Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Establishment’s Korea Nuclear Cover-Up Continues

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alliances, allies, Chicago Council on Global Affairs, East Asia, free-riding, missiles, North Korea, nuclear war, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, polls, South Korea

If a pollster asked respondents a question on the order of “Would you favor the government handing Americans unlimited amounts of money?” without specifying that “it might destroy the economy,” you wouldn’t take it very seriously, would you? In fact, you’d probably (and rightly) condemn the survey as a con job.

And that’s exactly the reaction you should have to a new “finding” by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs that this year, for the first time [since 1990, when the organization began asking the question], “a majority of Americans express support for using US forces to defend South Korea” if it was attacked by North Korea. According to the Council, moreover, this figure has risen sharply since 2015 – from 47 percent to 62 percent.

If you’re a RealityChek regular, you know why this question is fraudulent. It doesn’t tell respondents that North Korea is terrifyingly close to being able to retaliate against such U.S. military involvement by destroying an American city or two with nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles.

In fact, the question doesn’t mention anything about specific consequences for riding militarily to South Korea’s rescue. Even granting that the public realizes that wars are not picnics, the Council’s full phrasing was inexcusably anodyne:

“There has been some discussion about the circumstances that might justify using US troops in other parts of the world. Please give your opinion about some situations. Would you favor or oppose the use of US troops if North Korea invaded South Korea?”

Like the issue was simply being debated in a seminar.

Nor did the Council tell Americans why their country would need to risk blood and treasure to aid South Korea. It’s because, even though the South’s economy is vastly larger than the North’s, and even though the North actions have been threatening for decades, this long-time U.S. protectorate spends a negligible fraction of its wealth on its own defense.

So here’s what the Council should have asked:

“For nearly seventy years, the United States has pledged to defend South Korea militarily from attack by communist North Korea. But this promise was made when it created no risk for the American homeland, when the South was dirt poor, and when Washington feared that communism was on the march worldwide. Now it’s clear the North will very soon be able to launch a successful nuclear attack on the United States if it keeps its promise to the South. Since the alliance was formed, South Korea has skimped on its own defense spending even though it’s become one of the world’s richest countries. And communism is dead as a global military menace. Would you favor or oppose using U.S. troops to defend a free-riding South Korea if the result could be the nuclear destruction of an American city?”

Of course, my phrasing could be toned down. It could also add the argument American trade and other forms of business with economically dynamic East Asia would suffer if major war broke out anywhere in the region (although it’s easy to argue that business with the region has been a big net loser for the American economy), and that so far, the U.S. military presence and commitment have helped keep the peace. And to be fair, the Council didn’t mention any pro-interventionist arguments, either.

But the main point is that it’s hard to imagine any consideration surrounding the decision to intervene in a Korean war remotely comparing with this development: Until recently, Americans could be certain that their own territory would remain unscathed. Now such involvement could kill and maim millions of their compatriots, and turn important metropolitan areas into radioactive wastelands.

As I’ve long written (along with others), the American foreign policy establishment has been so irrationally wed to the country’s alliances that it’s concealed the catastrophic, and sometimes suicidal, (in the case of Europe, where the antagonist has been the Soviet Union and now Russia) dangers they have inevitably created. The only useful information contained in this Chicago Council on Global Affairs Korea finding is that, wittingly or not, this group is participating in the cover-up.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Uses and Mis-Uses of Thucydides

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balance of power, China, Destined for War, East Asia, foreign policy, geopolitics, globalism, Graham Allison, international order, internationalism, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, realism, strategy, The History of the Peloponnesian Wae, Thucydides, Thucydides Trap

It’s always great to learn that U.S. leaders are working hard to use history to inform their policy decisions – unless they’re completely misreading the relevance of lessons of the past to America’s current circumstances, as could well be the case with senior Trump administration officials and their fascination with Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War.

Don’t get me wrong: This chronicle of conflicts between ancient Athens and Sparta is a genuine classic both of military history and international relations theory. I hold it in particularly high regard because it contains a seminal argument for viewing the latter through a “realist” lens, emphasizing that countries act, in the words of one recent description, “out of pragmatic self-interest, with little regard for ideology, values or morality.”

