Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Trumply Deranged Coverage of a Trump Security Policy Win

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alliances, allies, America First, burden sharing, deterrence, Financial Times, globalism, James White, Joe Biden, military spending, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, South Korea, tripwire, Trump

I know that there’s lots more to say about last week’s outrageous Capitol Hill riot and its political and even broader fallout, but sometimes a news development comes along that’s so underappreciated and at the same time so poorly reported that I just couldn’t resist weighing in right away.

I’m talking about decisions being made in South Korea to become more militarily self-reliant, and the way they were reported in the Financial Times a week ago. The article, by Edward White, had it all as far as my Trump-y, America First-type worldview is concerned: an (apparently unwitting account) of signs of a clearly emerging potential triumph for this approach to U.S. foreign policy; a comparably stinging (and unwitting) rebuke of its globalist counterpart; a complete failure to mention the benefits for the United States (as opposed to the impact elsewhere) coupled with  attempts by globalist supposed experts focusinf singlemindedly on the downsides and ignoring the consequences for Americans; and just plain sloppy journalism.

As known by RealityChek regulars, the news that long-time military ally (or protectorate, depending on your point of view) South Korea is revving up its defense spending is an unalloyed good for Americans. For decades, Seoul’s skimpy military budgets, which remained modest despite the country’s phenomenal economic progress, required the United States to supply the conventional forces needed to defend it against a North Korean attack.

The large American troop contingent stationed right at the Demilitarized Zone, directly in the North Koreans’ invasion path, might have made sense when Washington had no reason to fear any conflict going nuclear, and indeed viewed its possession of these arms as a pillar of its strategy of protecting South Korea by deterring aggression (because North Korea had no nukes of its own that could hit the U.S. homeland in retalition). But since North Korea is at the least so close to possessing this capability, the American units have turned into a tripwire all too likely to expose Americans to these risks, thereby rendering the U.S. nuclear guarantee a prime example of policy masochism. (This post described the changing Korean peninsula and overall Asian security environment, and its implications for U.S. strategy, back in 2014.) 

As also known by RealityChek regulars, President Trump has displayed some awareness of this situation, and, as White has reported, has pressed the South Koreans to get their self-defense act together – though in his often typically incoherent way, focusing almost entirely during his term on securing more South Korean financing of the expenses of deploying the U.S. forces on the peninsula than on planning to withdraw, and thereby eliminate the nuclear risk to America that their presence creates.

But White’s article cites evidence that Seoul has interpreted Mr. Trump’s harangues about rip off-obsessed allies as a clear sign that the United States is no longer a reliable ally, and that South Korea needs to build the manpower and especially weaponry it will need if the United States flies the coop. Especially interesting is the apparent South Korean conviction that these preparations must be made even though alliance fetishizer Joe Biden will become President on January 20.

Clearly, nothing could be better for the United States, and just as clearly, Trumpian impatience – following decades of coddling free-riding by globalist American leaders – deserves most of the credit. Even if Biden has no intention of withdrawing the American troops and bolstering his own country’s security, at least one major argument against such a step would be eliminated if South Korea became self-reliant.

But none of this side of the equation will be found in the article. Instead, South Korea’s stated new strategy is depicted as an regrettably inevitable result of “Mr Trump’s treatment of long-term allies.” And of course, grave risks abound, including the chance that “The build-up could send unintended signals of aggression or weakness, inviting miscalculations or adventurism from countries including North Korea, China and Russia.”

Typically, however, these experts ignore the screamingly obvious: If the U.S. troops leave, any miscalculations or adventurism would be problems for South Korea and its neighbors, not for the United States.

As for the sloppy journalism, that comes in when White tries to show that South Korea has already been an impressive military spender:

“South Korea’s annual defence bill is already high compared with those of many countries of a similar size and wealth. Military spending as a percentage of government expenditure was 12.7 last year, according to Stockholm Peace Research Institute data, ahead of 9.2 per cent in the US and the UK’s 4.5 per cent.”

To which the only serious response is, “Seriously?” Because why should anyone except an apologist care how Seoul’s defense spending compares with similarly sized or wealthy countries, much less with the United States’? After all, almost none of these countries lives in what’s probably the world’s most dangerous neighborhood, with an utterly deranged, nuclear-armed regime right next door for starters? Given South Korea’s (great) wealth, and North Korea’s impoverishment, the only important gauge of the adequacy of Seoul’s military budget is whether it can meet South Korea’s needs. And obviously, there’s a long way to go in this respect.

