Following Up: Germany’s Merkel on NATO and Defense May be Leading, but Could Lack Followers

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allies, Angela Merkel, Europe, Following Up, Germany, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Pew Research Center, polls, Russia, Trump

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who’s not known as a bomb-thrower, at least chucked a pretty good sized grenade into newly volatile relations between the United States and the European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Merkel told a crowd at a political rally today that “The times when we could fully rely on others have passed us by a little bit, that’s what I’ve experienced in recent days.” She clearly was referring to her experience with President Trump, a longtime skeptic of the Atlantic alliance, at NATO’s summit last week. And Merkel continued, “For that reason,” Merkel continued, “I can only say: We Europeans really have to take our fates in our own hands.”

These remarks don’t count as full-fledged bombs for several big reasons. First, as I noted in a recent post, the Trump refusal to endorse explicitly NATO’s Article Five pledge to aid militarily any member under armed attack might have the transatlantic foreign policy crowd in a state of hysteria, but the clause is ambiguous and German and other European leaders have always known – and fretted – about this.

Moreover, U.S. allies repeatedly have discussed creating a meaningful defense capacity of their own with varying degrees of independence from the United States. So far, they’ve never followed through – mainly because American leaders typically responded with renewed pledges of undying loyalty. So the allies understandably felt perfectly free to continue free-riding.

But let’s say that This Time It’s Different (and sometimes it is, otherwise, we’d have no history). What’s interesting to say the least is that Merkel is going to face some major obstacles with her own people and many others in Europe. How do we know this? Let’s simply look at that Pew Research Center NATO poll I posted on yesterday.

Now some sharp RealityChek readers may be wondering why I’m using this Pew data, since yesterday’s post demonstrated many fatal flaws. Here’s the answer: My criticism of Pew focused on its failure to inform American respondents that the nation’s NATO commitments created any risks. That’s important given how ignorant so many Americans remain about even major foreign policy realities, because they’re so physically isolated and insulated from the rest of he world.

But European publics – which were also surveyed by Pew, and whose views I’ll discuss below, are substantially different. After all, they live much closer to Russia, NATO’s main concern. So even if they’re by no means foreign policy experts, the continent’s war-torn past is something much more apparent to them, and especially to their parents and grandparents. Just as important, they’re the ones who will have to live with the worst consequences of poor governmental national security decisions. And if the views they expressed to the Pew researchers are representative, Merkel could well find it almost impossible to help create an independent European defense effort worthy of the name.

Interestingly, Merkel herself implicitly acknowledged that not all the forces jeopardizing European unity are coming from Washington. As she observed, the United Kingdom just voted to withdraw from the European Union last year. And of course she knows how strong anti-EU sentiments remain throughout Europe, and how many stem from resentments over the outsized role Germany has played in dealing with (and allegedly contributing to) recent economic crises like the one that’s engulfed Greece.

Yet what Merkel may not yet know about her compatriots and other Europeans should trouble her even more. For example, according to Pew, German support for NATO is strong (67 percent view the alliance favorably). But only 40 percent of Germans agree that their country should use military force to defend a fellow NATO ally under attack. Fully 53 percent would want Germany to sit out the conflict.

Merkel might draw some comfort from seeing that Germany’s commitment to NATO’s core mission is the weakest among the countries surveyed. But it’s not whoppingly lower than the support for going to war registered in the two other major European military powers, the United Kingdom (45 percent) and France (53 percent). Further, the Pew results show that a distinct minority of those surveyed in NATO’s European members view Russia as a “major threat to their nation.”

Merkel, however, isn’t the only national leader who should be paying close attention to these Pew findings. If they’re accurate, President Trump and the rest of Washington need to ask themselves whether America can count on any prompt, significant assistance from NATO Europe if push comes to shove.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Desperately Seeking Adult Polling on NATO

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allies, burden sharing, defense spending, foreign policy, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear war, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Pew Research Center, polls, Russia, Trump, vital interests

There’s not much doubt that the main purpose of this recent Pew Research Center poll was to show the unpopularity in America of President Trump’s skeptical views of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Published just before this past week’s summit of the U.S. defense alliance with many European countries, the survey finds that “Today, roughly six-in-ten Americans hold a favorable opinion of the security alliance….”

So that seems to be quite the rebuke to a president who has faulted NATO as “obsolete,” accused many members of being defense free-riders, and during the meeting declined to promise unconditionally that the United States would help militarily any alliance member that came under armed attack.

Actually, the survey once again shows that polls on foreign policy issues tend to be among the most incompetently and misleadingly crafted polls of all. I say this because the Pew researchers failed to raise in any of their questions any of the most important issues Americans need to think about as they assess the value of NATO. Maybe the best way to make the point is to present question possibilities that would make these issues clear.

First: Would you favor the United States militarily defending a NATO ally if embroiled in an armed conflict with Russia if this aid might result in a Russian nuclear attack on the United States?

Second, Would you favor the United States militarily defending a NATO ally if embroiled in an armed conflict with Russia, and running that risk of nuclear war, if the ally in question had never been considered by any U.S. president going back to Franklin D. Roosevelt to be a vital or even significant security interest of the United States?

Third, Would you favor the United States militarily defending a NATO ally if embroiled in an armed conflict with Russia, and running that risk of nuclear war, if the nuclear war risk existed largely because NATO’s European members collectively refuse to pay for militaries that could repel the Russians on their own?

In other words, a poll that measured Americans’ true beliefs about and support for NATO would be one that reminded them that, as with most of what’s important about life, different positions and decisions have important potential downsides as well as important potential upsides. And until pollsters begin informing Americans about the real choices they face on important questions of both domestic and foreign policy, it will be painfully obvious that theirs is yet another portion of the chattering classes in desperate need of some adult thinking.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Trump’s Real NATO Mistake

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allies, Article Five, Baltics, Barack Obama, Charles de Gaulle, Cold War, Europe, France, Germany, NATO, NATO expansion, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear deterrence, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Poland, Russia, Soviet Union, tripwire, Trump, United Kingdom

President Trump’s tireless critics are at it again, accusing him of calling into question America’s “sacred” and allegedly legally binding obligation to come to the military defense of any of its European allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) if they come under armed attack.

