Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Globalist Blob Wants the U.S. to Keep Looking for Trouble

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alliances, Blob, China, Council on Foreign Relations, East Asia-Pacific, extended deterrence, globalism, Japan, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Project-Syndicate.org, Richard N. Haass, South Korea, Taiwan, Trump

I’d like to offer a deal to anyone in America’s bipartisan globalist foreign policy establishment: You come up with defenses of the pre-Trump strategies and approaches you support that aren’t transparently ridiculous, and I’ll start portraying them as something other than sick jokes.

Judging by Richard N. Haass’ latest column for the Project Syndicate website, it’s clear that even if these members of the Blob (a wonderful nickname for this crew of former officials, genuine scholars, think tank creatures, Mainstream Media journalists, and business and finance leaders) cared about what I think, they’d flunk this test.

Haass is an especially important Blob-er because he not only served as a top policymaker under three Republican presidents (and in a more junior position during Jimmy Carter’s administration). He’s the President of the Council on Foreign Relations – the Blob’s oldest and most prominent think tank. (Truth in advertising: He also preceded me by two years at our Long Island, N.Y high school, but we had no personal dealings.)

But we should all hope that the advice he dispensed in government was much better than that he seems to have offered in “Asia’s Scary Movie.” Because his arguably underlying message – that the United States should reinforce its commitment to militarily defending the East Asia-Pacific region even though the region shows signs of fracturing on the economic and security fronts – is nothing less than a recipe for increasing America’s exposures to perils it can’t possibly control.

Especially and dangerously nutty is Haass’ clear belief that the United States should maintain its security relationships with Japan and South Korea even though the two countries are engaged in a literal trade war that’s disrupting interactions between their two gigantic clusters of information technology hardware manufacturing – which are so big that global trade and production in these critical sectors could take a major hit if the feud escalates further.

After all, as noted in that post linked just above, American ties with these two countries are “vital to its aims of balancing China and addressing the threat from North Korea” – both of which threats Haass correctly describes as growing and as worrisome as ever, respectively. In other words, in the event of trouble that may require a military response, the United States is relying on help from Tokyo and Seoul – which, in turn, are going to need to be working together.

But military relations between these two Asian countries have long been threadbare at best. Worse, their latest dispute – amid the backdrop of the rising China challenge and the ongoing peril from North Korea, which endanger both – has broken out because of grievances and grudges dating from Japan’s long and brutal occupation of the entire Korean peninsula in the decades preceding the end of World War II.

Given the history, it’s easy to understand why there’s no love lost between these two peoples. But alliances make sense only when the participants can count on each other for effective assistance if and when the shooting starts. Can anyone seriously believe that Japan and South Korea are going to get their act together suddenly if North Korean forces barrel across the Demilitarized Zone, or if Beijing moves against Taiwan? Or that responsible American defense planning should assume this rosy scenario?

Even worse, if trouble does break out on the Korean peninsula, nearly 30,000 American troops will be right in the middle. As I’ve written repeatedly, their vulnerability to superior North Korean conventional forces means that a U.S. President might need to use nuclear weapons to save them. For many years, North Korea’s inability to hit the American homeland with its own nukes made this threat (known as “extended deterrence”) credible and helped keep the peace. Given the North’s major progress toward precisely this capability, the current U.S. strategy could soon amount to risking the complete destruction of a big American city – or two. That may even be the case now.

In other words, given all these major, worsening Asia problems, the logical U.S. response is not stubbornly staying seated atop a powder keg. It’s to disengage ASAP. But any disengagement is such anathema to Haass and the rest of the Blob that he’s actually portrayed President Trump’s various statements criticizing the wisdom of America’s alliances as major contributors to East Asia’s stability.

Ironically, though, despite the Blob’s complaints, Mr. Trump’s biggest mistake along these lines clearly has been to continue his predecessors’ alliance policies, and even to double down in Eastern Europe – a region that could be as dangerous as East Asia.

That is, Haass and the rest of the Blob should be resting a lot easier. What a tragedy that there’s no reason to say that for the rest of us.

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(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The Latest Trump Tariff Debunkers Debunked

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Benjamin Della Rocca, Benn Steil, China, Council on Foreign Relations, goods imports, imports, merchandise imports, n, Peter Navarro, tariffs, Trade, tradewar, Trump, Washington Post, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Only in the free trade-worshiping American Mainstream Media could an op-ed piece titled “Debunking Trump’s Tariff Claims” be published that’s chock full of easily debunk-able claims itself.  

The first such allegation in the article, which came out on the Washington Post’s website yesterday, holds that the administration’s view that China “bears most of the burden of the tariffs” imposed by the President over the last year is based solely on adviser Peter Navarro’s explanation that China is lowering the prices of its goods in order to offset them. Authors Benn Steil and Benjamin Della Rocca of the Council on Foreign Relations note, correctly, that U.S. government data show that prices of Chinese imports haven’t fallen by nearly as much as they’ve been increased by Trump tariffs.

What Steil and Della Rocca have left out, though, could fill a book. For instance, the tariffs still only cover $250 billion worth of America’s total goods purchases of China – which last year totaled just under $540 billion. So that’s well under half. In addition, the vast majority of these levies have been in place for considerably less than a year.

Moreover, the prices of imports from China – which stem from numerous influences aside from tariffs (U.S. and other foreign market conditions for the various products involved, levels of Chinese subsidies – including value-added tax rebates that were increased last September) – have definitely shifted gears. During the pre-tariff period May, 2017-May, 2018, they rose 0.40 percent. During the largely post-tariff period May, 2018-2019 (encompassing the latest available data), they fell by 1.4 percent.

Equally interesting: Those May China import prices hit their lowest absolute level since September, 2007, nearly 12 years ago. Coincidence? Overall non-fuel import prices are down, too – but stand only at a post-September, 2017 low.

