Our So-Called Foreign Policy: A Big Hint that America Finally Needs to Leave NATO

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alliances, allies, Article V, Cato Institute, defense spending, Europe, free-riding, globalism, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear war, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Pew Research Center, tripwire, Trump

Whenever I’ve written about America’s security alliances lately, I’ve emphasized the unacceptable dangers they pose to the nation’s safety because they commit the United States to risk nuclear attack to defend countries that clearly now don’t belong on the list of U.S. vital interests – that is, countries so important to America that their independence literally is worth the complete destruction of major individual cities and even genuine armageddon.

Earlier this week, however, a reminder has appeared about another crucial reason to ditch the granddaddy of these alliances – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Revealingly, it also strongly bears out President Trump’s charges that U.S. allies in the region where they’re concentrated (Europe) have been shamelessly free-riding on the United States. Indeed, the new information also underscores how the allied defense deadbeats are not only ripping America off economically (which seems to be Mr. Trump’s main concern), but how their cheapskate defense budgets are fueling the nuclear risk faced by the United States.

The evidence comes in the form of a new survey of the populations of NATO member countries (including the United States) released by the Pew Research Center, and if you stopped with the headline (“NATO Seen Favorably Across Member States”) you’d understandably think that everything is just dandy in alliance-land. But check out the chart below, which for some reason doesn’t appear until the middle of the Pew report. Its central message should outrage the entire nation.

 

For it shows that although NATO populations are confident that the United States “would defend them from Russian attack,” they’re decidedly unenthusiastic about their own countries participating in the defense of another NATO member. Specifically, a median of 60 percent of residents of NATO Europe (along with Canada) countries express such confidence in America’s military (including nuclear) guarantee (versus 29 percent who are not so convinced). But by a 50-38 percent margin, they oppose their own country joining in.

Of the fourteen NATO members surveyed, populations in only four (the United Kingdom, Canada, Lithuania, and the Netherlands) favored using military force to defend a fellow NATO ally. Yet in only four (Turkey, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic) did majorities not expect the United States would use force to defend them.

The gap was widest in Italy (where only 25 percent favored helping defend another ally versus 75 percent believing that the United States would ride to its own rescue) and narrowest in the Netherlands (where the numbers were 64 percent and 68 percent respectively). The Italians also were the most confident in the United States in absolute terms, and tied with the Greeks for the least willing to help out. The only NATO members in which majorities supported both propositions were the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Lithuania.

Americans should be infuriated by these results for several intertwined reasons. First, the obligation to come to the defense of a fellow NATO member is at the heart of the alliance (and indeed of any alliance) and is spelled out in Article V of the NATO treaty. Although it’s true that members can always ignore legal obligations when push comes to shove, that’s long been much more difficult for the United States – because of its policy of stationing its own forces in many NATO countries (as well as in South Korea) to serve as “tripwires.” The idea has been that once they’re bloodied by attackers, and indeed about to be overwhelmed (because of their relatively small size) American Presidents will have no real choice but to respond with the U.S.’ equalizer – nuclear weapons.

This prospect was supposed to deter attack in the first place, and the (very) good news is that this strategy worked to keep the peace in Europe throughout the Cold War, and is still working. The bad news is that during the Cold War, the main European beneficiaries were countries whose independence was arguably vital to America – like the United Kingdom, (West) Germany, and France. Nowadays, the main beneficiaries are countries whose independence was never even during the Cold War viewed as vital to the United States – principally, the former Soviet bloc countries.

Yet although the stakes have shrunken dramatically, Washington continues to brandish the nuclear sword. And this risky American strategy remains in place – as it always has – because the European allies’ military forces have remained far too small and weak to repel a Soviet/Russian attack on their own, or with the help of modest U.S. non-nuclear forces. Worse, the Pew results also strongly suggest that if war did break out, American leaders could not for long even count on the help of allied forces even if it was provided initially. That’s an unparalleled recipe for disaster on the actual battlefield.

The Pew findings make the reason for this alarming situation glaringly obvious – the allies have skimped on their military spending out of confidence that the Americans would always answer their call. So why shouldn’t they save the big bucks that would be needed for genuine self-defense and use them for other purposes – like generous welfare states? Even better, the Americans would be left holding the nuclear risk bag, since once any conflict on the conflict escalated to that level, the nuclear conflict would be fought over their heads.

In addition, the Pew survey reinforces the results of a poll released last fall and alertly reported by my good friend Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute (who’s also just come out with an important new book on the subject).

Let’s be totally clear: This European approach has always made perfect sense from a European standpoint. But it not only makes no sense for the United States – it’s a strategy that creates the danger of national suicide because of decisions that still yoke the country’s fate to manifestly unreliable foreign publics.

Weirder yet: Avowedly America First champion President Trump has been steadily increasing the U.S. military presence in NATO’s most vulnerable – eastern European – members without having secured military spending increases from the other NATO countries that are remotely game changing.