As charged by the author linked above (from the reflexively establishmentarian Brookings Institution), the president’s refusal to endorse this obligation explicitly in his speech today at alliance headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, will “raise grave doubts about the credibility of the American security guarantee and provide Russia with an incentive to probe vulnerable Baltic states.” Sounds awful – and unprecedented – right? Actually, not even close.  But as you’ll see, Mr. Trump could be on his way to creating another big – and completely unnecessary – problem.

In the first place, in concrete terms, Article Five legally obligates the United States to do absolutely nothing specifically if one of its NATO allies comes under assault. The clause simply requires treaty signatories to “assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”

And this flexibility-preserving wording is no accident, or product of jargon-addicted diplomats or international lawyers. It resulted from the U.S. Congress’ insistence that the American government and the people to which it owes its first loyalties to retain the legally recognized right to decide when to go to war. And keep in mind: Congress was determined to reserve the right to stay out of a conflict in Europe as the Cold War was reaching its height.

Just as important: The European allies recognized this right – and its implications – as well, especially after the Soviet Union’s development of major nuclear forces greatly increased the risk to the American homeland of nuclear attack if it plunged into war on the allies’ behalf. We know this for sure because the continuing ambiguity ultimately persuaded both the British and French to create their own nuclear forces. As former French President Charles de Gaulle warned, the United States could not reasonably be expected to endanger the existence of New York or Detroit to save Hamburg or Lyons.

Tragically, American leaders were so strongly opposed to its allies taking back control over their own fates that they strove almost fanatically to convince the Europeans that the United States could indeed be trusted. And Washington put its money where its mouth was, stationing hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, sailors, and air force personnel and their families on or around the European continent. The idea was to create a “trip wire” aimed at denying any U.S. President a real choice of rushing to Europe’s defense with whatever threats or means were necessary. For standing by in the face of aggression would mean a slaughter or American troops and possibly innocents by vastly superior Soviet military forces.

Even during this era of high East-West tensions, however, American leaders never completely lost sight of the desirability of shifting as much of the burden of nuclear risk as possible onto the Europeans – while maintaining as much control as possible over nuclear weapons use. The transatlantic feud over intermediate-range nuclear forces – which threatened to confine the nuclear damage of any East-West war to Europe, leaving the American and Soviet homelands unscathed – was only one prominent example. And even this U.S. aim was fatally muddied, or at best thoroughly confused, by the continuing enormous military presence in Germany, directly in the likeliest path of the Soviet conventional juggernaut.

After the Cold War ended, the tripwire was steadily dismantled, but American presidents continued to treat Article Five as an ironclad promise to defend NATO members militarily – as demonstrated by the 2013 Obama statement in the Atlantic article linked above. Moreover, once Russian military and paramilitary activity began to increase in Moscow’s “near abroad,” Washington began, hesitatingly, to be sure, to respond to the demands of the newest NATO members in Russia’s sights for U.S. tripwire forces of their own.

Hence the charges that President Trump’s latest statement could dangerously destabilize NATO’s eastern flank. But there’s far more to the situation. In the first place, there’s much evidence linking Russia’s new revanchism to NATO’s expansion eastward right up to Russia’s borders. Second, if Article Five were rigidly applied to new NATO members such as the Baltic states or former Soviet bloc countries like Poland, the United States would be running the risk of nuclear attack on behalf of countries that (a) are completely un-defendable with conventional military forces alone, because they’re right next door to Russia; and (b) consequently, have never been considered vital or even significant interests of the United States.

Troublingly, however, despite the latest Trump statement (or lack thereof), which arguably could inject the Eastern European countries with a needed dose of realism concerning their real options in dealing with Moscow, the president has so far continued the policy of incrementally responding to these countries’ requests for tripwires.

In other words, his big mistake isn’t casting doubt on America’s commitment to these and other European countries. For if the United States might have balked risking New York or Detroit for Hamburg or Lyons, it’s certainly not going to jeopardize an American city or two to save Warsaw or Vilnius. Instead, Mr. Trump apparently is trying to fence-straddle here, which could well create the worst of both worlds on both sides of the Atlantic.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: South Korea’s Elections are Likely to Make America’s Asia Strategy Even Loonier

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allies, Asia, deterrence, East Asia-Pacific, free-riding, Kim Jong Un, Moon Jae-in, North Korea, Northeast Asia, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, South Korea, Tim Shorrock

This coming Tuesday will not only see a new presidential election in South Korea. It may also mark the day when a second big wheel flies off of America’s grand strategy in the Asia-Pacific region, and in particular off its approach to addressing the North Korea nuclear weapons threat.

For now on top of the United States’ loss of escalation dominance on the Korean peninsula – which I’ve written about for more than two years and which has needlessly exposed the American homeland to the risk of nuclear attack – the U.S. ally supposedly facing the greatest threat from Kim Jong Un’s heavily armed dictatorship could wind up defecting from the anti-Pyongyang coalition. It would be hard to concoct a scenario that would be less defensible strategically and politically, and more utterly absurd.

Of course, the results of the South Korea election haven’t yet come in. The front-runner, veteran left-of-center politician Moon Jae-in, is by no means anti-American. And as with so many politicians, he may govern very differently from how he’s campaigned. But as made clear by coverage of South Korean politics by my good friend Tim Shorrock – who has written on the country for decades – Moon believes that the United States and North Korea’s neighbors need to start putting much more emphasis on reopening negotiations with the North and much less on threats of military action or more effective economic sanctions. At least as important, many of his compatriots clearly agree.

Moon and his supporters could well be right – if only because they’ve been so close to the situation on the peninsula for so long. (Tim strongly believes this to be the case.) Nevertheless, they could be wrong as well. After all, their very proximity to the North might be denying them valuable perspective. Their views may be influenced too strongly by shared ethnicity. And they may, like classic free-riders, be assuming that the American nuclear umbrella will ultimately bail out the South if they’re wrong.