Perhaps more important, though, Navarro has in fact not staked his stance only on import prices. As he told Fox Business on June 21 (before the Steil-Della Rocca article), “China producers pay for these tariffs in the language of economics, they bear the burden of the tariffs through lower prices, lower exports, lower profits.” And there’s abundant evidence to back him up.

Notably, since July, 2018 (when the first, $50 billion, tranche of Trump tariffs were imposed), America’s goods purchases from China fell on a monthly basis by 16.66 percent. The comparable results for the previous year – an increase of 0.92 percent. Over that span, U.S. non-oil goods imports (the best global control group for goods imports from China) weakened, too, but kept growing. The slowdown was from 6.65 percent to 1.82 percent.

Another way to look at these changes is to compare U.S. goods imports from China from January-May of this year with those purchases from the same five-month stretch in years past. During the first such Trump period (covering 2016-2017), before any tariffs were imposed, these merchandise imports from China increased by 8.10 percent. The purchases went up during the following five-month stretch –  to 9.54 percent.

The growth rate during the first five-month period featuring tariffs, in 2019? There was no growth. In fact, they sank by 12.34 percent. And interestingly, the overall U.S. economic growth rate during these spans was almost unchanged. 

Since the federal government doesn’t keep monthly figures on the gross domestic product (GDP), I’ve used the next best measure — the quarterly data kept by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. On a pre-inflation basis (the same gauge as used by the trade figures), during the first between the first two quarters of 2018, the economy grew by 2.93 percent. During the first two quarters of 2019, the pace quickened only to 2.95 percent. (Because the first results for second quarter GDP aren’t in yet, I’ve used the average of these widely followed “tracking figures” as a substitute.) 

An even clearer idea of Chinese losses can be gleaned from considering what U.S. merchandise imports from China might have been without any tariffs. These kinds of exercises are anything but precise, of course. But had they increased at the same 9.54 percent rate as between January-May, 2017 and 2018 rather than shrinking by 12.34 percent, they’d have totaled $224.97 billion during the first five months of this year – a swing of nearly $45 billion.

Steil and Della Rocca didn’t bother to look at the impact on China’s global exports, either – even though it looks sizable. Between July, 2018 and May, 2019 (from that first full month of U.S. tariffs through the latest data month), China’s global overseas merchandise sales fell by 0.80 percent on a monthly basis. From July, 2017 to May, 2018 (pre-any tariffs), they expanded by 8.94 percent. 

China’s overall economic growth took a big hit, too. On an annual basis, in the third quarter of 2018, (when those initial American tariffs were slapped on), Chinese GDP expanded by 6.5 percent. (And yes, I realize these numbers can be very dodgy.) By the first quarter of this year, it had dipped to 6.4 percent. From the pre-tariff third quarter of 2017 to the first quarter of 2018, China’s growth rate remained the same – a considerably higher 6.8 percent.

President Trump and his aides certainly can and should be much more precise when they talk about the trade war’s costs. But examining these claims using partial quotes and isolated figures is surely a much greater sin. In other words, the bigger the picture examined, the better the Trump administration’s contention that the Chinese economy is suffering a much greater burden from U.S. tariffs than America’s

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

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

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

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

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

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

In fact, Haass explicitly recognizes the dilemma thereby created:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: More Childish Attacks on Trump

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alliances, allies, Council on Foreign Relations, foreign policy establishment, George H.W. Bush, Greece, IMF, International Monetary Fund, international organizations, internationalism, Iran deal, JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, journalists, Mainstream Media, media, military bases, NAFTA, New Zealand, North American Free Trade Agreement, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Paris climate accord, Philippines, Richard N. Haass, Ronald Reagan, TPP, Trans-Pacific Partnership, Trump, UN, UNESCO, United Nations, Withdrawal Doctrine, World Bank, World Trade Organization, WTO

I’m getting to think that in an important way it’s good that establishment journalists and foreign policy think tank hacks still dominate America’s debate on world affairs. It means that for the foreseeable future, we’ll never run out of evidence of how hidebound, juvenile, and astonishingly ignorant these worshipers of the status quo tend to be. Just consider the latest fad in their ranks: the narrative that the only theme conferring any coherence on President Trump’s foreign policy is his impulse to pull the United States out of alliances and international organizations, or at least rewrite them substantially.

This meme was apparently brewed up at the heart of the country’s foreign policy establishment – the Council on Foreign Relations. Its president, former aide to Republican presidents Richard N. Haass, tweeted on October 12, “Trump foreign policy has found its theme: The Withdrawal Doctrine. US has left/threatening to leave TPP, Paris accord, Unesco, NAFTA, JCPOA.” [He’s referring here to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that aimed to link the U.S. economy more tightly to East Asian and Western Hemisphere countries bordering the world’s largest ocean; the global deal to slow down climate change; the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization; the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – the official name of the agreement seeking to deny Iran nuclear weapons.]

In a classic instance of group-think, this one little 140-character sentence was all it took to spur the claim’s propagation by The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Marketwatch.com, Vice.com, The Los Angeles Times, and Britain’s Financial Times (which publishes a widely read U.S. edition).  For good measure, the idea showed up in The New Republic, too – albeit without mentioning Haass.

You’d have to read far into (only some of) these reports to see any mention that American presidents taking similar decisions is anything but unprecedented. Indeed, none of them reminded readers of one of the most striking examples of alliance disruption from the White House: former President Ronald Reagan’s decision to withdraw American defense guarantees to New Zealand because of a nuclear weapons policy dispute. Moreover, the administrations of Reagan and George H.W. Bush engaged in long, testy negotiations with long-time allies the Philippines and Greece on renewing basing agreements that involved major U.S. cash payments.

Just as important, you could spend hours on Google without finding any sense in these reports that President Trump has decided to remain in America’s major security alliances in Europe and Asia, as well as in the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (along with a series of multilateral regional development banks).