It’s tough, therefore, to avoid the conclusion that America’s NATO allies are now giving Washington the broadest possible hint that it’s time for the United States to leave – because they’ve become utterly unreliable on top of their defense free-riding.  Why is the President acting as reluctant as any globalist to take it?

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why America’s Alliance Strategy Can’t Have it All

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alliances, allies, burden sharing, China, defense spending, Financial Times, Germany, James Mattis, Japan, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, North Korea, nuclear war, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, smothering, South Korea, Trump

Decades ago (literally!) I came up with an insight that’s stood the test of time pretty well. When my main professional focus was American foreign policy, I began realizing that the best way to describe the U.S. approach to its major security alliances with East Asian and European countries was to call it a “smothering strategy.” That is, American leaders were trying not only to protect Japan and Western Europe specifically from communist aggression. They were also trying to make sure that those critical regions never exploded into major war again – and principally, that Germany and Japan never resumed their roles as aggressors.

The characteristic U.S. solution? Washington would try to smother these German and Japanese impulses by removing their need to conduct any kind of independent foreign policies of their own in the first place. That’s why the United States pledged to take care of both their national security interests (with dangerous nuclear defense commitments) and their economic interests (by opening its economy much wider to their exports than vice versa). As a result, for decades, Germans (and other Europeans) and Japanese could avoid the expenses of maintaining big military establishments and concentrate tightly on the peacetime pursuits of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness – not to mention building great wealth.

How good was this insight? To me, the proof of the pudding was America’s determination to preserve these alliances almost unchanged even after the Cold War ended, the Soviet Union disappeared, and China had not yet launched a drive to boost its influence in East Asia. To put it bluntly, U.S. leaders were still terrified that, if they were forced to face the world on their own once more, the Germans and Japanese would go bonkers again.

But this past week came some evidence that the smothering strategy is still firmly in place – despite the election of an American President who has complained loudly as a candidate as well as in office about how these arrangements are inexcusable rip-offs of the American public and especially taxpayers. At a big national security conference held each year in Germany, Trump administration officials expressed alarm at the prospect that some European initiatives to boost military spending that have barely advanced past the talking stage could might result in European forces at least sometime operating independently of their alliance with the United States – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) – and even excluding America.

According to a Financial Times account of the meeting, U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis reacted by insisting that these European Union “defence plans…enhance Nato’s common defence rather than detract from it. And he put down an important marker: there was, he said, a clear understanding that common defence is a Nato mission that belongs to Nato ‘alone’.”

In other words, the Trump administration has now fallen into both of the traps that ensnared U.S. alliance policy during the Cold War. It has assured the allies that its commitment to their defense is absolute – including the risk of fighting a nuclear war on their behalf – thereby gutting any incentives for them to stop “free riding” on the United States militarily and bearing a greater share of the defense burden. And it has made clear that, although it wants the allies to assume more responsibilities for their own defense, it opposes the allies gaining any more control over their own defense. Instead, the United States must remain firmly in charge.

As a foreign policy realist, who believes that national interests are much more important than particular alliances, and can clash with the preservation of these alliances, I don’t blame the Trump-ers for wanting to have their cake and eat it, too on this score – i.e., more allied resources to use as Washington wishes. Nor do I blame the Europeans for wanting as much defense assistance from Americans as they can get while continuing to skimp on their military budgets.

But as an American, I wish the administration would recognize two fatal flaws in this alliance strategy status quo. The first is the un-realism of straining to freeze alliance structures in place when the common enemy that represented their raison d’etre has been gone for nearly thirty years. The second entails the needless dangers created by continuing to provide nuclear guarantees – and the tripwire forces needed to draw it into Armageddon – for these allies when not even the partial revival of Russian and Chinese threats (along with North Korea’s development of ever more advanced nuclear weapons) has fostered consensus in how to handle them.

Of course, dissolving these alliances will entail risks. But the risks of trying to square these circles look far greater. And when considering the nuclear threats they now pose (from those North Korean as well as Chinese forces that are much more capable of credibly threatening the United States with nuclear attack, along with Russia’s Cold War holdover arsenal), they look harder to justify than ever.

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: 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: Sense and Nonsense on Russia’s Hacking

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2016 election, Amy Klochubar, China, cyber-security, cyber-war, defense spending, Democrats, hacking, Hillary Clinton, intelligence, John McCain, Middle East, NATO, Obama, Office of Personnel Management, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Putin, Republicans, Russia, sanctions, terrorism, Trump

What could be more predictable? The growing uproar over charges that Russia’s government waged a cyber-focused disinformation campaign to influence the last U.S. presidential election has let loose a flood of positively inane statements and arguments on both sides that show politics at its absolute worst.

Even worse, unless both Democrats and Republicans – and the various conflicting camps within the two major parties – get their act together quickly, the odds of further attacks and all the damage they can cause to American governance will only keep shooting up.