But according to an account that came out last week (and that hasn’t been denied), top Trump foreign policy and national security aides are viewing Thucydides as a valuable guide to answering the question of whether war between the United States and China is inevitable. And their interest in the History has been encouraged by the work of a leading modern scholar, Harvard University’s Graham Allison. Allison has applied what’s widely regarded as Thucydides’ main conclusion – that established powers find it intrinsically and understandably difficult to deal with rising powers peacefully – to the U.S.-China situation, and in the process, he’s drawn a lot of attention in Beijing as well as Washington.

But there’s a major problem with focusing on whether the United States and China are stuck in a “Thucydides Trap” that makes war just about inevitable (Allison is not nearly so pessimistic), and examining past international rivalries for insights (his major contribution to the debate). As with so many mainstream analyses of American foreign policy for decades, Allison – and the Trump-ers apparently paying him heed – have completely forgotten the distinctive geopolitical and economic advantages the United States brings to international relations.

As I’ve written previously, the United States enjoys the kind of geographic isolation, military power, and capacity for economic self-sufficiency that enables it to view most overseas developments with relative indifference – provided that it maintains these strengths. And for all the important nuance he brings to his treatment of U.S.-China relations, it’s clear that Allison has overlooked what’s genuinely special about the American position, too.

Although I haven’t read Allison’s full Thucydides Trap book yet, I have read this lengthy magazine version. And it shows unmistakably that his warning that “Based on the current trajectory, war between the United States and China in the decades ahead is not just possible, but much more likely than recognized at the moment” accepts the same longstanding American globalist assumptions that have led to so many costly U.S. foreign policy mistakes since the end of World War II.

For example, Allison has a great deal to teach if it’s true that the United States has an intrinsic need to worry greatly about developments or questions like

>”a rising power…threatening to displace a ruling power”:

>”a rapid shift in the balance of power between two rivals”:

>”the rising power’s growing entitlement, sense of its importance, and demand for greater say and sway”;

>the fact that “Never before in history has a nation risen so far, so fast, on so many dimensions of power”:

>whether China is “restored to its rightful place, where its power commands recognition of and respect for China’s core interests”;

>whether “the growing trend toward a multipolar [as opposed to a U.S.-led] world will not change”;

But nowhere has he made this case for these concerns. Indeed, by and large, like other mainstream analysts and leaders, he simply assumes their crucial importance, without explaining how they could affect the nation’s safety, independence, and well-being directly and decisively.

Allison (along with the rest of the foreign policy mainstream, whose dominance is as complete on the conventional American Left as on the Right) gets more specific, and his analysis becomes more useful, when he raises questions like: ”Could China become #1? In what year could China overtake the United States to become, say, the largest economy in the world, or primary engine of global growth, or biggest market for luxury goods?”

And he identifies and expresses even more concrete core mainstream worries:

>First, whether China’s “current leaders [are] serious about displacing the U.S. as the predominant power in Asia?”’

>Second, both more broadly and more centrally “the impact that China’s ascendance will have on the U.S.-led international order, which has provided unprecedented great-power peace and prosperity for the past 70 years.”

But like the first set of worries, even these concerns should be treated as first-order issues by Americans only if they assume that, as with much less secure and inherently wealthy powers, either their security, prosperity, and independence are crucially reliant on the international environment, or that these aims are much more safely and efficiently achieved through international activism than through enhancing their abilities to deal with challenges and withstand crises acceptably in a turbulent international environment.

If the long-held globalist views stressing America’s relative vulnerability or dependence are accepted, then all of Allison’s questions remain vital – from the least tangible (like whether China wins more influence overall) to the most (whether China wants to replace the United States as Asia’s kingpin). And the fate of that “U.S.-led international order” (including preserving American primacy in Asia) ultimately matters most of all because it’s seen to be the only acceptable or only feasible guarantor of a satisfactory national future.

If, however, that assumption about the present international order is fatally flawed, then even subjects like the relative overall balance of power between the United States and China become secondary. They would logically cede pride of place to the issue of whether America’s power (in any dimension) is adequate to achieve specific national objectives or maintain valued national advantages. For even though relative power will of course influence success or failure, in the final analysis, the decisive consideration is whether that power is sufficient to achieve those particular successes and maintain those particular advantages, not whether America in some general sense “matches up” with other countries.