More important, you’d also fail to find on Google to find any indication that any of the arrangements opposed by Mr. Trump might have less than a roaring success. The apparent feeling in establishment ranks is that it’s not legitimate for American leaders to decide that some international arrangements serve U.S. interests well, some need to be recast, and some are such failures or are so unpromising that they need to be ditched or avoided in the first place.

And the reason that such discrimination is so doggedly opposed is that, the internationalist world affairs strategy pursued for decades by Presidents and Congresses across the political spectrum (until, possibly, now) is far from a pragmatic formula for dealing with a highly variegated, dynamic world. Instead, it’s the kind of rigid dogma that’s most often (and correctly) associated with know-it-all adolescents and equally callow academics. What else but an utterly utopian ideology could move a writer from a venerable pillar of opinion journalism (the aforementioned Atlantic) to traffick in such otherworldly drivel as

“A foreign-policy doctrine of withdrawal also casts profound doubt on America’s commitment to the intricate international system that the United States helped create and nurture after World War II so that countries could collaborate on issues that transcend any one nation.”

Without putting too fine a point on it, does that sound like the planet you live on?

I have no idea whether whatever changes President Trump is mulling in foreign policy will prove effective or disastrous, or turn out to be much ado about very little. I do feel confident in believing that the mere fact of rethinking some foreign policy fundamentals makes his approach infinitely more promising than one that views international alliances and other arrangements in all-or-nothing terms; that evidently can’t distinguish the means chosen to advance U.S. objectives from the objectives themselves; and that seems oblivious to the reality that the international sphere lacks the characteristic that makes prioritizing institution’s creation and maintenance not only possible in the domestic sphere, but indispensable – a strong consensus on defining acceptable and unacceptable behavior.

One of the most widely (and deservedly) quoted adages about international relations is the observation, attributed to a 19^th century British foreign minister, that his nation had “no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” Until America’s foreign policy establishment and its media mouthpieces recognize that this advice applies to international institutions, too, and start understanding the implications, they’ll keep losing influence among their compatriots. And rightly so.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: So You Think Trump is a Dangerous Nut on North Korea?

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Alex Ward, alliances, allies, Ana Fifield, Ankit Panda, Associated Press, BBC, CNN, Cold War, Council on Foreign Relations, David J. Rothkopf, David Jackson, deterrence, Diane Feinstein, Ed Markey, foreign policy, foreign policy establishment, Kim Jong Un, media, Nicole Gaouette, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Peter Baker, political class, Rick Gladstone, Stewart Patrick, The Atlantic, The Diplomat, The New York Times, Trump, United Nations, USAToday, Vox.com, Washington Post

Weird as it sounds, the North Korea nuclear crisis has created two significant benefits – though unfortunately neither has yet created either establishment or popular pressure to change an increasingly reckless American approach.

Still, it’s promising that dictator Kim Jong Un’s rapid development of nuclear weapons that can reach the U.S. homeland is not only revealing that America’s longstanding approach to defense alliances is now exposing the nation to the risk of nuclear attack even when its own security is not directly at stake. It’s also more recently begun exposing America’s many foreign policy and other elite mainstays either as ignoramuses or (much more likely) shameful hypocrites.

The reason? They profess to be shocked, just shocked (Google “Casablanca” and “Louis Renault”) that President Trump has threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea in order “to defend itself or its allies.” As if they’ve never heard of “nuclear deterrence.” And don’t know that such saber-rattling has been U.S. policy for decades.

To review briefly, since fairly early in the Cold War, and especially since the former Soviet Union developed its own impressive nuclear forces, American leaders have overwhelmingly concluded that the only reasonable uses of these weapons was preventing a nuclear attack on the United States itself, or a similar strike or conventional military assault on one of the countries it was treaty-bound to protect. The idea was that even nuclear-armed potential aggressors the Soviets and Chinese (and the North Koreans, once they crossed the threshhold) would think at least twice before moving on targets if they had reason to fear that the United States would launch its own nukes against those countries.

From time to time, some politicians and analysts suggested that the effects of such nuclear weapons use could be restricted to efforts to take out the enemy’s remaining nuclear weapons or otherwise fall short of “totally destroying” that adversary. But for the most part, the idea of limited nuclear war has been rejected in favor of vowing annihilation. And except for disarmament types on the Left and super-hawks on the Right (who supported the aforementioned “counterforce” approach), the political class comprised of office-holders and journalists and think tankers was just fine with the nuclear element of U.S. alliance strategy.

It’s completely bizarre, therefore, that almost none of the press coverage – including “experts'” analyses – of Mr. Trump’s September 19 statement evinces any awareness of any of this history. Instead, it’s portrayed the “totally destroy” threat as appallingly monstrous, unhinged rhetoric from an unprecedentedly erratic chief executive. Just as bad, President Trump is accused of playing right into Kim’s hands and shoring up his support with the North Korean populace.

For instance, here’s how Washington Post reporter Ana Fifield yesterday described the consensus of of North Korea specialists she had just surveyed:

“Kim Jong Un’s regime tells the North Korean people every day that the United States wants to destroy them and their country. Now, they will hear it from another source: the president of the United States himself.

“In his maiden address to the United Nations on Tuesday, President Trump threatened to “totally destroy North Korea.” Analysts noted that he did not even differentiate between the Kim regime, as President George W. Bush did with his infamous “axis of evil” speech, and the 25 million people of North Korea.”

Here’s the New York Times‘ take, from chief White House correspondent Peter Baker and foreign policy reporter Rick Gladstone:

“President Trump brought the same confrontational style of leadership he has used at home to the world’s most prominent stage on Tuesday as he vowed to ‘totally destroy North Korea‘ if it threatened the United States….”