Let’s start with those who have expressed skepticism about these allegations, including regarding the substance of yesterday’s intelligence community report concluding that “President Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine confidence in the democratic process, denigrate [former] Secretary [of State Hillary] Clinton [the Democratic nominee], and harm her electability and potential presidency.”

Can they really be serious in contending that the intelligence agencies’ publicly expressed judgments don’t pass the credibility test because no smoking gun or any other compelling evidence has been published? Do they really want the CIA etc to reveal whatever human and technical sources and methods they rely on? Do they really believe that any effective counter-hacking strategy can be developed or continued after disclosing that information?

The insistence on definitive proof, moreover, amounts to terrible advice for making foreign and national security policy generally. It seeks to apply to the jungle realm of international affairs the standards of the American legal system. President Obama’s years in office should have taught Americans how dangerously childish it is to believe that relations among sovereign countries are governed by commonly agreed on rules and norms, that the world is on the verge of this beatific state of affairs, or even that significant progress is being made. And Americans should hold shadowy world of spying and counter-spying to a simon-pure standard?

A more defensible rationale for doubting the intelligence community’s work emphasizes its past major blunders. And from what’s been made public, they have indeed been all too common and all too troubling.  (Please keep in mind, though, that successes often cannot be made public.)

Nevertheless, if a president or president-elect has no faith in a high confidence judgment of this importance from his intelligence agencies, then it’s clearly time to clean house. If the next administration does indeed decisively reject the community’s work on this matter, it will have no legitimate choice but to replace it leaders.

Back to the genuinely ditzy positions: statements that the Russian hacking failed to influence the course of the election. I personally believe this, and shame on those partisans who keep insisting that this interference prevented former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from winning the White House or that it delegitimizes to any extent Donald Trump’s victory.

But should the United States count on Moscow – or any other actor – continuing to fail? Should it wait to respond forcefully until a U.S. adversary succeeds? Shouldn’t Washington capitalize on its adversaries’ current evident shortcomings in this regard and focus on punishment and deterrence? Simply posing these questions should make clear how obvious the answers are.

A final major objection to hammering the Russians represents another more reasonable judgment call, but it’s still fatally flawed. It’s the argument that Washington needs to softpedal the hack attack because the United States has a vital interest in improving relations with Moscow.

As I’ve written, opportunities for better ties with Russia abound, and they should be pursued. But that’s no reason to let Moscow off lightly for its cyber-aggression. In the first place, in any mutually beneficial relationship, boundaries need to be drawn. This is especially true given how much stronger and wealthier than Russia the United States is. If an effort to subvert America’s democratic processes doesn’t qualify, count on further, even worse provocations by Moscow.

Just as important, this approach overlooks a crucial reality: Clear indications that Russia has an incentive to cooperate with the United States in fighting Islamic extremism and terrorism haven’t appeared because Moscow is in a charitable, or even helpful, mood. They’ve appeared because these are vital interests as well for Russia, which both borders the dysfunctional Middle East and rules over its own Muslim populations.

In other words, Moscow has plenty of incentive to play ball with Washington on the Middle East whether the United States retaliates sharply for the hacking or not. And if the Russians don’t understand that, then there’s little hope of any form of meaningful cooperation.

Yet the actual and potential inconsistencies and hypocrisies of those urging tough retaliatory measures are equally troubling. Some are exclusive to Democrats. For example, the sanctions imposed on Moscow by the Obama administration for the hacking seem pretty modest for actions that it claims “demonstrated a significant escalation” of Russia’s “longstanding” efforts “to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order.”

And at the same time, the outrage voiced at Moscow contrasts conspicuously with reactions to China’s successful attack on the federal Office of Personnel Management, in which the records of some 22 million U.S. government employees – including classified and confidential information – were compromised. Indeed, President Obama never publicly blamed China’s government nor announced any responses.

Most important, however, is the question of whether Russia hardliners in both major parties old and new will act on the logical implications of their views of Russian actions and intentions – including on Moscow’s efforts to expand its influence along its own European borders. If for instance the hacking, as per Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, is truly an “act of war,” then will the call go out to cut off economic and diplomatic relations with Moscow?

If Russia’s moves against Crimea or Ukraine or the Baltics mean, in the words of Minnesota liberal Democratic Senator Amy Klochubar, that “Our commitment to NATO is more important than ever,” will today’s hawks – especially the noveau liberal variety – call for more U.S. defense spending and bigger American military deployments in endangered countries? And will they demand that American treaty allies in Europe finally get serious collectively about contributing to the common defense – which is first and foremost their own defense?

