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

Tags

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.

Advertisements

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

Tags

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?

Tags

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

Tags

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.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Case that Trump is…and is not…a NATO Disrupter

Tags

energy, Europe, George H.W. Bush, Germany, Mainstream Media, Marc Fischer, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Soviet Union, Trump, Trump Derangement Syndrome, Washington Post

Marc Fisher’s column in today’s Washington Post on the approach taken to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by President Trump and his successors is one of the more schizoid articles on American foreign policy that I’ve ever seen.

On the one hand, Fisher makes the absolutely crucial – and typically overlooked – point that since its founding (back in 1949), the United States has seen the alliance as a means not simply to contain the old Soviet Union (and now the Russian follow-on state). It’s also been seen as a means to contain Germany – specifically, (in Fischer’s words) to “enmesh Germany so thoroughly in Western alliances that it never again became a dominant, destabilizing force.” And P.S. – that’s also why Washington was so enthusiastic about Germany joining the European Union (originally through various predecessor organizations).

Even better, the author discusses how this strategy has had historic benefits (helping build a Western Europe that was free and peaceful for decades) and costs (discouraging Germans, especially after unification, from grappling seriously with the challenge of becoming a “normal” country, complete with robust defense capabilities, without reverting back to dangerous militarism).

But despite the valuable history lesson, Fisher’s article at least flirts with Trump Derangement Syndrome in two important ways. First, he fails to distinguish between German ambivalence about more assertive foreign and defense policies, and current German policies like signing energy supply contracts bound to send billions worth of euros in revenue to a Russian government that Berlin professes to view as a threat to European security and the broader “global liberal order.”

Even seven decades after the end of World War II, the former remains understandable, at least to some extent. There can be no excuse for the latter, and President Trump has been absolutely right to call Germany on the carpet in this respect.

Second, Fisher calls the Trump-ian approach to NATO, and to defense burden-sharing issues a major and troubling departure from longstanding U.S. policy because it’s been (or seemed to be) uniquely ignorant of the Germany issue. Yet he belittles Mr. Trump’s claim to be a long overdue disrupter of hidebound American NATO strategies by noting that, in 1992, former President George H.W. Bush’s administration “bluntly warned” Germany that “the United States would pull its troops out of Europe if the Germans and other Europeans didn’t cough up the money and manpower to take more responsibility for their own defense.”

Unless Bush 41 was simply blowing smoke, I’m hard pressed to see the difference between this position and President Trump’s hard (and harsh) line. Fischer could have made this case – which is entirely conceivable given the long history of similar, indeed transparently hollow, threats from Mr. Trump’s globalist predecessors. But he didn’t. Moreover, the President’s rhetoric hasn’t (yet) gone as far as Bush 41.

The way I see it, major changes in America’s approach to NATO (and to its alliances in East Asia) are urgently needed, and Mr. Trump hasn’t gone nearly far enough down this road. It’s also clear that, in some important respects, the Trump-ian approach of loud bark and modest bite has given his administration the worst of all possible worlds – widely accused by the U.S. and many foreign chattering classes of ostrich-like isolationism, yet failing (to date) to secure for the United States any of the benefits of a genuine America First global strategy. Worse, as I’ve just argued, Mr. Trump actually seems determined to increase some of the threats the United States faces from continuing the alliance status quo.

So I’m not knocking Fisher for criticizing the President’s NATO policy. What a shame, though, that he didn’t limit himself to spotlighting the Germany issue, and proceeded to fall into the kind of Trump-induced incoherence that has rightly cost the mainstream media so much credibility.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: What’s Really Wrong with Trump’s NATO Policies

Tags

alliances, allies, America First, Crimea, Eastern Europe, Korea, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear deterrence, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Soviet Union, The National Interest, tripwires, Trump, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

As this year’s summit of the leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) begins, it’s nothing less than vital for Americans to understand two points about President Trump’s approach to the Atlantic alliance:

First, the President’s globalist critics are right in pointing out that Mr. Trump is thoroughly, and even dangerously, mishandling U.S. relations with NATO.

Second, these critics completely misunderstand why the President is off-base.