As always with these posts on overall foreign policy strategy, the main takeaway here isn’t that Allison and the other globalists are wrong and that I’m right. The main point is that the globalist school has – wittingly or not – long not only opposed, but defined out of existence, alternative approaches to security and prosperity that dovetail well with many of the nation’s most conspicuous strengths.

Here’s another way to put it: In his article, Allison expressly states that his detailed look at “16 cases over the last 500 years in which there was a rapid shift in the relative power of a rising nation that threatened to displace a ruling state….” But all entailed “the struggle for mastery in Europe and Asia over the past half millennium….” When globalists like him can explain why the geopolitical and economic similarities between the United States and these historic powers – or between ancient Athens and Sparta – count much more than the differences, they’ll be entitled to claim victory in their on-again-off-again debate with those favoring less ambitious over America’s foreign policy strategy. Until then, however, their opponents will be entitled to claim that they’ve managed to avoid the biggest questions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: North Korea Nuke Progress Shows Trump’s Right on Asia Strategy

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2016 elections, alliances, Donald Trump, East Asia, escalation dominance, Japan, missile defense, North Korea, nuclear deterrent, nuclear weapons, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, South Korea, submarine-launched missiles

All that was left out of the (minimal) press coverage of North Korea’s latest weapons test were the two most important – and intimately related – aspects. First, Pyongyang’s apparently successful launch of a ballistic missile from a submarine further undermines the grand strategy pursued in the East Asia-Pacific region by the United States for half a century — by bringing the North a big step closer to the ability to drop nuclear bombs on the American homeland. Second, as a result, the American people and their leaders need to start taking Donald Trump’s critique of this strategy much more seriously right now.

Although everything North Korea does is shrouded in mystery, the U.S. military said its “systems detected and tracked what we assess was a North Korean submarine missile launch from the Sea of Japan.” South Korea’s military seemed to agree, and added that what appeared to be a ballistic missile traveled about 19 miles from its naval platform.

Now 19 miles obviously doesn’t get the North’s weaponry very close to American territory. And the Pentagon conspicuously added that the launch  “did not pose a threat to North America.”  But these points are completely beside the point. Pyongyang’s last such test – at the end of last year – evidently was a flop. So progress has clearly been made. And the U.S. Army’s commander in the Pacific has testified to the Senate – in public, for attribution – “Over time, I believe we’re going to see [North Korea] acquire these capabilities [to strike the United States with nuclear weapons] if they’re not stopped.” The big question is, “Why would any responsible American leader assume the opposite?”

Shockingly and scarily, however, that’s exactly what every prominent figure in U.S. politics and policy seems to be doing – except for Trump. For their criticisms of the Republican front-runner’s challenge to America’s alliance strategy in the Far East all assume that America will indefinitely retain escalation dominance in the region. As I’ve explained, this means that the United States will be able to keep deterring aggression from the North with threats to use nuclear weapons against Pyongyang that would be credible because U.S. territory would remain safe from any comparable danger.

As I (and many others) have reported, escalation dominance on the Korean peninsula has been fading for years, as Pyongyang has moved steadily toward building land-based missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads on U.S. soil. But submarine capabilities greatly magnify even this terrible threat, as the near-impossibility of finding these vessels – unlike land launchers – rules out the possibility of knocking them out in a preemptive attack. And although the United States keeps working on missile defenses, their test record so far shouldn’t inspire any confidence.

In other words, according to the nation’s leaders and the rest of its foreign policy establishment (not that they dare make this point overtly), they’ve yoked the United States into a policy of risking Los Angeles to defend Seoul, Trump calls this “a position that at some point is something that we have to talk about,” and he’s the irresponsible one.

Even more ludicrously, the establishment (including President Obama) insists that it’s Trump’s comments – not the mounting dangers to U.S. survival created by Washington’s current approach – that are undermining the long-term American goal of keeping nuclear weapons out of Japanese and South Korean hands. What these supposed experts either don’t know or won’t admit is that these allies are bound to go nuclear because the increasingly suicidal nature of America’s Asia strategy is so glaringly obvious and literally unbelievable to them. Indeed, Japan is widely thought capable of manufacturing a working nuke in six months. It’s true that the Japanese – responding to U.S. pressure – are transferring much of their existing large stockpile of weapons-grade and near-weapons-grade nuclear fuel to American facilities. But it’s also true that they’re still planning to build new facilities to make more.