Similarly, USAToday‘s David Jackson described the Trump speech as “a stark address to the United Nations that raised the specter of nuclear warfare” and contended that “Trump’s choice of words on North Korea is in keeping with the bellicose rhetoric he’s already used to describe the tensions that have escalated throughout his eight months in office.”

As for the Associated Press, the world’s most important news wire service, it was content to offer readers a stunning dose of moral equivalence: “In a region well used to Pyongyang’s pursuit of nuclear weapons generating a seemingly never-ending cycle of threats and counter-threats, Mr. Trump’s comments stood out.“

CNN‘s approach? It quoted a “senior UN diplomat” as claiming that “it was the first time in his memory that a world leader has called for the obliteration of another state at the UNGA [United Nations General Assembly], noting even Iran’s most fiery leaders didn’t similarly threaten Israel.”

For good measure, reporter Nicole Gaouette added, “The threat is likely to ratchet up tensions with North Korea while doing little to reassure US allies in Asia, said analysts who added that the President now also runs the risk of appearing weak if he doesn’t follow through.”

The Council on Foreign Relations’ Stewart Patrick, who served on the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff under former President George W. Bush, told the BBC that the Trump threat is implausible, and that “I think the folks in the Pentagon when they look at military options are just aghast at the potential loss of life that could occur with at a minimum hundreds of thousands of South Koreans killed in Seoul.”

For David J. Rothkopf, a former Clinton administration official and protege of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who went on to edit FOREIGNPOLICY magazine (where I worked many years before), the problem is much simpler: “The president of the United States chose, in a forum dedicated to diplomacy, to threaten to wipe another nation — a much smaller one — off the face of the earth in language that was not so much hard-line rhetoric as it was schoolboy bullying complete with childish name-calling.”

Many members of the U.S. Congress were no better. Said California Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein: “Trump’s bombastic threat to destroy North Korea and his refusal to present any positive pathways forward on the many global challenges we face are severe disappointments. He aims to unify the world through tactics of intimidation, but in reality he only further isolates the United States.”

Massachusetts Democratic Senator Ed Markey brought up a war powers angle: “The more the president talks about the total destruction of North Korea, the more it’s necessary for the country and the Congress to have a debate over what the authority of a president is to launch nuclear weapons against another country.”

What’s of course especially ironic about Markey’s words is that such a U.S. policy of “no first use” of nuclear weapons would effectively destroy the American alliances that liberals like Markey have become enamored with lately, and that President Trump is often charged by these same liberals as attempting to dismantle.

Some other news organizations and websites have behaved even more strangely – lambasting the Trump threat but then acknowledging deep inside their accounts that the President said nothing fundamentally new.

For example, the viscerally anti-Trump Vox.com website predictably led off one of its accounts with, “On September 19, President Donald Trump gave his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly. His harsh rhetoric toward North Korea stood out — mostly because he threatened to obliterate the country of 25.4 million people.”

Six paragraphs later, writer Alex Ward got around to mentioning that “A few [specialists] noted that it was similar to what other presidents, including President Obama, have said before.”

And in an Atlantic post titled, “A Presidential Misunderstanding of Deterrence,” author Ankit Panda of The Diplomat newspaper accused President Trump of using “apocalyptic rhetoric” and threatening “to commit a horrific act expressly forbidden by international humanitarian law….”

But then he immediately turned around and admitted,

“The remarks echoed similar, countless deterrent threats levied against North Korea by past U.S. presidents with more subtlety and innuendo, perhaps allowing for a more calibrated and flexible response. But ultimately vowing to ‘totally destroy’ North Korea if America or its allies come under attack is, in fact, not all that sharp a break from existing U.S. policy.”

If these treatments of the North Korea crisis were simply efforts to demonize President Trump by abusing history, that would be contemptible enough, but what else is new from America’s too often incompetent and scapegoat-addicted elites?

But something much more dangerous is at work here. Individuals who, for good reasons, have not been regarded as kooks are using Never Trump-ism to foster a genuinely kooky idea. They’re suggesting that the alliances so central to America’s foreign policy making for decades should be viewed as little more than kumbaya symbols, and that anyone speaking frankly about their possibly deadly and indeed horrific implications is beyond the pale – even though the proliferation of nuclear weapons has unmistakably rendered these arrangements far more perilous.

In other words, they’re spreading the worst, and most childish, of all canards about foreign policy, or about any dimension of public policy – not that a particular set of choices is sound or not (that’s almost always legitimately debatable), but that hard choices never need to be made at all.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Why Trade’s Best Champions Really Need to Raise Their Game

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Brad Setser, China, Council on Foreign Relations, Financial Times, George W. Bush, Global Imbalances, manufacturing, Martin Wolf, non-tariff barriers, offshoring, offshoring lobby, tariffs, Trade, Trump, World Trade Organization, WTO, {What's Left of) Our Economy

When you’ve been in the trade policy trenches as long as I have, it’s important these days to look up from time to time and pinch or otherwise remind yourself how dramatically Donald Trump’s election a president has changed the policy landscape. And I’m of course someone who broadly supports his stated objectives in this field.

Weirdly, however, folks who oppose Mr. Trump’s views keep showing that their need to wake up is even greater, and this goes double for backers of the general trade status quo intellectually honest enough to acknowledge many of its serious problems. The biggest adjustment they need to make? Demonstrating that they can develop approaches to solving these problems that are realistic alternatives to the tariff-centered measures that the president is apparently contemplating. Recent offerings from the Financial Times‘ Martin Wolf and the Council on Foreign Relations’ Brad Setser reveal how much more progress is needed.

In Wolf’s latest column, he heaps scorn on the Trump-ian claim that expanding trade with China (or with any country) has played a “significant” role in causing any of U.S. manufacturing’s problems. And he declares that “Nothing [President Trump] does will reinstate manufacturing to its lost role as the dominant provider of “good jobs”.