The heart of the globalist case against Trump-ian NATO policies goes generally like this: Mr. Trump drastically underestimates the contribution made by the alliance to U.S. national security interests not only in Europe but around the world. Especially worrisome are his threats to reduce America’s military presence in Europe if other NATO members don’t boost their defense budgets to agreed on levels, and the chance that he could strike some kind of a deal with Russian leader Vladimir Putin at their upcoming meeting that would in some way accept Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and designs on Ukraine. The result would be the kind of appeasement that could encourage more Russian aggression against former satellites of the old Soviet Union that are NATO members today, and against the Baltic states, other new NATO members that were part of the Soviet Union proper after being taken over in 1940.  

Yet this critique fundamentally misreads the Trump NATO strategy – at least as it stands this week. Many of the latest alarm bells were set off by a Washington Post report describing a Pentagon investigation of “the cost and impact of a large-scale withdrawal or transfer of American troops stationed in Germany” – where most U.S. forces in Europe are deployed.

Although semi-denied by the Defense Department, the alleged finding seemed consistent with Mr. Trump’s suggestions that if the NATO allies don’t pick up more of the alliance’s military spending burden, America’s commitment to their defense might weaken. (Interestingly, a similar statement was made earlier this year by Defense Secretary James Mattis, who is generally considered a national security traditionalist who values America’s alliances much more than the President).

But widely overlooked in the latest trans-Atlantic tumult are Mr. Trump’s actions – which should speak louder than words. And many of them were nicely summed up in this Associated Press article:

“Notwithstanding Trump’s grumbles about America shouldering the defense burden of Europe, his administration plans to boost spending to support it.

“In the aftermath of Russia’s annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine in 2014 and its subsequent military incursion into eastern Ukraine, the Pentagon ramped up joint exercises in eastern and central Europe and spent billions on what it calls the European Deterrence Initiative aimed at Russia. After spending $3.4 billion on that initiative last year, the Trump administration has proposed boosting it to $6.5 billion in the 2019 budget year.”

It’s bad enough that a U.S. decision to increase the American military footprint in Europe will completely kneecap the Trump administration’s efforts to push more allied military spending by convincing the allies that continued free-riding and foot-dragging will carry no cost. Far worse is the focus of this new U.S. spending on beefing up the American/NATO presence in Poland and the other new alliance members in Eastern Europe. Indeed, that article about studying cutting American forces in Germany reported that one option being considered was moving some – presumably permanently – to Poland, which borders Russia.

The Poles and the other countries once under the Soviet thumb are understandably heartened by these possible moves. Troublingly, however, this apparent Trump gambit indicates that he’s just as ignorant about the paramount reason for overhauling U.S. NATO strategy as his globalist critics: Because of the alliance’s expansion to cover so many countries so close to Russia, because Moscow has recently been responding so sharply, and because NATO legally requires the United States and all other allies to rally to the defense of any NATO member under attack, the chances have risen that America could become embroiled in a war with a nuclear-armed Russia.

And worse still, the more American units are stationed in Europe, and the more permanent these deployments (so far, they’re periodically rotated in and out), the greater the odds that such a conflict will go nuclear – because defending Russia’s neighbors with conventional forces alone will prove impossible, and because the American forces will become a tripwire whose defeat or impending defeat would generate heavy pressure on any U.S. President to respond with a nuclear strike that would risk Russian retaliation.

A resulting, and tragic, irony: The security of Germany and the countries of Western Europe have for decades been considered vital American interests, primarily because their industrial and technological strength and potential could dramatically affect the balance of global power. The security of the countries to the East have never been considered vital American interests, partly because they have never remotely possessed these capabilities or potential, and partly because geography will always make them fatally vulnerable to Soviet or Russian ambitions.

So the possibly emerging Trump position amounts to assuming greater risks (including of nuclear attack on the American homeland) for assets of much less value.

As I’ve written, the continuation of status quo American policies on the Korean Peninsula poses similar nuclear risks to protect an ally – South Korea – that’s certainly impressive economically but hardly decisive to U.S. safety or prosperity.

I’m still firmly on board with President Trump’s declared intention of replacing longtime globalist foreign policies with an America First approach. But like everything else in life, this transformation can be carried out badly and well. Without a major course change, Mr. Trump’s policies could easily wind up leaving the nation with the worst of both international strategies.