The answers to these questions will speak volumes to the American people as to whether their government is truly determined to defend interests declared to be major against foreign threats. And you can be sure they’ll convey the same vital information to America’s foreign friends and foes, too.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: A Pitiful Media Defense of America’s Asia Strategy

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alliances, allies, Asia, Chung Min Lee, defense spending, deterrence, Donald Trump, Japan, Mainstream Media, non-tariff barriers, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, protectionism, South Korea, Trade, Washington Post, Yoichi Funabashi

It’s of course OK for the Washington Post op-ed page to run articles with which I disagree. It’s also OK – for a different reason – for the Post op-ed page to run mainly articles with which its editors or the paper’s owner agree. No media outlet is under any legal or moral obligation to serve as a completely open forum. (Although it would be nice if those with an obvious slant at least dropped the pretense.)

What’s much less OK is for the Post or any other paper to run op-ed articles that completely ignore major evidence and arguments that undermine their own conclusions, or that contain big internal contradictions. These articles may technically not amount to intentionally misleading readers. But as made clear by an offering in yesterday’s paper on America’s Asia policy, they come uncomfortably close.

The article, by a veteran Japanese journalist-turned-think tanker and a Korean academic Chung Min Lee, charges that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump appears dangerously likely to support “a U.S. withdrawal or fundamentally reduced U.S. military presence in Asia [that] would not only undermine regional security; it would also ultimately weaken the United States at home and abroad.”

Among the leading points:

>Contrary to the insinuations of Trump and other Americans, Japan and Korea are not defense free riders;

>Both countries are committed to free trade, just like the United States; and

>Trump’s positions would represent a complete turnaround from the policies of President Obama, who has “demonstrated that credibility need not be purchased through force; it can come from articulating clear strategies that give other nations confidence the United States will follow through.”

Anyone remotely familiar with U.S.-Asia relations in recent decades will find these claims downright laughable. But for layfolks, here’s what authors Yoichi Funabashi and Chung Min Lee didn’t tell you – and what Washington Post op-ed editors allowed them to leave out:

>The best measure of whether an ally is a free rider is not, as Funabashi and Lee contend, whether it picks up some or even most of the expenses of hosting American forces on its soil. After all, these payments aren’t acts of foreign charity. Those U.S. military units are present first and foremost to defend those very countries. It’s true that American leaders have determined that this posture serves American interests, too. But its the allies themselves that unquestionably have the greatest stake in preserving their own security. Why aren’t they paying all the expenses of hosting the U.S. military. Isn’t it enough that American taxpayers have footed the entire bill for fielding and arming these forces in the first place?

Instead, the best measure of free rider status is whether allies’ defense spending is proportionate to the threats they face. According to the World Bank, for South Korea – which is located right next door to wildly belligerent North Korea, and only a little farther away from two huge neighbors with which it’s had a troubled history – the military budget amounted to 2.6 percent of its economy last year. And this figure had been falling for decades, even though the North Korean threat was obviously worsening. For Japan, defense spending as a share of the economy has been rising – largely out of concern of growing belligerence from both North Korea and China. But it still only represented one percent last year. Do these statistics really paint a picture of countries that have stepped up?

>Contrary to this Post op-ed, there’s little evidence that Japan and Korea deserve to be removed from the list of countries ranking as the world’s most protectionist. But don’t take my word for it – look at what President Obama’s Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has reported. Its latest survey on protectionist practices around the world devotes more pages to listing trade barriers in Japan and Korea than to nearly any other single country (as opposed to agglomerations that include big countries, like the European Union).

Worse, it’s clear that tariffs and non-tariff barriers remain high in Korea even though a U.S.-Korea free trade agreement promising to open the latter’s market significantly went into effect more than four years ago. As with Japan, with which Washington has negotiated dozens of purported market-opening agreements over a span of decades, the reason couldn’t be clearer to any informed trade policy student: The pervasive non-tariff trade barriers they maintain have provided the most effective protections and subsidies for their domestic producers. And because they’re developed and administered by powerful and highly secretive bureaucracies, they’re painfully difficult for outsiders even to identify, much less combat.

>Finally, it’s nothing less than astonishing for the Post to have published a piece lauding President Obama’s success in preserving America’s credibility with its security allies. For the paper has published the most detailed reporting on an idea conspicuously being mulled by the president that could pose the greatest threat to these relationships since their creation: his interest in declaring that the United States will never be the first participant in a military conflict to use nuclear weapons.

As is surely known by Funabashi and Lee – and by anyone on the Post op-ed staff that reads the paper – the threat of using nuclear weapons has been central to America’s alliance strategy in both Europe and Asia for decades. The idea has been and still is that these arms would be the free world’s great equalizer versus Soviet, Russian, Chinese, and North Korean adversaries that have fielded conventional military forces that Washington and its allies have decided would be too expensive to match, much less exceed.

Why should they know this so well? At the least because Post columnist Josh Rogin laid it all out in a piece all of four days before the op-ed by Funabashi and Lee. Further, Rogin reported that “Diplomats from allied countries argued that if the United States takes a nuclear first strike off the table, the risk of a conventional conflict with countries such as North Korea, China and Russia could increase. Regimes that might refrain from a conventional attack in fear of nuclear retaliation would calculate the risks of such an attack differently.”