But although the merits of the Moon case are uncertain, the implications for the United States are anything but. If South Korea’s “doves” are right, a more durable peace could indeed be created in Korea (meaning, specifically, that the Korean War would finally come to an official end more than 60 years after an armistice halted the fighting in 1953). As a result, Northeast Asia, one of the world’s major economic dynamos, would be stabilized. And the prospect of the United States being drawn into a nuclear war with North Korea would be greatly diminished.

But it can’t be forgotten that the (mounting) nuclear risks posed by North Korea to the United States stem entirely from the American commitment to defend South Korea – and more specifically, it stems from the longstanding U.S. decision to try to deter a North Korean invasion of the South by stationing nearly 30,000 troops right at the Demilitarized Zone. They couldn’t possibly halt the North’s conventional forces, but their deaths would almost surely provoke an American nuclear strike on the North. This prospect that has certainly helped keep Pyongyang at bay – which was arguably an acceptable risk to run when Pyongyang lacked any means to hit back at American territory. But soon, pursuing this strategy could result in the North successfully launching a nuclear missile at an American city – or two or three.

Even worse from an American standpoint, a prime reason that the South relies on the U.S. nuclear umbrella for its defense is its failure to field adequate conventional forces itself. Despite living right next door to one of the world’s most heavily armed and unpredictable countries, South Korea only spends 2.7 percent of its entire economy on its armed forces. By comparison, the United States – which has no neighbors that are either powerful or hostile, let alone both – spends 4.3 percent.

All of which means that if the South Korea doves are wrong, the American people could pay a fearful price largely because one of the world’s leading economic powers has chosen to skimp on its military, and because its (new) leaders insisted on a diplomacy-first policy that gave Pyongyang yet more time to strengthen its nuclear forces. That’s a heckuva downside. And let’s not forget the chaos that would result from the United States and South Korea splitting in public and pursuing two dramatically different policies toward the North.

Supporters of the strategic status quo in East Asia are right – America’s longstanding policies have brought impressive benefits. But they’re wrong in insisting that the benefits for the United States have even remotely approached those for the East Asians themselves, including South Korea. And the emergence of a credible North Korean nuclear threat to the American homeland has skewed the relationship of costs and benefits much further against the United States.

I can’t think of a more unacceptable situation from America’s vantage point. Even before these South Korean political trends had become so prominent, it was clear to me that the best strategy for the American people was to recognize the North Korean challenge as the responsibility of North Korea’s (very wealthy and powerful) neighbors, and to withdraw the U.S. forces whose presence is bound increasingly to endanger the security of the United States itself.

The election of a South Korean dove would turn current U.S. strategy positively looney and even more dangerous to Americans – clashing strongly with the stated views of the presumed chief beneficiary’s new leader, and less able than ever to turn up the screws on the North.

I hope instead it causes America’s ossified bipartisan foreign policy establishment to realize finally that Washington can’t be placed in a position ostensibly of caring about South Korea’s security more than the South Koreans, and that if their new leaders disagree with U.S. priorities, that’s their sovereign right. By the same token, this ally can’t expect to have its cake and eat it, too. Bottom line? President Trump should let President-to-be Moon and his backers know that if they want to engage with North Korea, they feel free to give it a whirl – and that in the true spirit of an America First diplomacy, the United States will be wishing them the very best from safely on the sidelines.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why Establishment Thinking About Containing China Remains Far from Serious

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allies, American Enterprise Institute, Asia, burden sharing, China, Daniel Blumenthal, defense budget, East Asia, entitlements, foreign policy establishment, free-riding, Japan, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, RealClearPolitics.com, South Korea, taxes, tech transfer, Trade

Congratulations to the American Enterprise Institute’s Daniel Blumenthal for coming up with some genuinely new insights into the U.S.-China balance of power and especially its relationship with the evolving economies of the two countries. Unfortunately, Blumenthal’s new essay for RealClearPolitics.com also shows that gaping blind spots remain in establishment thinking about the China challenge its members claim to be analyzing seriously.

For the purposes of this post, let’s grant Blumenthal’s mainstream assumption that it matters greatly to the United States which great power dominates East Asia politically. I disagree, but the point here is that if America does want to fend off a China challenge, greater policy changes will be needed than Blumenthal and other conventional wisdom-mongers seem ready to contemplate.

The author’s main theme is that the United States has no legitimate reason to doubt its economic capacity to prevent China from becoming Asia’s kingpin, and his new wrinkle involves measuring economic power by looking more at national wealth, and less at national economic growth. Since the U.S. wealth levels are both much greater than China’s, and since the gap has just resumed growing according to statistics he cites, America can easily afford the military forces needed to put China back in its place. And he blames China’s recent and impressive catch-up on this score on Americans’ recent (Blumenthal doesn’t specify the time frame) political decision to skimp on military spending while continue to devote exorbitant sums to entitlement spending – which has indeed long dominated the budget outlays (along with, as he’s noted, interest payments on the resulting ballooning national debt).

According to Blumenthal, Americans and their leaders as a result have chosen to elevate “the intergenerational transfer of wealth” over national security. Strictly speaking, he’s right. But other interpretations of national priorities seem just as legitimate.

For example, as the author briefly notes, the U.S. population is aging. So a major national retirement funding challenge will face even the most defense-minded politicians. That doesn’t let American leaders or the recipients of these entitlements off the hook in terms of making sacrifices needed to safeguard national security. But it’s bound to raise the question of whether the burden of sacrifice should be limited to middle class Americans. The great increase in national wealth mentioned by Blumenthal makes clear that the nation has many other resources on which it can draw to fund a bigger military – especially since the private economy’s wealth has led the surge. In other words, why not tax the rich or corporations more heavily to pay for new personnel and weapons?

One obvious rejoinder is that modest levels of taxes on wealthy Americans and on American companies are needed to ensure the economic growth needed to keep national wealth levels robust. But even accepting the doctrinaire trickle-down economics underlying this assumption, should upper-level individual incomes and business profits be completely exempted from any responsibility to pay for the military? If so, why? And wouldn’t that policy greatly loosen the relationship between national wealth and military capability emphasized by Blumenthal?