P.S. If you’re interested in seeing how I would deal with the above dilemmas, check out my new article in The National Interest – on what a genuine America First foreign policy would look like, and why it would be far better than its predecessor, or the strange hybrid the Trump administration has created to date.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Real Trump-Kim Summit Danger

Tags

alliances, de-nuclearization, Kim Jong Un, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, sanctions, Trump, Trump Kim summit

I’m still skeptical about the prospects for the upcoming summit between President Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un – but not mainly for the slew of reasons trotted out by the Never Trump chattering class since this historic meeting began taking shape.

For example, it’s true that the President has little international negotiating experience. But which of the so-called experts expounding endlessly on the summit in recent weeks – especially those who worked in previous U.S. Administrations – has any record of dealing with the North Koreans that can be accurately described as anything else but abject failure? In fact, if Kim is as unconventional (to put it diplomatically) a leader as he’s commonly described, maybe Mr. Trump’s decades of dealing in the dog-eat-dog New York City real estate world will be much more useful background than anything that can be provided by CIA briefing books.

Has the President already handed North Korea an unearned, unreciprocated victory by agreeing to meet with Kim in the first place? This charge assumes that face-to-face talks with an American leader greatly adds to his North Korean counterpart’s legitimacy. But it’s hard to see how. Kim’s rule in North Korea isn’t based on any form of popular consent. Like his father and grandfather, his hold on power owes exclusively on repression. And in terms of global opinion, this indictment leaves two crucial questions unanswered. First, why on earth is Kim’s global image the slightest bit relevant to U.S.-North Korea diplomacy? And second, what thinking person would fundamentally change his or her views on Kim’s stature or record, or whatever criteria is chosen, solely, or to any extent, because he’s photographed side-by-side with a U.S. President?

Will Mr. Trump turn out to be over-anxious for success and agree to a cosmetic or outright bad deal just to boost his ego, or his domestic poll numbers – and Republicans’ chances in this fall’s midterm elections? This concern actually resembles my own principal fear, but my underlying reasons are fundamentally different (and much more coherent) than those of run-of-the-mill Trump critics. And more important, the policy conclusions I draw remain fundamentally different.

The Trump critics seem to define a bad deal as one in which the President makes concrete concessions to North Korea (say, some relaxation of economic sanctions, or the withdrawal of some U.S. military forces) in return for vague or misleading or unenforceable promises by Kim to take some steps to start dismantling his nuclear arsenal. In addition, it’s argued that if this pattern drags on, North Korea could pocket valuable gains (a stronger economy, an improved military position on the Korean peninsula, more time to make more covert progress on its nuclear program) at the expense of the United States and its South Korean and Japanese allies. And don’t forget the alarms expressed at the prospect that, if Mr. Trump concludes he’s been snookered, he’ll angrily cut off the negotiations and – much worse – his administration could resume military threats that eventually, whether intentionally or not, trigger real conflict.

The main problem with the critics’ warnings isn’t that they’re far-fetched. Indeed, they’re all too plausible. Instead, the main problem is that the bulk of the critics have urged North Korea policies that would create many of the same dangers – principally, American agreement to relax the sanctions, and/or to military steps like halting certain exercises condemned as needlessly provocative by the North but essential for maintaining readiness, in exchange for moves by Kim that would fall way short of complete, verifiable de-nuclearization.

In other words, the critics, like the over-anxious Trump of their purported nightmares, seem to be willing to live for quite some time with a North Korea that remains a formidable nuclear power, and with one that might keep on perfecting a weapon that could destroy one or more American cities in the event of a peninsular war. As I’ve explained, this arsenal, along with the ongoing presence of a U.S. tripwire military force, could easily produce a White House decision to enter a war that might result in almost unimaginable damage to the American homeland.

I’m not saying that this terrifying scenario will unfold inevitably. Nor am I completely pessimistic about the stars aligning for success over time – such as Kim’s reported determination to develop North Korea’s primitive economy (for reasons that include a self-interested calculation that more domestic prosperity is his best bet for regime survival), the Trump administration’s promise to maintain its intensified sanctions in the absence of major de-nuclearization progress, and Kim’s possible fear that the administration’s talk about preemptive or preventive war isn’t just bluster.

What I am saying is that the uncertainties are still so great, and the stakes (a nuclear attack on American soil) are so high, that it remains reckless to assume any needless risk to the nation at all. And the best way by far to eliminate needless risk from the Korea nuclear crisis, as I’ve written repeatedly, is to remove American troops from the peninsula and to allow North Korea’s neighbors to deal with its nuclear arsenal however they wish.