It’s possible that Rogin’s reporting was completely off base, and that the allies are all on board with an impending U.S. “no first use” policy. It’s also possible that even if Rogin’s coverage is on target, the allies are wrong, as insisted by some American arms control advocates quoted by Rogin. (Although if this is true, that logically wouldn’t mean that the allies are thrilled with Obama or still believers in American defense guarantees.) But why on earth didn’t the Post op-ed staff ask Funabashi and Lee to at least address the issue?

The Mainstream Media have been under such fire lately that its members have been spending more and more time contending that its record, resources, and devotion to quality mean that alternative media can’t be remotely adequate substitutes. The more slipshod, tendentious, pro-status quo columns like Funabashi’s and Lee’s that these news organizations serve up, the weaker these increasingly controversial claims become.

Following Up: Early Responses to Paris Look Discouraging

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Al Qaeda, border security, burden sharing, defense spending, Following Up, France, Francois Hollande, G20, Germany, ISIS, Middle East, migrants, NATO, Obama, Paris attacks, refugees, Schengen Zone, September 11, Syria, terrorism

Yesterday on Twitter, I asked folks whether they thought that last week’s Paris terrorist attacks would represent a turning point in global politics as big as September 11. I wasn’t too sure about the answer at that point; today I feel much more confident that Paris’ impact should – at least – be even greater, but that its impact will fade much sooner than it should.

There’s no question that the September 11 attacks were more spectacular, and killed many more people, than the Paris operation. But the latter worries me precisely because it was so low-tech, so un-spectacular – and therefore so much more easily repeatable. Clearly, there are many reasons that the use of hijacked civilian airliners as bombs hasn’t been repeated in the last 14 years. Air travel security has been greatly tightened all over the world – although the recent ISIS-claimed destruction of a Russian plane reminds us that gaps remain at various air nodes. But security – and intelligence – responses undeniably have been stepped up, and partly as a result, it’s likely that terrorists are much less interested in fighting “the last war.”

It’s also possible, however, that terrorists have concluded that the airliner bomb approach is simply too difficult, and that the risk-reward ratio is inadequate. First, think about the planning and equipment required for the Paris attacks: It’s not even close. Now think about the “reward”: The September 11 strikes were over in minutes. The handful of Paris attackers turned a major Western capital into a battlefield for hours. This tells me that repeats are much better bets.

Which brings up the likely effect on Western and global responses. It’s true that it’s been less than three days since Paris. But the early indications don’t point even to major shifts, much less wholesale changes. I don’t have the transcript yet, but I watched President Obama’s just-concluded press conference following the G20 summit in Turkey, and nothing could have been clearer than his conviction that he’s pursuing the right strategy, and that nothing more than a moderate escalation of anti-ISIS military operations is in store right now.

Certainly there was no mention of stepped up border security measures, which I have written are the keys to protecting the American homeland more effectively. In fact, Mr. Obama became most emotional when condemning (admittedly stupid) proposals to restrict admissions of Middle East refugees to Christians – despite his (reluctant) acknowledgment that security screening is required.

Not surprisingly, France’s reaction has been more substantial. French President Francois Hollande has just addressed a rare joint session of the country’s Parliament (itself a major departure from domestic political practice), is seeking to extend the state of emergency initially declared to three months, and has requested significantly new constitutional powers to deal with individuals deemed dangerous.

On Saturday, of course, Hollande had described the Paris attacks as an “act of war,” in contrast to President Obama’s continued tendency to view terrorism mainly as a law enforcement challenge. The French president also authorized a round of air strikes versus ISIS targets in the Middle East, and promised more resources for the country’s security forces. In addition, he’s urged the members of Europe’s visa-free travel zone – the so-called Schengen area – to tighten up their internal controls. (At the same time, the president of the European Commission has stated that he sees “no need for an overall review of the European policy on refugees.”)

But a New York Times op-ed this morning made clear how lax and paltry French – and other European – counter-terrorism efforts have been, and therefore how far they need to go to deserve the adjective “serious.” As reported by former senior Obama administration foreign policy aides Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin, French and German spending on intelligence and counter-terrorism operations are the merest fractions of America’s. And these countries are located much closer to the Middle East breeding grounds of ISIS and similar groups.

Moreover, Hollande’s apparent decision to escalate French military efforts to defeat ISIS in the Middle East is reasonable, and budget figures are never perfect measures of military strength. But even though the Paris attacks have hardly been the first by the region’s extremists against European targets, the only European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to have met the alliance’s defense spending goals have been the United Kingdom, Greece, Poland, and Estonia. France and particularly Germany are among the foot-draggers. Will the Paris attacks spur much more energetic efforts? In the face of continued European economic weakness? Or will these countries ultimately continue their decades-long policies of relying mainly on the United States for protection?