But Wolf continues to see a different – and arguably more important – danger stemming from preserving the global trade status quo:

“[H]uge current account surpluses in some countries forced deficit countries into financial excesses as an (ultimately unsustainable) way to maintain demand in line with potential output. The [2007-08 financial] crisis vindicated the concern of John Maynard Keynes about the potentially malign role of surplus countries in the global economy.”

So logically, Wolf is telling readers that if better balance doesn’t come to global trade, Financial Crisis 2.0 could easily result – echoing a warning made both by me and by many eminent economists.

What does he recommend to stave off such a catastrophe? A “proactive, not defensive” approach that includes a drive to “open global markets” (as if this hasn’t been tried before?) and – most interesting in light of his opposition to U.S. trade barriers – “forcing” chronic trade surplus countries like China “to rely more on domestic and less on external demand.” It’s somewhat encouraging that Wolf recognizes that the surplus countries (read “protectionists”) won’t take these steps voluntarily. But what could he possibly mean by “forcing” if no “defensive,” or even punitive, measures like tariffs are permissable? Maybe he’ll tell us in his next column?

The gap between diagnosis and prognosis is at least as wide in Setser’s January 18 post on “China’s WTO Entry, 15 Years On.” The essay is worth reading in its entirety, for it decimates the arguments made by the entire bipartisan U.S. globalization cheerleading policy establishment (not to mention the corporate Offshoring Lobby) about the unprecedented benefits that would flow from admitting China into the global trade rule-making and enforcement body – and thereby shielding it legally from most American unilateral economic power and leverage. Here, though, are a few key examples:

>”It now seems clear that the magnitude of the post-WTO China shock to manufacturing was significantly larger than was expected at the time of China’s entry into the WTO. China already had ‘most-favored-nation” (MFN)/“normal trade’ access to the U.S. Market….But China’s pre-WTO access to the U.S. came with an annual Congressional review, and the resulting uncertainty seems to have deterred some firms from moving production to China.”

>”Moving final assembly of electronic goods to Asia created pressures for the full supply chain [i.e., the much more valuable and innovative production of parts and components, as well as the research and development and engineering work] to move to Asia….Even if the currency issue is taken off the table, I suspect that the trade gains—or really the export gains— from integrating China into the WTO’s “rules” were overestimated.”

>“It is now clear that WTO accession was not enough to make China into an easy market for foreign firms to supply from outside China.

“Here is a point that I think should get a bit more emphasis. China’s imports of manufactures, net of its imports of imported components, peaked as a share of Chinese GDP in 2003—and have fallen steadily since then. There is no ‘WTO’ effect on China’s imports of manufactures, properly measured (i.e. leaving out imports for re-export).”

>”Some firms have succeeded in China, but generally by producing in China for the Chinese market, not by selling to China. Successful challenges to some specific Chinese practices in the WTO have yet to alter this pattern….The WTO rules aren’t all that constraining in a country like China—thanks to state control of commanding heights enterprises and banks, and institutions, such as the National Development and Reform Commission (NRDC), that assure party control of major state firms and large investment projects.”

>Many WTO-legal remedies that might have worked were not used “because U.S. and European firms benefited from making use of Chinese production to meet global demand” – and because George W. Bush’s administration danced to their tune.

But Setser’s policy recommendations seem no more realistic than Wolf’s, especially if significant, unilateral tariffs are ruled out:

“The correct fight right now is against the domestic policies that keep China’s savings so high, against a surge in capital outflows that leads to a yuan depreciation that then becomes entrenched (if China’s currency goes down, I worry it won’t go back up), and against Chinese import-substituting industrial policies that aim to displace major exports to China.”

In the pre-Trump period, the diagnosis-prognosis gap unaddressed by intellectually honest supporters of the trade status quo didn’t matter much, since American presidents were so determined to preserve that status quo. But this time, it seems to be different.  And if these trade advocates hope to prevent what they tend to describe as a counterproductive – and maybe worse – shift in American policy, they’ll need to do a much better job of showing that no major course change is needed at all.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: A Conflicted but Noteworthy Call for a U.S. Middle East Pullback

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Council on Foreign Relations, energy, Foreign Affairs, foreign policy establishment, Henry Kissinger, Iran, ISIS, Middle East, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Saudi Arabia, Syria, terrorism

The signs are getting curious-er and curious-er that the American foreign policy establishment is becoming more and more taken with the idea of just throwing up its collective hands in exasperation and walking away from the Middle East. In addition to being personally gratifying to yours truly, as I’ve been urging this course change for many months, it would be great for the nation as a whole, as the region has become completely dysfunctional on every level imaginable. Therefore, the notion that any outside power can intervene or try to manage events constructively has become a formula for disaster.

Last week, I noticed that former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, clearly still one of America’s foremost foreign policy gurus, published a column in The Wall Street Journal that could easily be read as a thinly disguised brief for withdrawal. This essay has now been followed by one in Foreign Affairs that argues explicitly for a U.S. pullback – mainly in military terms. That journal has for nearly a century rightly been seen as the flagship publication of the national foreign policy establishment – or, more accurately, its increasingly underwhelming remnants – because it’s sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, the closest approximation the nation has to Establishment HQ. And to thicken the plot further, Kissinger has long been a leading power in the Council’s counsels.

Skeptics can observe that the article’s authors are two former Obama administration White House foreign policy advisers, and that, just to keep a premature campaign promise, the president wants nothing more than to wash his hands of the Middle East and its seemingly endless wars and turmoil. But its appearance in Foreign Affairs means that a much broader – and powerful – part of the establishment has at least decided that this recommended strategy has now become legitimate to bring up. And such developments and the signals they send throughout not only the policy and political communities, but into the upper ranks of business and finance, have a habit of influencing decision-makers sooner or later.