Such a withdrawal would remove any rational reason for Kim to attack the United States with his nuclear weapons in the event of a peninsular war. And an American threat to retaliate massively for an attack on its own territory would be almost infinitely more credible than a threat to retaliate for an attack on another country – especially if and when North Korea develops intercontinental nuclear strike capabilities.

The drawbacks of withdrawal should by now be familiar – destabilization and possibly war in East Asia, and a missed opportunity to end finally a frightening, decades-long threat to this region of big populations and economies. But the advantages – which are not nearly familiar enough because the nuclear risks of America’s alliances policies have been obscured from the public for so long – entail minimizing the chances of what would be by orders of magnitude the worst catastrophe in the country’s history. What a tragedy – and indeed scandal – that this question is still open.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: North Korea, China, & the (Inevitable) Limits of Diplomacy

Tags

agriculture, China, commodities, diplomacy, energy, Iran, Kim Jong Un, LIbya, Made in China 2025, manufacturing, Muammar el-Qaddafi, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Saddam Hussein, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, tariffs, technology, Trade, trade deficit, tripwire, Trump, Ukraine

Diplomacy has sure taken a beating these last few days. And revealingly, that looks like a good thing.

Let me explain: I have no problem whatever with countries trying to resolve their differences peacefully, through dialogue and compromise. But in the nuclear age, and especially after America’s Vietnam debacle, this age-old concept has turned into a foreign policy magic bullet in the United States – including among the nation’s bipartisan globalist establishment. So the collapse (for now) of plans for a summit between President Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, and the failure so far of the President to make any headway in curbing China’s predatory trade practices, could be welcome developments. For these developments could remind Americans of diplomacy’s limits in promoting U.S. national interests (the overriding priority of the nation’s foreign policy), and how even on crucial issues of war and peace, it can be completely pointless and even dangerously distracting.

On North Korea, there have always been strong grounds for skepticism that negotiations could achieve America’s main objective – the complete elimination of Kim Jong Un’s nuclear weapons. It’s true that Kim has appeared more interested in economic reform than his father or grandfather – who preceded him in power. Therefore, in principle, he would be more responsive to economic carrots and sticks. On the one hand, he might be amenable to surrendering his arsenal in exchange for foreign investment and aid (along with security-related concessions from the United States like formal recognition of his regime, a peace treaty ending the decades-long state of war between Pyongyang and its enemies). On the other hand, he might be more concerned about the impact of the sanctions that President Trump has both broadened and intensified.

Yet it was always difficult to believe that Kim would prize any of these considerations above his regime’s defense against overseas threats, and for these purposes, nuclear weapons are hard to beat. As widely noted, he’s surely been impressed by the gruesome fates of fellow autocrats who gave up their nuclear hopes (Libya’s Muammar el-Qaddafi) or who hadn’t the chance to develop these weapons (Iran’s Saddam Hussein).

Further, Kim also is no doubt aware of a third recent example of a country paying heavily for signing away its nuclear weapon status: Ukraine. In 1994, that nation agreed to dismantle the large nuclear force stationed on its soil when it was part of the Soviet Union, and left there after the USSR’s demise. In return, it received security promises from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia that its territorial integrity would be respected. A quarter century later, Moscow has seized effective control over much of the country’s eastern half.

Moreover, if a Trump-Kim summit and follow-on negotiations resulted in a compromise that left the North with some kind of nuclear arsenal, this “victory” could eventually become disastrous for America and its homeland. For there would be no guarantee that Kim would have truly abandoned his family’s goal of dominating the Korean peninsula through nuclear-aided conquest or intimidation of the South. And as long as large U.S. ground forces remained in South Korea, the outbreak of war would still threaten to draw Washington into a conflict with a foe capable of hitting its territory with nuclear warheads.

That still-live prospect should be an awfully powerful reason for switching to a strategy I’ve long advocated – ditching diplomacy, withdrawing the U.S. troops in South Korea that expose the United States to nuclear danger, and permitting North Korea’s neighbors to handle Kim and his nuclear ambitions any way they wish.

Trade diplomacy with China doesn’t threaten to turn an American city into a glowing ruin. But it’s all too likely to result in open-ended talks that do as little to combat the economic and security threats created by Beijing’s trade predation as previous negotiations involving President Trump’s predecessors. As I’ve recently written, even if his administration could come up with a coherent set of priorities, adequately verifying any Chinese compliance with U.S. positions is a pipe dream.