The establishment is almost certainly correct in arguing that, all else equal, the fewer nuclear powers in the world the better. But all else hasn’t been anywhere near equal for years. Despite his personal flaws, Americans already owe Trump thanks for calling out an economic elite whose policies have disastrously failed the nation and world. Arguably, he deserves even greater thanks for calling out a foreign policy elite that’s now unmistakably – and needlessly – exposing the United States to literal destruction.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: On U.S. Alliances, Trump’s the Voice of Responsibility

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2016 election, alliances, China, Cold War, Donald Trump, East Asia, escalation dominance, extended deterrence, foreign policy establishment, Germany, Japan, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, smothering strategy, South Korea, Soviet Union, Western Europe

Foreign policy devotees like yours truly have rarely seen salad days like the last few weeks. On the heels of a long and remarkably candid interview of President Obama summarized in an Atlantic magazine piece have now come two comparably detailed and revealing sessions on the subject between Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump and reporters from first the Washington Post and then The New York Times.

I wrote last week on Trump’s Post remarks on America’s approach to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) embodied far more realism and indeed wisdom on the subject of U.S. alliances than the bipartisan American foreign policy establishment has demonstrated in decades. His latest statements to The Times confirm this superior judgment – and on elements of U.S. alliance doctrine that are as fundamental, longstanding, and arguably reckless as they have been thoroughly soft-pedaled in public. Specifically, Trump is challenging the decades-long policy that, a quarter century after fall of communism, is still exposing the United States to the risk of nuclear war to protect Japan, Western Europe, and South Korea.

One reason for threatening to unleash armageddon to maintain the freedom of major treaty allies was always made reasonably clear to the American voter during the Cold War: Western Europe and Japan were actual and potential concentrations of economic, industrial, and therefore military might. Therefore, they needed to be kept out of Soviet (and Communist Chinese) hands at literally all costs or else the global balance of power would tip fatally against the free world. And central features of American foreign policy quite naturally became deterring communist aggression both by deploying hundreds of thousands of American soldiers and heavy conventional weapons overseas, and by placing literally thousands of nuclear weapons on allied soil.

What was never made remotely clear to the U.S. public was a second, equally crucial reason for this alliance strategy – and the reason it has survived the complete transformation of the global strategic environment since the Soviet Union collapsed and China started integrating with the world capitalist economy instead of seeking its overthrow. Extending the American defense umbrella over the allies was also deemed essential to prevent these countries – and especially the former Axis powers Germany and Japan – from ever becoming global security threats themselves again.

The ultimate military guarantees provided by Washington were central to a strategy of what I’ve called “smothering” the allies. The United States literally would eliminate the need for them to carry out independent foreign policies ever again by meeting all the major needs that spur countries to conduct foreign policies in the first place. Washington would shield them from military attack and provide huge markets for the surplus production they needed to foster ever-rising levels of prosperity.

The economic dimension of this strategy have been problematic enough – but let’s save that discussion for another post. But the military dimension has become downright irrational in recent years. Put simply, yoking America’s very survival to that of foreign countries is easily defensible at a time when mortal threats to U.S. alliances are difficult to find – as in the early post-Cold War years, when Russia was weak, China seemed tamed, and North Korea’s development of nuclear forces that could strike the American homeland seemed a remote prospect even to worrywarts.

What Trump has been telling his media interlocutors is that those relatively halcyon days are gone. As events are making clear, the weaknesses of the military smothering strategy have become most apparent in East Asia. As I’ve written, the U.S. approach is logically defensible for America only if the United States maintains escalation dominance – nuclear superiority so overwhelming that even a questionably rational regime like North Korea’s would understand that it would come in a distant (and completely destroyed) second if these terrible weapons were ever used.

But as I’ve also written, this American escalation dominance is weakening, as the North has made progress in developing both nuclear weapons able to strike U.S. targets, and weapons mobile enough to survive limited American preemptive strikes aimed at taking them out. Here’s an update on Pyongyang’s nuclear programs. In other words, it’s one thing for an American president to promise to risk Los Angeles for Seoul (the South Korean capital), when there’s no real risk to Los Angeles. It’s quite another to make this vow when southern California is a real target. Recent Chinese nuclear weapons progress presents a similar dilemma, especially with China more aggressively asserting territorial claims in the South and East China Seas – including islands also claimed by Japan.

