan, and South Korea and the recreation of a functioning international economy (until the Cold War ended, of course, one confined to the bounds of the non-communist world).

But what distinguishes today’s article – and pushes it into the realm of fantasy – is the author’s claim that this order and its institutions and procedures have “managed the key global issues after W.W. II — like trade, migration, environment and human rights….”

How do we know this is fantasy? Because Friedman himself emphasizes here that the migrants crisis remains out of control. Moreover, the world trade system is proving woefully unable to handle the challenge of China’s predatory government-private sector hybrid economy. The management claim, meanwhile, is sure hard to square with Friedman’s own nearly innumerable warnings that climate change is about to destroy the planet unless dramatic steps are taken immediately.

And although the world is unmistakably freer than before World War II, again it’s been American power – not any set of worldwide institutions and rules – that’s been primarily responsible. Further, a major elite commentator meme nowadays of course is that freedom has taken some important hits lately – e.g., because of the rise of allegedly authoritarian populists on both sides of the Atlantic, because Russia’s post-Cold War experiment with genuine democracy proved so short-lived, and because China’s widely anticipated evolution toward greater political (and economic) openness never even got started.

I’m also grateful to Friedman for creating another opportunity for me to explain why dismissing the importance of international institutions and rules does not amount to dismissing the importance of international cooperation in addressing the varied and important worldwide problems that transcend borders.

As I’ve most recently written in my June National Interest article on the superiority of a genuine America First foreign policy, there’s no reasonable question that in order to deal with pollution and disease and climate shifts (whether man-made or not, they can create terrible common problems) countries will need to meet and figure out how to respond jointly.

But since the agreed-on solutions will not affect every country equally, or benefit every country equally, it will be vital for the United States to push for the measures that most effectively promote and preserve its own interests. Further, since Washington will not be able to count on persuasion solely or even largely to accomplish this goal, it will need to make sure that it possesses the only other advantages capable of shaping the outcomes favorably – power and wealth. Accept no substitutes.