But this latest American attempt at trade diplomacy faces two other seemingly insuperable obstacles. First, the President’s objective of reducing the U.S.’ massive bilateral trade deficit with China appears to neglect the makeup of this deficit – which matters more than its size. Specifically, his proposals to date envision narrowing the trade gap mainly by boosting American exports of farm products and energy to China.

Both sectors of the U.S. economy are obviously important. But neither can become a major driver of sustainable American prosperity, because they’re essentially involved in producing commodities – which have never added nearly as much value to national economy as manufactures. That’s why developing countries invariably view a transition from agriculture to industry as the key to their hopes for rising living standards, and why even wealthy energy producers like Saudi Arabia have resolved to focus more on manufacturing and other higher value activities.

And P.S. – that’s no doubt why the Chinese clearly consider this American demand the most appealing on the Trump agenda.

As for the intertwined threats of continued and rampant Chinese intellectual property theft, and of China’s master plan to lead the world in a wide array of “industries of the future” (the Made in China 2025 program), U.S. tariffs on the goods and services these policies already enable Beijing to produce and export could well deal its ambitions a major blow. And clearly, that’s the Trump administration’s aim.

But if so, why negotiate over these matters? The United States has made reasonably clear what it wants China to do. And it’s declared its intent to retaliate with trade curbs if China balks. If the Trump administration is serious about this approach, and confident that it will succeed, what is there left to talk about? Either the Chinese accede (in which case, as I wrote this week, towering verification challenges would remain), or they dig in their heels and the tariffs follow.

Further talks, unless they’re simply aimed at clarifying American positions, can only muddy the waters and encourage endless Chinese foot-dragging – including regularly throwing Washington a few crumbs of market share – by telegraphing a Trump reluctance to pull the trigger. All the while, the Chinese tech prowess ostensibly alarming Americans across the political spectrum will keep growing.

And as with the case of the Korean crisis, a far better American approach would be disengagement – i.e., a series of measures aimed at reversing the disastrously wrongheaded twenty-year U.S. effort to more closely link the nation’s fate to a country with which mutually beneficial commerce was never possible. The Trump administration has already taken some important steps in this direction. Chiefly, it has greatly tightened restrictions on Chinese takeovers of economic assets in the United States. And the President’s threatened tariffs have induced some factories to move from China to the United States. But as previously indicated, the administration also seems bent on helping U.S. companies invest more in the Chinese economy, which can only further widen the trade deficit and hand China more cutting edge American technology. And it’s given no hint of a comprehensive strategy to bring manufacturing supply chains now concentrated in China back to the United States.

The latter task, in particular, will entail a long-term effort – not exactly the American governing system’s strong suit these days. And success will also depend on thoroughgoing domestic policy reform. (See this article for one sensible list.) But compared with the apparent belief that, over any policy-relevant time frame, China’s will become an economy compatible with America’s, it’s the height of realism.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Trump-Kim Summit is a Spectacular – but Dangerous – Distraction

Tags

Barack Obama, Kim Jong Un, North Korea, nuclear buildup, nuclear deterrence, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, preventive strike, South Korea, Trump

The more the circumstances surrounding the North Korea nuclear crisis change, the more they remain fundamentally the same – and that includes the dramatic recent news that President Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un have decided to hold the first ever meeting between the top leaders of the two countries presumably to energize efforts to reach some kind of negotiated solution. As a result, it’s still the case, as I’ve argued repeatedly, that America’s only sane course of action is not to plunge even more deeply into the potentially deadly affairs of this far-off peninsula. It’s to disengage, especially militarily, and let North Korea’s big, wealthy neighbors deal with Pyongyang’s nuclear forces any way they wish.

Before the historic announcement of the Trump-Kim summit – which is far from certain actually to be held – the case for U.S. disengagement was growing more compelling by the day. The North’s rapid progress toward building a nuclear-tipped missile that could strike targets in the continental United States meant that America’s decades-old strategy of deterring Northern aggression against the South had become dangerously obsolete. Before North Korea had reached this stage, this U.S. defense guarantee was risk-free for the American homeland. Because Pyongyang could pose no threat to the United States itself, Washington could even safely afford to station nearly 30,000 combat troops directly in harm’s way in South Korea literally to trap a President into using nuclear weapons to defend the South against attack from the North and its superior non-nuclear military. And precisely because of America’s nuclear weapons monopoly, the promise was supremely credible.