Past isn’t always prologue. (If it was, we’d still be living in caves.) But the power of inertia and the temptations of free-riding should never be under-estimated. Nor should the determination of politicians – on either side of the Atlantic – to stick to failed policies. So the odds remain way too high that the Paris attacks will leave the United States and other major countries with the worst of both possible worlds – facing game-changing circumstances and more attached to the status quo than ever.

Im-Politic: Walker and Rubio Continue Republican China Pseudo-Hawk Tradition

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2016 elections, Asia, Asia-Pacific, China, cyber-war, defense spending, Im-Politic, Marco Rubio, Obama, offshoring, offshoring lobby, RealClearPolitics.com, Republicans, Scott Walker, South China Sea, technology transfer, The Wall Street Journal, TPP, Trade, Trans-Pacific Partnership

Two of the Republican party’s establishment presidential candidates have now spoken out in detail about America’s China policy; if timing is everything, they’d deserve A’s, given how Beijing’s erratic recent economic moves lie behind so much of this week’s tumult in world financial markets. Sadly, everything else about these statements simply repeats what’s become boilerplate for the Republican mainstream, and especially its Washington, D.C.-based Congressional leadership: (a) ringing calls to stand up more forcefully to increasingly aggressive Chinese behavior in East Asia and on the cyber-hacking front; and (b) thinly disguised excuses for coddling the ongoing predatory economic policies that have immensely strengthened China both economically and militarily.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at least has an excuse. He has no significant foreign policy or international business experience other than hitting up Beijing for Chinese investments for his state and markets for its products and services (which, to be fair, is Standard Operating Procedure for governors).

Not surprisingly, he’s parroting the Boehner-McConnell – and, ironically, Obama – line that responding to China-related challenges (and opportunities) in Asia requires first and foremost approving the Trans- Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal.

At least in an article today on the RealClearPolitics.com website, Walker intriguingly left himself some Clinton-ian wiggle room on trade, calling for a TPP “that puts American workers first and levels the playing field. A deal that genuinely opens markets and ensures high standards for an area covering almost 40 percent of the world’s GDP….” In other words, he’s (reasonably) reserved himself the option of rejecting a final agreement if campaign considerations so dictate by claiming that it’s failed these litmus tests.

Nonetheless, Walker’s equation of concluding the TPP on the one hand, and restoring American “leadership” in Asia on the other – a staple of pro-TPP rhetoric – signals that he won’t be a terribly hard sell. Meanwhile, his reference to “high standards” suggests that he buys the bogus contention that the TPP can ensure that the Chinese and other Asians will wind up structuring their economies, and regional trade and commerce, along U.S.-style lines – even though even American allies in the region keep emphatically rejecting these norms.

More fundamentally, just like Washington’s Republican China pseudo-hawks, Walker would beef up America’s military response to Beijing’s regional muscle-flexing while apparently leaving intact its access to the global resources and technology that powers it. Thus, Walker would “rebuild our military strength in Asia. Defense sequestration must end, and our defense budget must return, at a minimum, to the level [at which] we can once again field a military that is fully equipped to keep the peace. We also need a vigorous shipbuilding program that puts Americans to work in service of our safety.” And he’d reinvigorate regional defense alliances that President Obama has allegedly permitted to decay.

But would Walker stand up to the mercantilism that has paid for so much of China’s military power, including cyberhacking capabilities that have resulted in “brazen attacks against the United States”? Not exactly. Walker declares that “we cannot allow [China], or any other nation, a free pass on unfair trade practices and the theft of our intellectual property.” But all he’ll say about his approach to these transgressions is “These are not insurmountable issues, and the more we can work together through difficult issues, the more people from both countries will benefit.”

But at least his article said something about the subject – as opposed to its treatment of corporate technology transfers. These practices, which have given China such formidable defense-related knowhow, were completely ignored.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio has no Walker-like excuses, but his Wall Street Journal op-ed today duplicates the shortcomings of Walker’s strategy almost to a tee. It’s true that, although Rubio actually voted for the TPP in the Senate, he doesn’t regurgitate the blather about the deal demonstrating America’s strategic commitment to and credibility in East Asia. In this piece, he portrays the agreement’s main benefits as economic, embodying “firmer insistence on free markets and free trade.”

But like Walker, Rubio would restore “America’s strategic advantage in the Pacific” with higher defense spending that would “allow us to neutralize China’s rapidly growing capabilities in every strategic realm, including air, sea, ground, cyber space and even outer space.” Also like Walker, Rubio would reinforce America’s ties with its Asia-Pacific allies.