The point here is not that America’s current approach to alliances should be changed immediately. It’s entirely possible that such “extended nuclear deterrence” is the nation’s best overall bet for continued security and prosperity even in a post-Cold War world in which potential adversaries possess increasingly formidable nuclear capabilities. But contrary to the sneering, harrumphing – much less indignant – responses of foreign policy establishmentarians, the smothering strategy is anything but a slam dunk any more, either.

So it’s anything but crazy or irresponsible for Trump to be raising the prospect of Japan and South Korea acquiring their own nuclear deterrents. Indeed, as Trump told New York Times reporters David E. Sanger and Maggie Haberman, it’s essential for Washington to start thinking about these possibilities precisely because better Chinese and North Korean capabilities are – understandably – raising doubts among Japanese and South Korean leaders themselves about the credibility of U.S. nuclear guarantees. That is, they’re no longer solidly convinced that Washington would risk Los Angeles for Seoul or Tokyo. And if you think about these matters seriously, how could they be?

Indeed, Trump’s remarks about U.S. alliance policy have performed a major public service. For decades, a series of at-least-questionable decisions bearing on American national life and death have been common knowledge among U.S. leaders and foreign policy professionals, allied leaders, and adversary leaders. But they’ve been practically unknown to most Americans. Now what has clearly been a secret kept through countless acts of omission is starting to come out. The establishment is clearly being discomfited, but given its longtime record of often disastrous incompetence, why should anyone outside its coddle ranks care? For all other Americans, and especially those truly supportive of accountable, representative government, Trump’s challenge to the nation’s alliance strategy can only ultimately be an unalloyed good.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Toward a Common Sense Middle East Refugee Policy

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assimilation, East Asia, Europe, illegal immigration, Iran, Iraq, ISIS, Islam, Lebanon, LIbya, Middle East, migrant crisis, migrants, Muammar el-Qaddafi, multiculturalism, national security, North Africa, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Palestine, punditocracy, refugee crisis, refugees, Saddam Hussein, Syria, terrorism

Massive human tragedies defy efforts to explain and most of all to prescribe, and the Middle East/North Africa refugee crisis is no exception. The global commentariat of course is weighing in energetically and – predictably enough – for the most part predictably. So far, the most common memes have been efforts to exploit the situation politically, either to contend that the incoherent and ambivalent response of Europe’s generally wealthy countries rivals for heartlessness American resistance to amnesty-friendly immigration policies, or to insist that more welcoming approaches towards both populations is economically unaffordable and dangerous for national security.

Also especially popular have been efforts to blame American Middle East policy decisions for most of this mounting catastrophe. The main reputed villains are of course former President George W. Bush, for invading Iraq and overthrowing its brutal dictator Saddam Hussein, and President Obama, for pulling out of Iraq prematurely, or helping to overthrow Saddam’s Libyan counterpart Muammar el-Qaddafi, or remaining aloof from the Syrian civil war for too long – and usually for all three.

I’m as stumped as as any of you readers out there regarding what precisely the United States should do – at least concerning lasting solutions – as well as where sound guidance might be found. But although the performance sketched out above makes clear that the usual chattering classes are once again largely failing to provide serious answers or even analyses, their typically tendentious bloviating is at least so far illuminating some thinking that’s best ignored or rejected. Four examples stand out so far, starting with the two I’ve already mentioned.

> First, just as supporting admission into the United States of even many more Middle East and North Africans displaced by the region’s conflicts can’t be blanketly dismissed on national security concerns, greater caution doesn’t automatically signal xenophobia or callousness. It’s true that the world’s most dangerous terrorism comes from the Middle East, but it’s also true, as shown by the lone wolf phenomenon in North America and Western Europe, that ISIS etc has been able to recruit outside the region as well. So as long as the United States continues to accept refugees as a matter of policy, barring them from the Middle East and North Africa is indefensible – especially since these regions are at the center of this problem, too.  