The main problem with “The End of the Pax Americana” – which Foreign Affairs‘ editors billed as pointing to a “Post-American Middle East” – is that the pullout depends on a great many things going right in a region where confidence in the future has rarely been justified. The authors’ overall prescription is that Washington seek to advance America’s “primary interest” in the Middle East – “regional stability” – by acting as an “offshore balancer.” As they explain, this political science-y term entails “refraining from engagement in overseas military operations and forgoing quasi-imperial nation building to focus instead on selectively using its considerable leverage to exert influence and protect U.S. interests.”

But usually when analysts use phrases like “use its considerable leverage to exert influence,” it’s a sign of fudging. On the one hand, they’re seeking to dispel the illusion that the United States remains powerful enough simply to dictate outcomes in the region. On the other hand, they’re insisting – for no apparent reason – that the amount of influence that can be exerted will always, or at least often enough, suffice to achieve the desired goal.

It also seems that the authors are saying that whatever interests the United States retains can’t be addressed militarily (hence their warning that “Political and economic developments in the Middle East have reduced the opportunities for effective American intervention to a vanishing point….”) but can be handled diplomatically. Which seems awfully, and inconvincingly, convenient.

But the bases for the authors’ optimism are also specific and concrete, though no more persuasive. Will the United States really be able to continue deterring Iran’s ambitions to be the Middle East’s kingpin even after it becomes clear that a major military campaign against ISIS has been ruled out?

Indeed, it’s doubtful that the authors themselves believe this. In the first place, they pointedly add that Iran probably isn’t strong enough to dominate the region. And in the second place, even though they portray a major ant-ISIS campaign as the height of strategic folly, they argue that “a serviceable regional U.S. military presence” can “prevent ISIS from expanding further (into Jordan, for example) and…deter Iranian breaches of the nuclear deal and respond to any destabilizing Iranian moves, such as a major ground intervention in Iraq.” Even, apparently, though this presence should never be used.

Moreover, the serviceable presence itself turns out to be pretty big. In fact, they maintain that “The American military footprint in the region should not change.” In fact, neither should the Obama administration’s current military strategy:

“The air campaign against ISIS should continue, and American troops will still need to be deployed occasionally on a selective basis to quell terrorist threats or even respond in a limited way to large-scale atrocities or environmental disasters. But a resolute policy of restraint requires that any major expeditionary military ground intervention on the part of the United States in the Middle East be avoided and that regional partners be encouraged to take on more responsibility for their own security.”

And that reveals a further weakness with the authors’ proposals: As they themselves point out, Washington has few, if any, local countries it can rely on. Worse, its supposedly closest allies, like Saudi Arabia, seem deeply conflicted about the desirability of defeating the terrorists – as opposed to trying to use them to overthrow Syrian dictator Bashir Al-Assad.

Nonetheless, even though “The End of Pax Americana” doesn’t make a sound case for U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East, and in fact seems to back only the slightest actual policy changes, its appearance in Foreign Affairs is a minor milestone. It pushes the foreign policy mandarinate – and therefore the nation as a whole – one step closer to a strategically sensible and prudent case for exiting the region, one that recognizes America’s potential to deal with the threats the region still generates mainly through domestic policy that capitalize on its geographical remoteness from the Middle East and its potential for even greater energy self-sufficiency.

But all the progress in the world won’t make a difference unless it takes place fast enough to prevent a new regional disaster for the United States. And so far, it’s been tough to justify genuine optimism on that score.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: What Does Obama Really Think About the Iran Military Option?

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Arab Street, Bashir Al-Assad, Council on Foreign Relations, Iran, Iran deal, Iraq, ISIS, John Kerry, Middle East, nuclear weapons, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Shiites, Sunnis, Syria

I’ve suggested that the less President Obama and his top advisers say about their new Iran nuclear deal, the better its chances of Congressional approval, and Secretary of State John Kerry recently provided a great example that somehow escaped even the critics’ notice.

The president plainly thinks that one of the strongest arguments on behalf of the deal is that it’s America’s best option for keeping Iran nuclear weapons-free short of war. And most of his critics plainly agree with his assumption that such a conflict would be terrible. Otherwise, why would they keep insisting despite all the evidence that tougher sanctions, or a prolonging of current sanctions, can get the job done?

I agree that a military strike could be very dangerous. It’s anything but clear that the U.S. government knows where all of Iran’s key sites are, and secret facilities would almost by definition survive American bombs and missiles. Moreover, military actions have a nasty habit of producing unexpected and harmful consequences.

But here’s the funny thing: According to Secretary of State John Kerry, the president actually isn’t so worried. And Kerry’s stated views could legitimately be interpreted as agreeing – at least if you take seriously some July 24 remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City.

The Council, just to remind, is a combination foreign policy education and discussion group and research organization, and its members include many of America’s top private business and financial leaders as well as current and former government officials (along with, less impressively, chattering class types like think tank staffers and journalists). So Kerry (a member himself) presumably was choosing his words even more carefully even than usual. It’s worth quoting at some length what he said about the military option:

“Now, I know there’s been a lot of railing through the years over their [Iran’s nuclear] program, and people rant and rave. And we know we’ve seen the prime minister with a cartoon of a bomb at the UN and so on and so forth. But what’s happened? What has anybody done about it? Anybody got a plan to roll it back? Anybody got a plan that’s viable beyond bombing them for one or two days or three days that might slow their program down for two years or three years? To which, as most of you as practical human beings, you know what the response will be.

“I mean, we can do it, and we haven’t taken it off the table. Let me make that absolutely clear. This President is the only president who has actually developed something called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, the MOP, which has been written about publicly. And not only has he asked it to be designed, he’s deployed it.

“…And when I became Secretary of State, when he called me into the Oval Office and I sat with him, I said, ‘Mr. President, if I’m going to be your Secretary of State, I want to know that if I’m going around and talking to countries in the Middle East and I say you’re prepared to use military action, I don’t want to be a Secretary of State for whom you’ve pulled out the rug.’