Yet although Rubio promises that “if China continues to use military force to advance its illegitimate territorial claims…I will not hesitate to take action,” and even notes that Beijing’s military spending has been surging for years, like Walker, he says nothing serious about crimping China’s revenue and technology streams. On the one hand, Rubio accuses China of numerous major violations of global trade and economic standards. On the other, he would respond “not through aggressive retaliation, which would hurt the U.S. as much as China, but by greater commitment and firmer insistence on free markets and free trade” – i.e., the TPP. Apparently, despite his experience on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rubio has yet to learn that export-dependent China has much more to fear from trade conflict than the still-largely self-sufficient United States.

For decades, America’s China policy has been sabotaged by leaders more dedicated to fronting for corporate offshoring interests and their profits-first approach to Beijing rather than promoting national interests. Their combination of military bluster and economic pablum makes clear that Walker and Rubio are offering more of the same.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Desperately Seeking Real Retrenchment

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Afghanistan, American exceptionalism, Asia-Pacific, Baltic states, Bashir Al-Assad, boots on the ground, Charles Lanes, chemical weapons, defense budget, defense spending, Earl Ravenal, George W. Bush, international law, Iraq, ISIS, isolationism, Middle East, multilateralism, national interests, NATO, Nixon Doctrine, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, pivot, Poland, Richard Nixon, Russia, sequestration, Soviet Union, Stephen Sestanovich, Syria, Ukraine, Vietnam War, vital interests, Vladimir Putin, Washington Post

Washington Post columnist Charles Lane has just done an excellent job of demonstrating how powerfully universalist America’s bipartisan foreign policy establishment remains – even as powerful reasons keep multiplying for climbing down from this wildly ambitious approach.

According to Lane, a new book by former American diplomat and Columbia University political scientist Stephen Sestanovich bears out President Obama’s claim to be a kindred spirit with Richard M. Nixon as a “retrenchment” president – one of the chief executives who has sought to “correct the perceived overreaching of their predecessors and free up U.S. resources for domestic concerns.” In fact, says Lane, Sestanovich has written that post-World War II U.S. foreign policy has been marked by a “constant pendulum-swing between administrations that aggressively pursued U.S. goals abroad” (who the author calls “maximalists”) and those Nixon- and Obama-style retrenchers.

I hate to comment on books I haven’t yet read. But Lane’s description of Mr. Nixon and Mr. Obama both qualify as retrenchers reveals a mindset so enthusiastic about massive and potentially open-ended U.S. involvement in literally every corner of the world if necessary that it sees even talk about a more discriminating approach as a major departure.

Judging by the record, it hasn’t been. In fact, both the Nixon talk and the Obama talk about retrenchment have been overwhelmingly that – talk. Just as important, and closely related, what have arguably looked at least superficially like exercises in retrenchment have in fact been exercises in wishful thinking. Both presidents have actually agreed that the security, stability, and even prosperity of the entire world are U.S. vital interests. They’ve simply differed with the maximalists in insisting that these interests can be defended through means that are less dangerous and violent, and more globally popular, than the unilateral U.S. use of military force.

To cite the leading historical example, the ballyhooed Nixon Doctrine of 1970 was never a decision to cross Vietnam or any part of Asia off the list of vital U.S. interests – those whose defense was thought essential for maintaining America’s own security and prosperity. As explained initially by Earl C. Ravenal shortly after the Doctrine’s declaration, Mr. Nixon had decided, in the absence of any evidence, that this vital set of objectives could be defended without an early resort to U.S. military involvement – chiefly, by the militaries of America’s regional allies.

Therefore, Ravenal wrote:

“the Administration’s new policies and decision processes do not bring about the proposed balance [between the country’s foreign policy ends and the means to be used to attain them]; in fact, they create a more serious imbalance. Essentially we are to support the same level of potential involvement with smaller conventional forces. The specter of intervention will remain, but the risk of defeat or stalemate will be greater; or the nuclear threshold will be lower.”

President Obama has given us a different version of such dangerous wishful thinking. More accurately, he’s given us several different versions. His original 2008 candidacy for the White House was largely motivated by a conviction that the overly unilateralist and militaristic tendencies of George W. Bush had produced disaster in Iraq, and were actually undermining U.S. security by damaging America’s international image.

That’s why Mr. Obama focused so much attention on repairing that image. He never indicated that he would scale back that list of U.S. vital interests. He simply suggested that they could be better defended if need be by acting multilaterally, with international approval, rather than by going it alone. And he conveyed the clear impression that challenges could be prevented in the first place if only America became more popular in regions like the Middle East.

Once in office, Mr. Obama did try to establish a hierarchy of U.S. worldwide interests that would have operational impact. He decided that the nation had been so preoccupied with Middle East wars that it had been neglected the Asia-Pacific region, which he considered at least as important. So he launched a “pivot” that would transfer some American forces from the former to the latter.