At the same time, the Middle East/North Africa refugees present the United States with a fundamentally different set of challenges and opportunities than the nation’s huge population of illegal immigrants.  The numbers of people involved are orders of magnitude different (inflows to the United States from the Middle East will be much smaller under any imaginable admissions policy), so the economic impact at a time of sluggish American recovery would differ qualitatively, too.  In addition, the refugees are overwhelmingly fleeing war and savage persecution by jihadists, not seeking jobs, higher incomes, or government benefits.  Moreover, whereas some form of amnesty for America’s illegals is almost certain to create a powerful magnet that attracts millions more newcomers – especially from the Western Hemisphere – a welcoming migrants policy threatens no such consequences.      

> Second, despite all the evidence that U.S. policies have destabilized the Middle East and North Africa, the idea that either excessive intervention or simple inaction by Washington are largely responsible for the region’s woes could not be less serious. The region, imprisoned both by secular dictatorships and by a religion still proudly mired in medievalism, has been a powder keg for decades. Also fueling the Middle East’s dysfunction is a pervasive culture of resentment and grievance versus the historically more successful West, and a reaction to its failings that’s been dominated by scapegoating and violence. That’s a sharp contrast to East Asia, which has been every bit as victimized, but which has responded with determination to beat its former colonial masters, along with the United States, at their own wealth-creation and economic development game.

A Middle East that never experienced either of America’s Iraq wars or the 1950s coup Washington engineered in Iran or staunch U.S. backing for reactionary theocrats in the oil-rich Persian Gulf (not to mention Cold War-era Soviet support for equally brutal “Arab socialist” dictators) would have still eventually blown up. Only the timing might have been different.

By the same token, the Middle East’s deep-rooted, homegrown failings reveal the senselessness of insisting that the rest of the world finally act decisively to address the root causes of the crisis. Centuries of pathological social and cultural practices and institutions can only be changed meaningfully from within, and such transformations are rarely quick, easy – or peaceful. There still remains a case for outside actors avoiding measures that make the region’s dysfunction worse. But given the importance of the Middle East’s oil and terrorists, simple hands-off postures will create unacceptable risks for the foreseeable future.

> Third, because geography still matters decisively in global affairs, for all the “small world” babble among politicians and academics, the impact of Middle East migrant and refugee flows as such is bound to be felt overwhelmingly in Europe. So be wary of American leaders and pundits declaring that vital or even important national interests will be at stake depending on how the United States reacts. But that doesn’t mean that the only legitimate American response should be standing aloof. It’s entirely valid for the public to demand that its wants be reflected in policy as well as its needs. So let the nation by all means debate migrant and refugee policy, but let both sides also portray the stakes honestly.

> Let both sides also – especially supporters of more generous responses – acknowledge the inevitable costs and propose responsible ways to finance them. Normally, I’d favor some combination of tax increases or public sector spending cuts. These measures would ensure that Americans today pay the costs in the here and now – and put their money where their mouths are – rather than create more debt and shift costs onto future generations who will have had no say in these decisions. Yet interest rates today are so low that it’s easier from a financial – and moral standpoint – to justify what would be a pittance in extra deficit spending to ease the suffering.

My own preference is for the United States admitting many more refugees from the region – financed by a new tax on upper-income Americans. In my opinion, it’s the right thing to do from an ethical standpoint, and it’s completely affordable for a country as wealthy as the United States. Moreover, unlike most of Europe, the United States has a long record of successfully assimilating newcomers. It system tends to bring out the best even in refugees and other immigrants from especially diseased regions, like Lebanon and the Arab areas of historic Palestine.

There’s no doubt that widespread “multiculturalist” beliefs among policy elites have created new barriers to successful assimilation. But there’s also no doubt that most new arrivals in the country who are not coming from Latin America have no desire to ghettoize themselves language- and culture-wise. (When’s the last time you heard about Vietnamese Americans pushing for bilingual classes for their kids?) And national security threats could be eased by giving priority to admitting families, especially with young children.

But this approach just reflects my own preference. If you’ve got your own, the time to express them to elected politicians is now.