The author also neglects another big pool of resources that can be brought to bear on countering China: the wealth of America’s regional allies. Stunningly, after decades of American pleading for greater burden-sharing, countries with a far greater stake than the United States in resisting Chinese regional domination continue free-riding on U.S. defense guarantees. Why should American entitlements recipients see any reduction in benefits before Japanese and South Koreans pay at least as much for their own security (relatively speaking) as the much more geographically distant United States does? And their contributions could be immense. Japan alone, for example, is the world’s third largest national economy (behind the United States and China, respectively). 

Finally, as with nearly all the rest of the establishment, Blumenthal completely neglects the opposite side of the U.S.-China defense resources equation: The decisive extent to which American economic policy continues enriching China, and therefore continuing to enable it to afford lots of both “guns and butter” (as economists and political scientists have dubbed military and social spending). Thanks in part to literally trillions of dollars of earnings from the trade surpluses it’s long run with the United States, the Chinese pie keeps expanding strongly (that’s the economic growth whose importance Blumenthal softpedals). As a result, more new resources are generated for whatever priorities or combination of priorities the Chinese government chooses.

Even worse, as I’ve long noted, recklessly lax tech transfer policies on America’s part have for decades given the Chinese much of the knowhow needed to turn out increasingly advanced weapons and other military systems. Some signs of official concerns about this outflow have appeared in Washington lately, but U.S. leaders (and the rest of the establishment) remain woefully behind the curve.

When America’s East Asia security strategy stops bolstering the Chinese threat it depicts as such a huge concern, when it insists that local countries act like they have at least as great a stake in remaining independent of China as does the United States, when the wealthiest Americans are required to devote more of their recent immense windfalls to the common defense, and if all of those changes still leave China closing fast on the combined forces of the United States and its neighbors, it would become legitimate to ask Main Street Americans to start shouldering greater burdens. Until then, the U.S. working and middle classes will be entirely justified in demanding that the nation’s Asia strategy pass a minimal seriousness test first.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: A Genuinely 21st Century Approach to Asia

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alliances, allies, Asia, China, Cold War, coupling, defense spending, East Asia-Pacific, extended deterrence, free-riding, Japan, Lifezette.com, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, South Korea, Trade, trade surpluses, Trump, Xi JInPing

Yesterday in a piece for Lifezette.com, I argued that President Trump should ignore the advice he seems to be getting from his more establishmentarian advisers, and from conventional thinkers outside his administration, and focus on economics and not security when he meets Chinese leader Xi Jinping starting tomorrow.

Today, I’d like to spell out some of the assumptions about America’s priorities in the East Asia-Pacific (EAP) region that lead to these conclusions – and why genuinely bringing America’s grand strategy in the region into the twenty-first century is essential to reduce the nation’s vulnerability to nuclear attack and to strengthening its economy.

First, as I’ve long maintained, since the Cold War has been over for nearly three decades, the geopolitical basis for the current American approach to the EAP has simply disappeared. Until 1990, Washington provided a nuclear umbrella for the region and set up alliances for two main reasons. First, the United States was determined to keep Asia’s vast economic power and potential out of communist hands. Second, America resolved to prevent Japan from needing to conduct an independent foreign policy – which U.S. leaders believed would lead to its rearmament and likely reversion to 1930s- and ’40s-style militarism.

Since 1990, America’s goals have remained essentially the same, but one of the rationales shifted. Preventing Japanese rearmament was still (secretly) treated as an imperative. But with the Soviet threat gone and China increasingly integrated into the world economy, the United States began justifying its continued military presence as essential for buttressing the stability needed to keep the region’s economically dynamic countries functioning as major cogs of an increasingly close-knit global trade and investment system. Also reinforcing regional stability would be the continuing protection of South Korea from its bellicose northern neighbor.

The most dangerous problem with this approach is that, although it arguably made sense from the U.S. standpoint when America’s main actual and potential rivals in the region either had no nuclear weapons (North Korea), or vastly inferior and relatively primitive nuclear forces (China), it has become ever more suicidal more recently. For whereas once Washington could credibly brandish a nuclear threat to keep powerful enemy conventional forces at bay while incurring almost no risk of nuclear retaliation against the American homeland, the Chinese and even North Korean have now made major progress towards fielding nuclear weapons both capable of reaching American shores and of surviving U.S. nuclear attacks. As a result, they can now place American cities in mortal danger.

To modify a common Cold War-era saying, Washington has promised to sacrifice Los Angeles in order to save Seoul and/or Tokyo. Has anyone explained to the American people why this potential tradeoff is remotely acceptable – or even sane? Quite the contrary. A literally suicidal strategy keeps getting dressed up in terms that sound either comfortingly technical and abstract (like “extended deterrence”) or even warm and fuzzy (like “coupling”).

Indeed, the latter phrase, upon examination, reveals what has now become by far the least forgivable aspect of American strategy given current nuclear circumstances: The “coupling” of America’s security to its allies’ security was designed to force the United States to risk nuclear attack to protect Japan and South Korea. This aim was accomplished mainly by stationing major American forces right along the North-South Korea border – the Demilitarized Zone – to ensure that they would die during a North Korean invasion and thereby give an American president no real choice but to respond with nukes. The presence of the U.S. Seventh Fleet in Japanese bases and on patrol through regional waters serves the same purpose. That is, the United States surrendered one of the paramount goals of genuine national security since the Atomic Age began – the power to choose whether to involve itself in a nuclear war, or to avoid one. And Washington stubbornly clings to this strategy even though the nuclear landscape has been decisively transformed.

Two related developments make Washington’s acceptance of this risk even less acceptable. First, America’s Asian allies have become more than capable of defending themselves from their enemies. Yet even South Korea, with a possibly deranged dictatorship for a neighbor, has understandably decided to rely on American blood and treasure for its security, and skimped on its military spending. And although Japan has increased its own defense budget and capabilities significantly in recent years, its far greater economic power still justifies the label “free rider.”