“…And he looked at me and he said, ‘John, let me tell you something directly. Iran will not get a nuclear weapon and I will do whatever is necessary, but I believe diplomacy has to be put to the test first.’”

So according to Kerry, although Mr. Obama is by no means anxious to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, his position that all options needed to remain “on the table” has not simply been talk. He gave the orders to develop a weapon needed to achieve success and to put it into service.

Kerry’s own views of using force and of its consequences are at least as interesting. He told Council members that “We can do it” and that between one and three days of strikes “might slow their program down for two years or three years.” To be sure, the Secretary did add, “you know what the response will be.” In fact, though, this matter is far from clear.

For example, what Kerry didn’t mention during this appearance was the possibility of such attacks triggering a region-wide Middle East war. Nor did he bring up the prospect that the so-called “Arab Street” might rise up in anger. Maybe that’s because, if anything, Sunni Arab public opinion could well welcome action against Shia Iran. Meanwhile, the region’s other Shiites – in Iraq and Syria – seem to have their hands full with ISIS and with embattled Syrian dictator Bashir Al-Assad’s remaining forces.

Kerry might be referring to a point he has made elsewhere – that Iran’s knowledge of the nuclear fuel cycle can’t be “bombed away,” and that Tehran could simply start all over again. At the same time, if this is Kerry’s point, it hardly proves that military action would be futile. After all, creating enough physical destruction to slow Iran’s weaponization plans by two to three years sounds pretty impressive – especially compared with a deal whose flawed verification and sanctions snap-back provisions could easily permit Tehran to continue progressing toward weapons capability with its remaining human and physical infrastructure intact. Moreover, if the Iranian nuclear program shows signs of attaining critical mass again, it could be attacked again.  

Again, none of the above means that I favor the military option. What it does mean is that the president himself might not believe one of the main arguments for his Iran deal.  If true, that could ironically hearten many opponents – but frighten many supporters.

 

 

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Has the American Establishment Finally Turned on China?

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Asia, China, Council on Foreign Relations, foreign policy establishment, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, technology transfer, TPP, Trade, Trans-Pacific Partnership

Here’s a real shocker: The Council on Foreign Relations, which has long disseminated reams of research and analysis favoring panda-hugging China policies, has just issued a report strongly echoing an argument I made in an op-ed last July: that America’s longstanding strategy of encouraging China’s rise to great power status in the hope of turning into a “responsible” global player is failing badly, and that a fundamentally new approach recognizing Beijing’s threatening nature is imperative.

Right off the bat I need to acknowledge that this post is based on a quick perusal of the report’s introduction and conclusions. Doubtless, therefore, I’m leaving out some important missed nuances. But the main thrust of the study, written by veteran senior U.S. diplomat Robert Blackwill and longtime think tanker and Defense Department advisor Ashley Tellis, is clear enough.

According to Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China, “The long-term U.S. effort to protect its vital national interests by integrating China into the international system is at serious risk today because Beijing has acquired the capacity, and increasingly displays the willingness, to pursue threatening policies against which American administrations have asserted they were hedging.” In particular, “China has not evolved into a ‘responsible stakeholder’ as then Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick called on it to become.” Not only could I have written this practically word for word – I did!

It gets better. Despite the emerging Chinese threat, the authors charge, “these same U.S. policymakers have continued to interact with China as if these dangerous Chinese policies were only theoretical and consigned to the distant future. In short, successive administrations have done much more cooperating with China than hedging, hoping that Beijing would gradually come to accept the United States’ leading role in Asia despite all the evidence to the contrary, not least because cooperation was so much less costly in the short term than military, geoeconomic, and diplomatic hedging.”

I do, however, have many more problems with the policy recommendations. The good news is that responses to the China threat like strengthening U.S. military forces and alliances in the East Asia-Pacific region make sense if you agree with the authors that the nation’s China policy should aim first and foremost to maintain America’s preeminence in that part of the world in all dimensions – military, political, and economic. In particular, it’s gratifying to see that the authors recognize the big hole punched in U.S. strategy in the form of trade and technology transfer policies that have dangerously strengthened China’s military capabilities.

At the same time, as I’ve long written, what really matters to America in Asia is maintaining adequate – and reciprocal – access to its trade and investment markets.  This objective can be achieved overwhelmingly via the decisive leverage the United States enjoys from its status as the main customer to which the region’s economies need to sell to realize their growth and development ambitions. And America’s market power is so immense that it can be wielded successfully regardless of who controls East Asia politically and economically.

So it’s heartening that an influential organization like the Council acknowledges the dangerous absurdity of trying to counter China’s growing power by boosting its own defense spending, and by incurring ever greater military risks, while simultaneously showering this potential adversary with wealth and knowhow. It would be even better, however, if the organization recognized that America enjoys enough actual and potential security and self-sufficiency to promote its essential interests in East Asia in much safer, cheaper, and more efficient ways.

Incidentally, one interesting question still left open is exactly how much of the foreign policy establishment the study’s views represent. The Council itself claims to take no institutional positions. Moreover, another Council staffer just published an article in the Financial Times that seems to contradict Revising U.S. Grand Strategy pretty directly in terms of where President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal should fit in. At the same time, authors Blackwill and Tellis belong to a Council “Study Group on Grand Strategy Toward China” many of whose other members have been strong supporters of the U.S.-China policy status quo. That also goes for Blackwill himself. Stay tuned for more details as I try to figure this puzzle out.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The U.S. Establishment’s Dangerous Confusion over Whether the Cold War is Over

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38th parallel, allies, Asia-Pacific, China, Council on Foreign Relations, Cuba, deterrence, East Asia, foreign policy establishment, forward deployment, Japan, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Richard Haass, Russia, South Korea, Soviet Union, tripwire

What a difference (less than) a week makes! On December 18, Richard Haass was telling the world that President Obama’s recent move to normalize U.S. relations with Cuba was “the latest sign” that “the Cold War is over.” On December 23, he urged Washington to turn the heat on North Korea way up – to the point of seeking regime change – because it’s become an intolerable threat to America’s Cold War defense strategy in Northeast Asia.