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.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Obama’s UN Message was Squarely in America’s (Dubious) Diplomatic Tradition

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21st century rules, alliances, China, civil society, East Asia, Hillary Clinton, human rights, international organizations, NATO, NGOs, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, UN, WTO

Anyone could be forgiven for listening to President Obama’s just-completed speech to the UN General Assembly and wondering what on earth he thought he was doing. Even given the tendency for the most down-to-earth American presidents to turn into gasbags when addressing the world body, and his own quasi-messianic streak, Mr. Obama’s offering seemed noteworthy for ethereal boilerplate.

Especially at a time when aggressors are on the march in eastern Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia, just what did the president think he was doing in urging the assembled delegates to “reject fatalism or cynicism,” to throw away “a rule-book written for a different century,” to recognize “that we gain more from cooperation than conquest,” to “lift our eyes beyond our borders,”and to “meet our responsibility to observe and enforce international norms”?

After all, seated before him were representatives of the very governments responsible for so many of the woes and threats he bemoaned – whose leaders are, as per that famous 1960s saying, part of the problem, not part of the solution. Did the president really think that his inspiring words would convert regimes not only behind so much international violence, but that came to and maintain power through the barrel of a gun?

The best answer is “Of course not” – but not necessarily because Mr. Obama may be a closet cynic, or may be a mindless prisoner of American diplomatic convention, or may be trying to score some easy global propaganda points. All these characterizations may apply to the president. But he’s also remaining true to a longstanding principle of the internationalist ideology that has shaped American foreign policy since Pearl Harbor – and that also, worrisomely, is a major illusion. It’s the belief that the very structure of world politics, not just individual regimes, is not only in a state of flux, but moving steadily towards needed revolutionary change – and the corollary conviction that enlightened U.S. policies can hasten its arrival.

The change anticipated by President Obama, all of his predecessors, and the rest of America’s foreign policy establishment, is that the unit that has organized world politics for centuries – the nation-state – is not only fundamentally harmful, but transient. Therefore, Washington within reason should be actively undermining it and planning for its demise and replacement by global systems of cooperation.

At first, this sounds as naïve as Mr. Obama sounded in New York earlier today. After all, it’s common knowledge that the UN and other international organizations and international law itself are institutions and arrangements to which U.S. leaders pay lip service and ignore whenever convenient. And often this common knowledge is true. But often it’s not true, and in ways as important as they’re neglected.

The clearest example by far is the notion popularized by the president and Secretary of State Kerry, and mentioned again this morning, that the world is well on the way to adopting a set of new rules of statecraft that have made war obsolete and that center on peaceful dispute resolution. As is now painfully clear, China and especially Russia haven’t bought on – and the administration has clearly been surprised by their stubbornness.

International organizations themselves offer another important example. Not that the UN, in particular, hasn’t become almost completely marginal to American foreign policy. It has. Once the Cold War began, it was clear that the Security Council’s authority to prevent or end aggression could never be used in conflicts that really counted (the Korean war was a notable exception), and even after the Berlin Wall fell, it’s generally been too difficult to forge consensuses that include Russia and/or China (the first Persian Gulf war was a notable exception).

Nevertheless, in the early 1990s, the United States spearheaded the creation of another international organization – the World Trade Organization – that does have major enforcement authority. And even though success in the global economy has become ever more important to both American prosperity and security, the WTO has frequently ruled against the United States and Washington has adopted and observed a policy of abiding by these decisions.

Yes, the WTO has strongly served the interests of offshoring U.S. multinational corporations – by ensuring that the U.S. market will remain almost completely open to all the goods they produce in their foreign factories. But most trade policy critics in Congress also regularly vote to maintain America’s membership. And although their support reflects the power of inertia in politics and policy, it also stems from the view that, whatever short-term or individual losses may result, the entire U.S. economy’s long-term interests are best served by creating a durable system for legally resolving international trade disputes.

This belief in a better global future lies behind American policy towards another kind of arrangement – military alliances. America’s main alliances – with NATO’s European members and Canada, and with Japan – have been in place for some six decades. As frequently declared, their main purposes were coldly pragmatic – to keep these strategically and economically valuable regions in the free world, to ensure that the United States would not be fighting its enemies alone, and to maximize the odds that aggressors would be fought “over there” rather than “over here.”