Second, precisely because current nuclear circumstances make the American defense guarantee so literally non-credible despite the coupling strategy, the likelihood of Japan and South Korea acquiring nuclear weapons for their own defense rises with each new North Korean missile test and each new Chinese thrust into the South or East China Seas. In other words, if that train hasn’t already left the station, its engines are firing up.

There is, however, an immense silver lining that the supremely unconventional President Trump – unlike many of his advisers – should be quick to recognize: Because the Cold War threats are gone, and because the whole of the EAP relies so heavily on net exports – especially to the United States – for its growth, America no longer needs to worry about a foreign power controlling the region politically.

This development is of course most relevant to America’s China strategy. It means that even if Beijing established unquestioned hegemony in its backyard, China and all of its supposed new vassals would still desperately need to access the U.S. market. The flip side of this proposition is just as crucial: America’s paramount interests in the EAP are economic – ensuring adequate access to Asian markets, and safeguarding American domestic businesses and their employees from predatory Asian trade practices. Further, the best way to achieve these goals is by wielding economic, not military, power.

A U.S. China and Asia policy reflecting these trends – and other generally ignored regional realities that increasingly have been staring obtuse establishment analysts in the face – would make for a dramatically different agenda for this week’s China summit than has apparently been laid out. For example, President Trump has indicated that he will press China’s Xi harder to use his leverage on North Korea to curb or even end the latter’s nuclear weapons program, threaten to attack the North militarily if China doesn’t step up, but ease up on trade pressure if Beijing goes with the American Korea program.

Far better would be for Mr. Trump to recognize that this position raises the prospect of accepting continued Chinese trade predation as long as China even holds out the prospect of providing a North Korea assist; that even if North Korea’s nuclear weapons can’t hit American territory yet, a war with its regime could terribly bloody America’s conventional forces in the Pacific along with allied civilian populations; and that whatever nuclear threat to the United States faces from the North stems not from any intrinsic desire to attack America, but from continued U.S. military involvement in a decades-long Korean civil war that has only been suspended since 1953.

Modernized American priorities would enable the president eventually to tell his Chinese counterpart that the United States is greatly lowering its military profile in Korea, and that however China decides to deal with its dangerously predictable neighbor will be fine with Washington. But since both the Chinese and especially American allies would need time to prepare for this transition, and since a premature announcement would only embolden North Korea, Mr. Trump should simply downplay the subject at the summit, convey these messages privately as soon as Xi leaves, and let the transition begin before going public. A similar approach should be taken toward territorial disputes in the East and South China seas.

Having freed himself to focus on trade and other economic issues, the President should tack away from the conventional wisdom in this sphere, too. Specifically, he should acknowledge that the main lesson of long years of U.S. China trade diplomacy is that there’s no longer any point in negotiating trade agreement with Beijing. The Chinese record of breaking their promises is too long, and even an administration determined to monitor and enforce trade deals would face a formidable challenge in keeping track of conditions in China’s gargantuan industrial complex.

Instead, Mr. Trump should keep the discussion general and thank Mr. Xi for coming such a long way. Then once all the photo-op moments are finished, and he’s departed, the administration should develop a list of Chinese goods that represent especially egregious examples of trade predation (either in the Chinese market or the U.S. market, and impose unilateral tariffs on them. The president should specify that the list will keep growing until he receives reliable information that the Chinese have not only dropped trade barriers, but have compiled a serious track record of keeping them low – which will of course take several years to demonstrate. He should make clear that his own administration will be judge, jury, and court of appeals for any Chinese claims of compliance. And he should then let Mr. Xi know that he’s looking forward to their next meeting – and would of course be happy to come to Beijing.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: America Still Playing Uncle Sucker on Asian Security

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alliances, allies, Asia, China, deterrence, Japan, Kim Jong Un, national security, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, South Korea, Trump

If you want the clearest possible explanation of why America’s longstanding national security strategy in Asia is increasingly, jaw-droppingly, and – worst of all – needlessly dangerous, check out what China’s foreign minister just said about the growing North Korea nuclear missile threat Washington has been coping with, and then look at a map.

According to top China diplomat (at least by title) Wang Yi, the United States and North Korea “are like two accelerating trains” speeding toward “a head-on collision.” Pyongyang is developing ever more potent nuclear weapons that are ever more capable of hitting American territory. So that – along with the scarily erratic nature of the North Korean regime – explains the “dangerous” part. The map explains the “needless” part.

So take out (or look up) your atlases. You’ll see that the United States and North Korea – the countries on that collision course – are slightly less than 6,900 miles apart. Now look at some of the countries that Wang evidently believes aren’t on a collision course with North Korea leader Kim Jong Un. China itself is right next door. So is South Korea. And Russia. Japan is less than 800 miles away. Why are they, unlike geographically remote America, seemingly lumped into the bystander category?

The (intimately related) reasons: First, the United States has significant military forces stationed nearly along the Demilitarized Zone dividing North from South Korea, along with other major deployments in Japan. And don’t forget their family members! In other words, the Americans in Korea will be sitting right in the way if much stronger North Korean forces invade the south. And the Americans in Japan are exposed to Pyongyang’s missiles, as North Korea’s latest test launches have again made all too clear.

Shocked? You shouldn’t be. That’s the idea. If North Korean aggression kills large numbers of Americans, and showing signs of succeeding, a U.S. president will face strong pressure to respond by using nuclear weapons against Kim’s military and country.

As I’ve written repeatedly, until the last few years, this strategy was defensible. Not only were North Korea’s nuclear forces greatly inferior to America’s, but they lacked the means to hit the United States. So the threat of U.S. nuclear weapons use was, reasonably, judged to be a prudent policy that would deter any North Korean aggression in the first place, and thereby ensure the security of both South Korea and Japan without risk to the American homeland.