With that monopoly nearly gone, the tables are turning completely. Once the North gains reasonably reliable intercontinental nuclear attack capability, America’s policy will become one of risking the complete destruction of U.S. cities for the security of another country – and a relatively unimportant one at that. And since even the landing of a single warhead one such a target would create a catastrophe never even remotely approached in American history, the current U.S. strategy will become completely non-credible. Even worse, however: As long as such a large American military force remains in South Korea, a U.S. President still may have no real choice but to proceed down the nuclear road – or accept mass American military casualties inflicted by a North Korean invasion.

It’s entirely possible that the big new twist in this story could wind up bringing the United States (and South Korea and East Asia in general) the best of all possible worlds: a verifiably denuclearized North and the preservation of American security alliances that Washington has long prized (with little evidence to be sure) as guarantors of decisive American influence in this economically vibrant region. President Trump’s stance toward the North is indeed a striking contrast to the can-kicking Obama posture of “strategic patience,” and a case can be made that the new administration’s combination of stronger military threats and economic sanctions has convinced the North that its historic truculence and defiance has become too risky. In this vein, it’s also possible that, as erratically as he’s often acted, Kim is a North Korean leader with a difference – specifically, one who significantly values his country’s economic well-being and who might be willing to trade some regained access to the world economy for his nuclear arsenal.

Sadly, it’s at least as easy to make the case that Kim will never give up his nuclear weapons (because he views them as his best guarantor of survival given the United States’ recent record of miltarily deposing other despots like Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi), and that a U.S. administration ardently desiring the semblance of diplomatic victory will accept a compromise that leaves at least much of Kim’s nuclear arsenal in place, that provides valuable economic support for his regime, and that leaves at least many of the American forces in harm’s way in Korea. But this outcome would simply leave the United States in the same position as today – hostage to events in a region retaining far too many powder keg characteristics, and vulnerable to entrapment in a nuclear war if its reading of Kim and his ultimate intentions isn’t largely accurate.

Alternatively, President Trump could well continue insisting on full, verifiable denuclearization by the North, end or suspend negotiations if he’s persuaded that he’s getting conned, tighten the sanctions further in the hope that they’ll ultimately push Kim to accept U.S. terms – and even resume talk of preventive attack to (try to) make sure that the North never finishes building nuclear weapons that can be used against the America’s homeland or any of its territories, or simply to coerce greater cooperation from the North. Of course, this outcome would also leave the United States in substantially the same perilous position as at present.

As a result, the only way to drive down the risk of nuclear attack from North Korea to an acceptable level – and to enable Washington to run this risk in the first place as a matter of choice and not necessity (in order to save the troops deployed in the South) – is to pull those troops out ASAP, or by some date certain.

As I’ve noted, continued nuclear progress could still bring North Korea the ability to attack the United States with these weapons. But with the United States playing no military role in his backyard, why would it do so? Moreover, although in these circumstances an American promise to defend the South with nuclear weapons lacks would lack needed credibility (because of America’s own vulnerability), an American promise to defend itself with these devices would be supremely credible.

U.S. disengagement would indeed leave North Korea’s neighbors with many of these dangerous dilemmas. But because they’re neighbors, they have far greater stakes in dealing with them successfully than the distant United States. And because they’re among the world’s leading powers (China, Japan, and Russia, as well as South Korea), they surely have ample capabilities, or at least potential, to meet the North Korea challenge.

Are they guaranteed to succeed? Absolutely not. In fact, as supporters of the U.S. policy status quo keep insisting, an American withdrawal could destabilize the region, and even trigger conflict. But the real choices facing the United States are not between the good and the bad, but between the bad and the worse. And when the worse carries any significant possibility of a nuclear attack on American soil, the call shouldn’t even be close.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Syria, Round II

Tags

air strikes, America First, chemical weapons, globalism, jihadism, John R. Bolton, Middle East, oil, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Syria, terrorism, Trump

About a year ago, when President Trump first ordered airstrikes to punish Syria for using chemical weapons in its civil war, I made the case for not jumping to the conclusion that the chief executive had betrayed his promises to carry out an America First-style foreign policy. This weekend of course came a second set of Syria strikes, with the same declared objective, and I still believe that they don’t herald a new burst of (futile, if not counterproductive) interventionism in the Middle East. My main reason: Mr. Trump’s own words in announcing the attacks.