But Washington had an agenda that was never fully voiced to the American public: Although U.S. leaders constantly sought greater allied defense contributions, they also wanted to make sure that America predominated, and in fact would obviate the need for Germany and Japan in particular to take major responsibility for their own security in the first place. If these wartime enemies could be freed to concentrate on their own peaceful development, the main sources of instability and conflict in these two major regions would be eliminated, and transnational economic integration and collective security regimes could emerge. (These U.S. hopes have proved far more realistic in Europe than in Asia.)

All the strategy required were military expenditures that badly strained U.S. and ultimately global finances, and trade policies that gave these regions unreciprocated access to U.S. markets and helped hollow out America’s productive economy.

And yet, transformational hopes also unmistakably explain why, after the end of the Cold War, America’s alliance strategy literally never skipped a beat. After the overriding security reasons for these arrangements’ very existence either disappeared or morphed dramatically (in the case of China), Washington worked overtime to concoct series of new rationales and missions, continuing to run outsized risks and pay outsized costs in order to turn the age-old political dynamics of Europe and the Far East into…something better.

President Obama’s UN speech today prominently displayed another dimension of this belief in the transience of nation-states – the conviction that the importance of their national governments is on the wane, and that non-governmental actors are on the rise in world politics. In this sense, for much of his speech, Obama didn’t view his principal audience as the delegates seated in Turtle Bay. Instead, he was addressing “the Lebanese factions rejecting those who try to provoke war;” “ young people across the Muslim world”; entrepreneurs in Malaysia; the young Iraqi man who “started a library for his peers”; civil society in Senegal; and the like.

He was addressing these inspirational individuals and groups to help spread their example. But he was also sending a message that Washington has continually transmitted to the developing world – often albeit inconsistently and uncertainly – that the United States will be just as happy to do official business with non-government actors as with their repressive leaders. And the reason has not only to do with a feeling of moral satisfaction, or a confidence that these individuals and groups represent the future, but because the institutions and networks they create are thought to matter greatly in the here and now.

Mr. Obama’s former chief diplomat, Hillary Clinton, recently provided a sense of how central to American foreign policy this cultivation of what’s called civil society has become.

As she wrote in her Washington Post review of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s new book on American foreign policy, she took the helm at Foggy Bottom recognizing that “new technologies” could “help citizens hold leaders accountable” as well as “help dictators keep tabs on dissidents.” She understood that “non-state actors,” including “courageous NGOs” were steadily growing in influence. She realized that “International problems and solutions are increasingly centered, in ways both good and bad, on nongovernmental organizations, businesses and individual citizens.”

And because “foreign policy is now as much about people as it is about states,” America’s “levers of leadership are not just about keeping our military strong and our diplomacy agile; they are about standing up for human rights, about advancing the rights and role of women and girls, about creating the space for a flourishing civil society and the conditions for broad-based development.”

The promise inherent in these insights should be self-evident, simply because the list of consequential international actors has expanded qualitatively. Unfortunately, the dangers are easily overlooked. They could blind U.S. leaders to difficult but inescapable tradeoffs, leading them to pursue the (supposed) perfect instead of the good. They could addict them to grandiose, unattainable, and unnecessary schemes and obscure the viability and often the necessity of mere muddling through. They could prevent them from promptly pulling the plug on loser projects. And they could turn reduce the nation’s approach to key individual and clusters of challenges into complete mush – not least of all in the eyes of leading adversaries.

A great example: Secretary Clinton’s description of the Asia strategy she and the president pursued – which she writes “centered on strengthening our traditional alliances; elevating and harmonizing the alphabet soup of regional organizations, such as ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and APEC (the ¬Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation organization); and engaging China more broadly — both bilaterally, through new venues such as the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, and multilaterally, in settings where regional pressure would encourage more constructive behavior and shared decision-making on matters from freedom of navigation to climate change to trade to human rights. Our ‘pivot to Asia,’ as it came to be known, is all about establishing a rules-based order in the region that can manage the peaceful rise of new powers and promote universal norms and values.”

To which one can only reasonably respond “Huh?” and “No wonder the Chinese are on the move.”

American leaders are often admonished (especially by each other) to deal with the world as it is, not as they would wish it to be. But it’s increasingly clear that a big problem with U.S. foreign policy is a strong penchant for defining this distinction out of existence to begin with.