But as I’ve also written repeatedly, North Korea’s nuclear program is steadily moving toward being able to strike the United States. So the risks to Americans posed by this strategy are way up – and sure to rise even higher. Worse, the North Korean forces are thought to be increasingly survivable. That is, they’re either mobile and/or well hidden enough to prevent Washington from having much confidence of destroying them all either in a preemptive first strike, or an attack on North Korea launched in response to any invasion. As a result, even if America’s own nukes destroyed North Korea, whichever of the latter’s leaders escaped this fate could order a revenge attack.

And the second reason why the United States alone is (rightly) described as one of the two oncoming trains is that for decades, Washington has actively discouraged Japan and even South Korea from fielding the forces needed to deal with North Korea on their own for fear that one or both countries would build their own nuclear forces in response, and thereby “destabilize” the supposedly crucial East Asia-Pacific region still further. The United States also remains determined to prevent Japan from becoming a serious and independent conventional military power, too, which allegedly would increase the odds of it returning to its aggressive, militaristic past. So U.S. leaders have decided to bear the lion’s share of the burden and danger of keeping North Korea (and China) at bay.

Since this policy now means that protecting Asian allies could mean the annihilation of American cities, it’s clearly time for Washington to admit the danger, get out of the way, and let the region’s countries handle the North Korea problem. This goes double since Japan, South Korea, China, and Russia are amply capable economically and technologically of building the militaries that can get the job done.

Two closely linked objections that have been raised since this American strategy was born in the aftermath of World War II will surely be raised again. The first is that such a U.S. withdrawal could produce not only reasonable defense buildups by Asian powers, but – because so many have historically fought and mistrusted one another – heated conventional and nuclear arms races. The second is that such competitions would backfire big-time on the United States, largely because Asia is so economically critical to America.

What the stand-patters don’t seem to get, however, is that precisely because American policy looks so positively suicidal – and non-credible – to the allies in particular, a growing chorus in Japan and South Korea is urging nuclear-ization anyway. I’ve reported previously on such developments, and just yesterday came new calls for such capabilities. As the North Korea nuclear forces get better and better, expect further widening of this divide between America’s policy rationale on the one hand, and entirely understandable Asian mistrust on the other.

As for the economics, even if trade and investment with highly protectionist Asia were a winning proposition for the United States (and it’s not by a long shot), it’s going to get increasingly dicey for American leaders to keep insisting that it’s important to risk nuclear attack on the homeland to make sure that U.S. businesses can make some more money in the region.

In that vein, however, it remains troubling that even the most detailed reporting lately on the mounting North Korean threat keeps omitting the fact that the United States faces greater and greater dangers from Pyongyang not because it’s protecting itself. After all, existing U.S. policy of responding with nuclear arms to a direct nuclear attack from North Korea (or any country) on its own territory is as credible a deterrent as is possible (even against arguably lunatic enemies). Instead, the United States faces this nuclear dangers because it’s protecting allies that it’s been encouraging to free-ride on its defense guarantees.

Equally troubling – even though Donald Trump pointed out most of these Asia alliance-related problems during the campaign, he now seems determined to preserve the policy status quo. If I didn’t know better, I’d conclude there’s a conspiracy of silence.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Who are the Real “Hot Heads”?

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alliances, allies, America First, Asia, China, Cold War, establishment, Europe, foreign policy, foreign policy establishment, globalism, H.R. McMaster, internationalism, interventionism, Jim Mattis, Jonathan Stevenson, national security adviser, NATO, NATO expansion, North Korea, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Populism, Russia, Stephen K. Bannon, The New York Times, Trump, U.S. military, Vietnam

The Mainstream Media remain useful as a mouthpiece for an American political establishment that retains all too much power to frustrate Trump-ian – and other populist – impulses. So it’s vitally important to identify and evaluate emerging narratives they’re trying to propagate. And one that’s been especially prominent – and pernicious – is the habit of dividing the president’s top aides into the voices of reason (my term) and the “hot-heads.” A great example of this habit and the dangers it can foster, is Jonathan Stevenson’s February 21 New York Times column on President Trump’s appointment of Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as his new White House national security adviser.

According to Stevenson – a national security veteran of the Obama administration – McMaster is a welcome addition to the voices of reason. In particular, his selection is portrayed as combining with that of former general Jim Mattis as Defense Secretary to strengthen a firewall against the “hot heads” (Stevenson’s term) that also have Mr. Trump’s ear.

Part of the reason Stevenson likes McMaster and Mattis et al is that he believes they will oppose “pointlessly disrupting” strategies and positions that he and many other establishment-arians (on both sides of the aisle) view as successes, or the best possible approaches – like the “One China” policy, the Iran nuclear deal, and immigration initiatives that seek to admit more refugees and other newcomers from the Middle East in hopes of winning hearts and minds in the Islamic world. I personally don’t agree with the Stevensonian/establishment view, but reasonable people can legitimately differ on these matters.

What’s much less reasonable, and genuinely dangerous, is Stevenson’s other reason for liking the world’s McMasters and Mattis’, and disliking its Stephen K. Bannon – the Trump aide who he and so many others view as a quintessential extremist and populist hot head. As the author sees it, McMaster is one of the national security professionals who will help make sure that American diplomacy won’t be unduly influenced by Trump-ists like Bannon. These ostensibly shallow, narrow-minded politicos supposedly see foreign policymaking not as an exercise in advancing and safeguarding the country’s most critical interests, but simply as a means of boosting or protecting a president’s popularity.

Although foreign policy can never be entirely separated from domestic politics – and in a democracy, shouldn’t be so separated – over-politicization can of course produce disaster. But Stevenson’s main historical example (the gradual escalation of the Vietnam War), and his analysis of the Trump administration, get literally everything important wrong. For example, two of his leading Vietnam villains (and those of Gen. McMaster) are then Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara and then national security adviser McGeorge Bundy. But far from being politicians who had any experience with the electoral process, or any apparent interest, they were quintessential establishment mandarins. In fact, it was their catastrophic advice that (rightly) turned “the best and the brightest” into a term of contempt.