Haass’ writings are worth scrutinizing because, as a former senior diplomat for the last two Republican presidents (Bush) and now the head of the Council on Foreign Relations, he’s a pretty reliable guide to the U.S. foreign policy establishment’s general worldview at any given moment (including in the corridors of power). If that’s been true over the last week, this means it’s the latest sign that this worldview is in utter, and therefore dangerous, disarray.

Not that Cuba and North Korea are close to identical – or, more important, that they affect the United States in close to identical ways. Haass is absolutely right to observe that “change in the international environment” has made the former “less of a strategic threat” because the demise of its Soviet patron sharply limited Havana’s potential to endanger American interests beyond its borders. He’s equally right that aggression by the well-armed, nuclear-capable, and erratic North Korean regime “would instantly bring the U.S. into a major, costly, dangerous war.”

But what Haass misses is by far the biggest reason that Pyongyang can embroil the United States in conflict – and one that soon seems capable of putting the American homeland at risk due to the North’s increasingly potent nuclear weapons and missile programs. It’s the archetypical Cold War strategy Washington keeps pursuing on the peninsula. A quarter century after the Soviet Union’s demise, the United States still deploys 28,500 troops in South Korea. As was the case with America’s Cold War strategy in Western Europe, these soldiers have been placed directly in harm’s way – right along the 38^th parallel that has long divided the peninsula – as a tripwire. Their mission literally is to die.

Of course, the hope of U.S. leaders is entirely different. For decades, both Democratic and Republican presidents have wagered that fear of drawing America – including U.S. nuclear weapons – into a Korean conflict would deter a North Korean attack. That is, the more vulnerable the troops, the likelier that an invasion by the North would force Washington’s hand by inflicting casualties.

As Haass realizes – and as I’ve written – the more powerful North Korean nuclear forces become, the weaker deterrence becomes, because America’s vulnerability would call into question Washington’s escalation dominance (its clear ability to prevail in an intensifying conflict). And his solution – eliminate the North Korean regime that’s responsible for the problem – is defensible. But mine’s much better, for it fully capitalizes on the vastly superior position the nation is in – and therefore the vastly superior options it enjoys – precisely because the Cold War really is over. I recommend responding to this mounting North Korean threat and enhancing America’s security by withdrawing militarily from South Korea.

Foreign policy traditionalists will recoil in horror, but only because they stopped thinking long ago. Indeed, even if the Cold War were still on, the pullout case should still be irresistable. The main reason: Although the troops’ presence in the middle of the Korea powder keg might still buttress deterrence, it is also now greatly, and perhaps fatally, reducing the possibility of choice for American leaders regarding the most fateful decision they could ever face – whether to expose the nation to nuclear attack.

It’s indisputable (at least by realistic folks) that an American withdrawal from South Korea could increase the risk of North Korean aggression. But it should be equally indisputable that nothing at risk on the peninsula – whether or not a strong global communist movement that could exploit aggression existed – is worth the destruction of an American city. Or two. Or more.

In other words, the dangers to South Korea and other countries in the region would be heightened.  But the dangers to the United States would be reduced. Why on earth isn’t this option and its matchless advantages at least being actively debated? It’s all the weirder because the pullout would not deny Washington the option of responding to North Korean aggression with American nuclear weapons. It would simply make this option a function of choice rather than necessity.

Moreover, it isn’t like the United States is the only major power potentially capable of protecting South Korea, even with a nuclear guarantee. China and Russia could do this right now. And Japan can’t be far behind. In fact, since these countries live in South Korea’s neighborhood, and presumably would experience direct fallout from war on the peninsula, shouldn’t they carry the main burden, and bear the prime risk, of creating deterrence and maintaining peace?

The foreign policy establishment typically makes two responses. First, these kinds of U.S. withdrawals would fundamentally destabilize an East Asia whose major local powers have never displayed an ability to coexist peacefully for any length of time. Second, they would dramatically reduce America’s influence in this economically dynamic region, and therefore America’s access to its lucrative markets.

But whether these supposed benefits actually exist, or are worth the cost and risk, what’s crucial to recognize is that Haass (and by extension much of the rest of the foreign policy establishment?) doesn’t seem concerned with them.

His op-ed on the subject states that if the North Korean regime could be removed and the peninsula reunified, “There would be no need for U.S. troops on the 38th parallel….Also a matter for discussion [with China and South Korea] should be the number, mix and mission of any remaining U.S. forces.” I imagine that Haass is assuming that U.S. units in Japan and the rest of the region would remain in place, but of course, the rationale for these forward deployments logically would be called into question, too. After all, would their purpose be to contain a Chinese government that had just acted as a genuine strategic partner? To prevent conflict over island-rocks disputed by Japan and South Korea — which are both U.S. allies?

But even if Haass isn’t on board with a broader review of American strategy in the Asia-Pacific region, my withdrawal proposal also beats his North Korea regime change strategy because the latter is so manifestly unpromising. It hinges largely on persuading China to drop its support for Pyongyang – including major de facto economic subsidies – even though Beijing seems to have every intention of maintaining it.

All the while, as Haass himself so cogently argues, the cataclysmic risks posed by North Korea to America’s core security keep mounting. Troop withdrawal, unlike changing China’s mind, is an option that Washington can completely control, and that would make the world a safer place for this nation. I’d be willing to phase out the U.S. troop presence, in order to give the region’s countries time to develop their own coordinated (or not) strategy. But what should be completely unacceptable is American leaders’ unthinking acceptance of an increasingly scary status quo. For as Haass has pointed out regarding Cuba, the Cold War really is over.