At the same time, don’t think that I’m incredibly confident that I’m right.  

First, the reasons for some confidence about where Syria policy is headed. According to the President, he’s under no illusion that either limited American uses of military force or more comprehensive policies will cure what ails Syria or the completely dysfunctional and failed Middle Eastern neighborhood in which it lives. In his words, not only is he opposed to “an indefinite presence in Syria.” He declared more broadly:

“Looking around our very troubled world, Americans have no illusions. We cannot purge the world of evil or act everywhere there is tyranny.

“No amount of American blood or treasure can produce lasting peace and security in the Middle East. It’s a troubled place. We will try to make it better, but it is a troubled place.”

In other words, Mr Trump is rejecting the globalist premises of his post-World War II predecessors. Reflecting the ostensible (and, it seems, eternal) lessons of appeasing fascist dictators during the 1930s, they have held that aggression or turmoil or instability or (fill in the upsetting development of your choice) anywhere are all too likely to escalate into crises that will eventually threaten the United States.

As a result, American forces repeatedly have been ordered into backwater conflicts with no intrinsic potential to affect U.S. security, prosperity, or freedom in any tangible way. But given the consequent globalist resolve both to nip these problems in the bud, as well as to address their underlying causes, they have demonstrated plenty of potential to mire the country into a series of costly quagmires.

Therefore, even though Mr. Trump – like former President Barack Obama before him – has described the airstrikes as essential for upholding a global norm (decades-long international bans on the “ghastly,” “barbaric,” and “brutal” use of chemical weapons), he seems to believe that this military practice can be isolated not only from whatever deep-rooted economic, social, and cultural failures have produced the strife that has occasioned their use, but from that consequent conflict itself.

But I’m worried about three big caveats. First, as long as the Syria civil war lasts, the more apparent it will become that limited actions like airstrikes won’t prevent atrocities like chemical weapons use, and the greater the temptation for more ambitious measures judged likelier to achieve their aims – but also capable of triggering a conflict with Russia, which like the United States has officials and military personnel in Syria.

Second, although the President has portrayed Syria as a conflict from which the United States can soon walk away, this analysis depends on claims that deserve major skepticism, to say the least – like the final defeat of ISIS (and, by extension, all jihadist terrorism?), and the possible emergence of a regional coalition of Sunni Arab states that “can ensure that Iran does not profit from the eradication of ISIS” and spread its influence across the Middle East.

After decades in which the American people have been told (rightly) that the region can endanger their security (via that terrorism) and their prosperity (via its gargantuan oil supplies), these positions will invariably look like naive hopes if the President’s rosy scenario doesn’t pan out. In fact, they could well spur calls for deeper and more dangerous U.S. involvement – even from an understandably skeptical public.

What’s of course supremely ironic about that dilemma is that important elements of the Trump domestic programs look like much more promising ways to shield the nation from Middle East threats than the globalist strategy he’s partly embraced of “fighting ’em there so we don’t face ’em here,” and promoting prosperity by trying to control a dizzying array of events abroad.

As I’ve written repeatedly, it makes much more sense to deal with terrorism by “keeping them out of here” through the kinds of serious border security programs the President endorses, and to continue breaking the region’s strong choke hold on global energy supplies by supporting the production revolution that American energy companies have engineered at home.

The third reason for concerns about a more interventionist Trump foreign policy has to do with his appointment of John R. Bolton as his national security adviser. Bolton, a former (interim) U.S. UN ambassador during George W. Bush’s presidency, is a strong, lifelong supporter of using the American military to solve all manner of national security challenges abroad.

It’s true that, unlike most globalists, Bolton seems to believe that these challenges will stay solved without any kind of nation-building- or democracy promotion-type follow-on. Hence his unrepentant support for the Bush administration overthrow of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein  – without a serious plan for the war’s aftermath. In all, it’s worrisome for believers in an America First approach to foreign policy that Bolton’s often trigger-happy voice could often be the last one Mr. Trump hears before making a momentous strategic decision.

Bottom-line: The slope leading from America’s current approach to Syria and the Middle East’s turmoil in general to another major war isn’t completely slippery. But it’s hard to be confident that President Trump’s footing is completely secure, either.