The substance of their advice – chiefly, the championing of gradual escalation – can be faulted, too. But as Stevenson glosses over, this strategy enjoyed wide backing in the military, and not only among a group of military chiefs who McMaster and Stevenson dismiss as “inordinately politicized.”

Much more important, however, the fundamental mistake behind the Vietnam disaster was not the specific set of military tactics chosen, but the strategic decision to intervene militarily in the first place. And this choice reflected the strong internationalist consensus across the foreign policy establishment that, in the face of the Cold War community threat, every square inch of the globe had to be treated as a vital American interest, whether it held any specific geopolitical or economic significance to the United States or not.

Now fast forward to the present. Who’s more likely to embroil the United States into a needless military conflict that could spiral into a complete debacle? Mere “politicos” like Bannon – and his boss – who have complained (most recently in the Inaugural Address) that America has too often “defended other nations’ borders while refusing to defend our own”? Has “spent trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay”?

Is a new Vietnam really what can be expected from a president who has declared, “We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world – but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first.

“We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow”?

For my money, I’d bet on the genuinely reckless foreign policy moves being advocated by figures from an establishment that, in the wake of Mr. Trump’s election, is doubling down on its support for internationalism – and therefore for the indiscriminate interventionism that logically follows from it. Indeed, lately this allegiance to internationalism has even blinded the establishment to rapidly mounting dangers from the pillars of post-World War II foreign policy – America’s security relationships with Europe and Asia.

In the former region, a completely unnecessary expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to include former Soviet republics and other nearby countries has committed the United States to protect lands that can be defended only by he threat of using nuclear weapons even though they have never been viewed as vital interests. In the process, of course, this NATO expansion has triggered a military and paramilitary reaction by Russia that has all of Europe on edge.

In Asia, America’s two likeliest adversaries – China and North Korea – are rapidly becoming capable of offsetting the nuclear weapons edge that has enabled Washington to protect countries like Japan and South Korea with little risk to the U.S. homeland. Ever more powerful nuclear forces now mean that Beijing and Pyongyang can use the credible threat of destroying American cities to deter U.S. military responses to any aggression they undertake.  (See this post for more detail – and for powerful evidence that Mr. Trump recognizes both problems.)

Indeed, in this respect, erring on the side of caution would involve President Trump siding with the America Firsters like Bannon – whatever short-term disruption their recommendations would bring – against the McMaster portrayed by Stevenson, and other establishmentarians he comfortingly but misleadingly labels as guardians of policy “stability.” That’s the last result that Washington will get from defining or simply wishing away lessons that have stared the nation and its leaders in the face for decades.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Establishment’s Hypocritical China Cassandras

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allies, cabinet, China, confirmation hearings, East Asia, island building, national security, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State, South China Sea, tech transfer, Trade, Trump

Since Donald Trump’s cabinet choices appeared at their Senate confirmation hearings last week, critics have rightly observed that the president-elect and his picks to run his foreign and national security policies seem to disagree sharply on some major issues.

Less noticed is how the Trump nominees’ statements have revealed worse incoherence in the ranks of most critics – who sit overwhelmingly in the nation’s bipartisan foreign policy establishment. An unusually worrisome example has been the near-firestorm over Secretary of State-designate Rex Tillerson’s statement that “We’re going to have to send China a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops, and second, your access to those islands also is not going to be allowed.”

Tillerson’s remarks referred to an especially brazen aspect of Beijing’s expansionism in the South China Sea – centered on territorial claims that no one else in the region accepts. In an apparent effort to create irreversible realities “on the ground,” China has been capitalizing on the local topography literally to turn existing rocks and similar features into mini islands. Beijing has gone on to place various kinds of facilities – including some with military capabilities – on them, and to declare the immediately surrounding waters to be Chinese territory.

As widely noted, there’s at best considerable tension between Tillerson’s warning and several suggestions made by the president-elect during the campaign that he’s worried that America’s security relationships in the East Asia/Pacific region have become too dangerous militarily (since its adversaries are developing increasingly potent nuclear forces) and too one-sided economically (since the United States runs huge trade deficits with most regional countries).

Also completely weird, however, have been the alarm bells set off in establishment ranks to the effect that Tillerson had suddenly moved America dramatically closer to war with China over the South China Sea. For many of these voices have thoroughly upbraided Mr. Trump for failing to appreciate the crucial importance of U.S. alliances for safeguarding American and global security.

Establishment voice FOREIGN POLICY magazine ran a piece ominously asking, “Is Tillerson Ready to Go to War Over the South China Sea?” Only slightly less melodramatic was this Wall Street Journal sub-headline: “If carried out, Tillerson’s proposal to bar Beijing from some South China Sea islands would likely trigger military battle, experts say.”

A Christian Science Monitor headline sounded a similar alarm, and its article reported that “[T]he policy would dramatically reshape US thinking on Chinese expansionism, drawing a hard new territorial line in China’s backyard and, experts say, invite a military confrontation with Beijing.”

And even though they weren’t predicting imminent conflict, the experts interviewed by The Los Angeles Times still apparently fretted that Tillerson, “without diplomatic experience, had engaged in a flight of hyperbole in keeping with the tough rhetoric about China favored by Trump.”

These would all be defensible views except for one consideration: The American security strategy in the East Asia/Pacific region that all these experts have endorsed as a group for decades depends first and foremost on a credible threat to use military force to deter the kind of aggression in which China is engaged.

It is completely legitimate to question whether or not China’s island-building is the best casus belli, or circumstance for drawing a “red line.” But it is the height of hypocrisy to condemn – or even tut-tut over – a statement emphasizing that the United States has long considered maintaining freedom of the seas in East Asia to be a vital security interest (including by the Obama administration), and that China is on a course that will require U.S. military responses unless Beijing stops or changes direction sharply.

Or are all these American Asia experts confident that China will even slow its land and sea grab at some point down the road without firmer U.S. counter-moves than have been seen to date? If so, it’s time that they explained their reasons why – and how these rationales relate to their long-time insistence that major American military deployments in this region are essential to maintain peace and stability.