But the president never apparently judged the Middle East to be less important to America’s fate. He simply concluded that, with the Afghanistan and Iraq wars supposedly winding down, it had become less dangerous. Having been proven wrong by the rise of ISIS. in Afghanistan, he’s (gradually) boosting the American military presence in region again. The president is claiming, moreover – based on as little evidence as Mr. Nixon required – that any remaining capabilities gap can be filled by the armed forces of regional countries. Worse, many of his Republican critics, who are just as reluctant to deploy many more U.S. “boots on the ground,” agree with Mr. Obama’s fundamental assessment.

Further, the president has actually expanded the list of circumstances in the Middle East (and presumably elsewhere) that should justify American military responses – the kinds of chemical weapons attacks launched by Bashir Al-Assad against Syrians revolting against his dictatorship, along with similar major violations of international law.  (This effort, so far, has not yet won over the public.)

Nor does that exhaust Mr. Obama’s efforts to lengthen the list of U.S. vital interests. He has understandably responded to Russia’s recent provocations against allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by strengthening U.S. forces and deploying them more conspicuously in new NATO members like Poland and the Baltic states, former Soviet satellites clearly in Moscow’s line of fire. Less understandable have been the Obama administration’s numerous suggestions that the security of Ukraine, too, is a matter of urgent American concern – even though this country was actually part of the old Soviet Union for decades with no apparent effects on U.S. safety or well-being.

Yet like the debate over countering ISIS, that over dealing with Vladimir Putin spotlights one major difference between President Obama and his (mainly) Republican foreign policy critics: Many of them have strongly backed big boosts in the U.S. military budget (if not always using these forces), including aggressive moves to circumvent spending caps established by the sequestration process. Mr. Obama has not sought comparable increases.

The president unquestionably has often spoken in terms that seem to support a smaller U.S. role in the world – e.g., his remarks suggesting that America’s exceptionalism isn’t all that exceptional, and reminding that much of the world has legitimate historical grievances against the West, and in some cases against the United States specifically. But his strategic walk has never matched this talk, and the continuing flood of contentions to the contrary in the punditocracy and even academe (if Lane’s Post column is accurate) plainly are serving their (partly) intended purpose of preventing searching debate on foreign policy fundamentals.

Given the nation’s resulting over-extension militarily, therefore, when the chattering class powers-that-be start labeling presidents or most other politicians as retrenchers or minimalists (an improvement to be sure over the hackneyed charge of “isolatonism”), the only legitimate reaction is a thoroughly exasperated, “If only.”

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Concerns About the Quality of U.S. Growth Remain Amply Justified

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austerity, bubbles, capex, consumption, defense spending, GDP, government spending, gross domestic product, growth, housing, recession, recovery, {What's Left of) Our Economy

As usual, all the buzz about this morning’s final (for now) revisions to second quarter U.S. economic growth was about the quantity of growth. For a country that’s still pretty growth starved, that’s understandable. But I wish the powers-that-be paid more attention to the quality of growth. In the proverbial long run, the only sustainable growth is high quality growth. Or have you already forgotten the last decade’s historic bubbles and their bursting, and think that Americans can keep borrowing and spending their way to prosperity?

Today’s gross domestic product (GDP) numbers were by no means devoid of good news on this score. In line with my finding yesterday, business investment powered 25.65 percent of the second quarter’s 4.60 percent annualized growth. This role is much bigger than that played by such investment before the late-1970s, when Corporate America supposedly started to get hooked on fast buck strategies at the expense of genuinely productive uses of profits and credit. And measured as a share of real gross domestic product on a static basis, the latest 13.11 percent business investment number is historically elevated, too.

Another positive long run sign: The economy is growing in real terms even though government spending is falling. Since the recovery began, total public sector consumption and investment is off nearly seven percent adjusting for inflation. In fact, as noted by Rex Nutting of Marketwatch.com, in absolute terms, federal spending is now below its level at the start of the Great Recession. In fact, this spending has been dropping in abolute terms for seven straight quarters.

At the same time, it’s far from clear that the United States is on an austerity path. Since the recovery began officially, in mid-2009, nearly 56 percent of the decline in real federal outlays has come in defense. Moreover, state and local government spending during the recovery has dropped by only 5.99 percent – substantially less than the 8.53 percent federal spending decrease – and it’s up 1.47 percent over those last seven quarters during which federal spending fell.

Other signs also abounded that America remains far from creating what President Obama has called “an economy built to last” – one based on producing real wealth in the form of everyday goods and services, not simply binge consuming. Principally, the 2000s bubble was inflated mainly by soaring spending by households and by soaring spending on homes. The new GDP figures show that such spending now comprises 71.26 percent of the total economy after inflation. That’s lower than the 71.56 percent level in the first quarter of this year. But it’s higher than the 70.94 percent in the second quarter of 2009 and the 71.16 percent of the last quarter of 2007.

In other words, the economy has become more housing and consuming heavy not only since the recovery began, but since the last recession started. To me, that still sounds too much like an economy built to implode.