So the incoming administration looks to be a house divided on dealing with China’s strategic ambitions in Asia. That’s disturbing, but at least from the little known so far, the leading factions will be internally consistent (though the hawks still need to show that they understand the need to stop adding to China’s wealth and power through dangerously shortsighted trade and tech transfer policies, and Mr. Trump needs to understand more completely that even greater defense burden-sharing by the Asians could still leave America with unacceptable nuclear risks).

But the outside critics have just about disqualified themselves from any role in this debate – unless they can offer something more than hopelessly scattershot whining.

Following Up: Growing Asia Nuclear Policy Risks Remain Hidden from Americans

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"The Interview", alliances, allies, deterrence, Donald Trump, extended deterrence, Following Up, Hillary Clinton, Japan, Kim Jong Un, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Obama, South Korea, Team America: World Police

If a longstanding policy U.S. foreign policy position strongly endorsed by the nation’s bipartisan political leadership was steadily becoming a major nuclear threat to the American homeland, and the mainstream media and chattering classes at best glossed over the threat, wouldn’t you start wondering if they were in cahoots with each other against the interests of the mass public – and dangerously so?

Well it’s hard to read the coverage of North Korea’s latest nuclear weapons tests and reasonably reach any other conclusion.

Over the last month, North Korea has fired missiles and set off underground nuclear explosions that revealed major progress toward the goal of developing nuclear weapons capable of hitting American territory. Yesterday’s bomb test prompted a statement by President Obama that condemned the dictatorship of Kim Jong Un, and did refer to implications for the United States:

“”Today’s test, North Korea’s second this year, follows an unprecedented campaign of ballistic missile launches, which North Korea claims are intended to serve as delivery vehicles for nuclear weapons targeting the United States and our allies, the Republic of Korea and Japan. As Commander in Chief, I have a responsibility to safeguard the American people and ensure that the United States is leading the international community in responding to this threat and North Korea’s other provocations with commensurate resolve and condemnation.”

But he didn’t make clear the real reason that the rapidly emerging new North Korean nuclear capabilities endanger America. It’s not, as someone who knows the Pyongyang regime mainly from blackly comedic portrayals in Hollywood films might suppose, because its current leader and his father were homicidal maniacs insanely plotting global conquest or bent on triggering a worldwide nuclear holocaust. (Think Team America: World Police or The Interview.)

Not that anyone can dismiss this possibility with great confidence, given the North’s erratic behavior and how little we know about it. But from a purely strategic standpoint, if Pyongyang really is seeking world domination, unless a preemptive strike is seen as a promising option (and as reported in RealityChek, at least one respected defense consulting firm doesn’t agree), the United States is already doing everything that can plausibly be done to deter the threat. It’s maintained nuclear forces of its own fully able to wipe the North off the map, and whose threatened use would be credible because America’s own survival would be at stake.

And logically, but worrisomely, if Kim really is insane, and harbors suicidal tendencies, there’s literally no deterrence strategy with high odds of succeeding.

So it should be clear that an unprovoked intercontinental bolt from the blue is not what’s on the president’s mind, or those of other foreign policy specialists who are so alarmed by the latest news.

Instead, what Mr. Obama and the rest of the foreign policy establishment’s political, policy, and media wings fear is that North Korea’s improving forces threaten America’s decade’s long commitment to defend U.S allies in East Asia with nuclear weapons. Specifically, as RealityChek regulars know, a pledge that was arguably prudent when the North lacked any nuclear weapons, or still showed no potential of reaching the United States proper, has become anything but prudent if it could result in the destruction of an entire American city. Two. Or more.  

Worse, the North – as well as China – also has been making progress in building what strategy specialists call a secure retaliatory capability.  That means nuclear forces standing a good chance of remaining at least partly functional even if the United States tries to take it out. 

Current U.S. policy looks even less defensible given that America’s allies in the region have ample resources to build the militaries needed to repel any conventional attack by North Korea, and that Washington has long maintained its nuclear umbrella in order to prevent South Korea and Japan from going nuclear themselves. Inadequate allied military spending provides ever greater fuel for charges that American leaders are risking their own countrymen’s safety in order to protect defense deadbeats. And as even the establishment media has begun to report, the non-credibility of the United States vowing to incur nuclear risks on behalf of others has voices in allied countries more earnestly talking about their own nuclearization.

According to President Obama, America’s most sensible course of action is to reaffirm existing policy: “I restated to President Park [of South Korea} and Prime Minister Abe [of Japan] the unshakable U.S. commitment….to provide extended deterrence, guaranteed by the full spectrum of U.S. defense capabilities.” Translation into plain English: Despite the mounting threat to America itself, the nuclear umbrella remains up.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton believes that the North’s new steps require a “rethinking” of U.S. North Korea policy, but only in the sense of strengthening sanctions aimed at denuclearizing the North, and pursuing the kinds of negotiations that resulted in the deal to delay Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. She made sure to add that she would “back allies in the region, including South Korea and Japan,” an Associated Press account reported.

I would be the last person to insist that these positions are by definition out of bounds. Although I strongly disagree, it’s entirely legitimate to conclude that maintaining the (so far peaceful) status quo in East Asia is worth accepting some degree of risk for the American homeland. What should be out of bounds is Washington’s continuing determination to conceal these risks from the American people – with the cooperation of most of the Mainstream Media.

Even the few reports of the North Korea tests and their implications that both mentioned the increasing threat to the United States, along with some relationship to its alliance policy and to America’s deterrence strategy, did so only the most oblique, abstract ways. (See here and here for examples.) None of them explained that, when the North did develop intercontinental strike capabilities, it would remain American policy literally to risk Los Angeles or San Francisco or Chicago or New York or Washington for Tokyo and Seoul.

Again, the point is not that this risk shouldn’t be taken. It’s that no one has made the nuclear attack realities clear to the American people, and then asked them if they approve.

Of course, there has been one political figure who’s called America’s nuclear commitments to its allies into question. That’s Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. And of course, thanks to Mainstream Media coverage, we all know what a lunatic loose cannon he is.