Moreover, even anyone who puts any stock in the numbers mentioned by White needs to ask themselves why the emphasis is on percentages of government spending? What actually counts is percentage of gross domestic product (GDP, or the entire economy). Because it’s the share of total national resources devoted to defense that genuinely makes clear the priority it enjoys. And with 2.7 percent the figure for highly insecure South Korea, according to the latest available data, and 3.4 percent that for the highly secure US of A, the only accurate way to describe defense as a South Korean priority is “not real high.”

Don’t get me wrong: As a sovereign country, Seoul has every right to skimp on defense spending. It also has every right to try to make another country bear an outsized measure of cost and risk for this decision. But the equally sovereign United States has every right to refuse to keep playing Uncle Sucker, especially when North Korea’s nuclear weapons make the stakes so potentially catastrophic. America’s outgoing President understood this, however imperfectly. Anyone believing that America’s security (especially from nuclear attack) needs to come first for Americans should be hoping that the nation’s incoming President quickly gets on this wavelength.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Trump’s Potentially Disastrous Germany Troops Decision

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America First, Cold War, deterrence, free-riding, Germany, military spending, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear war, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Poland, The Wall Street Journal, tripwire, Trump

So where will President Trump send those U.S. troops he’ll be moving out of  Germany? That may sound like an odd question to post about, given the widespread anti-racism and police brutality protests in the United States, still deeply depressed activity across the national economy, some signs of a CCP Virus second wave, and of course the intensifying presidential election campaign.

But precisely because, as Americans hopefully are learning, crises can spring up seemingly out of nowhere, it’s a crucial subject to examine. For if President Trump comes up with the wrong answer – as is entirely possible based on what’s known so far – the stage could be set for a terrifying and completely needless nuclear showdown with Russia that could all too easily result in a nuclear attack on the U.S. homeland. And in a supreme irony, these dangers all stem from what’s been shaping up as one of the President’s sharpest and most dangerous departures from the America First principles on which he’s based much of his foreign policy.

But let’s begin at the beginning. As first reported last week in The Wall Street Journal, and pretty strongly confirmed last week, the President has decided to reduce the numbers of active duty American servicemen and women stationed permanently in Germany from 34,500 to 25,000, and cap this presence at that level.

If the troops would be heading further west on the European continent, or heading back home, that would be great news for Americans, as it would dramatically reduce nuclear war risk. As I’ve frequently written, for decades, (although in much greater numbers during the Cold War), U.S. forces have been deployed in Germany not to defend Germany militarily, but to function as a tripwire.

That is, American policymakers were under no illusion that these units would strong enough (even in tandem with the forces of U.S. allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – NATO – like Germany) to beat back an attack from the conventional forces of the Soviet Union and its satellite allies. But Washington believed that the U.S. presence in West Germany – which bordered then-Communist East Germany) would deter a Soviet attack in the first place precisely because of its vulnerability. Specifically, the specter of American soldiers being  decimated would force an American President to try saving them with nuclear weapons. The resulting prospect of the conflict threatening to escalate to the all-out nuclear leve – which would destroy the Soviet Union, too –  would supposedly be enough to keep Moscow at bay.

As I’ve also written, this strategy arguably made sense during the Cold War, when its aim was keeping in the free world camp West Germany and Western Europe and all of its formidable economic power and therefore military potential. Today, however, it not only makes no sense from a U.S. standpoint. It has become positively deranged, as the likeliest targets of post-Soviet Russian aggression (and the arenas where the U.S. forces would likeliest be sent if the shooting starts) are not the longstanding NATO members of Western Europe. Instead, they’d be sent to the newer NATO members of Eastern Europe – most of which border Russia, but whose security was never viewed as a vital U.S. interest (that is, worth risking war over), even in the Cold War days.

Even less excusably, sizable American forces have remained in Germany and elsewhere in Western Europe in part because Germany and most of the other allies keep skimping so shamefully on their own militaries – even though most have hardly been short of resources.

No ally has been a more disgraceful military free-rider than uber-wealthy Germany, and the President has been right to complain about German and broader stinginess, and to threaten major consequences if the allies’ defense budgets aren’t significantly boosted. But as I’ve also explained, he’s focused on the wrong objective: securing a fairer deal for U.S. taxpayers.

Instead, all along, he should have been seeking the removal of the American military either from Europe altogether, or its transfer far enough from the front lines to reduce meaingfully the odds of it getting entrapped in a new East-West conflict immediately. For those are the kinds of moves that would shrink to insignificance the chances of the United States getting hit by Russian nuclear warheads because of a combination of its forces being placed in a completely impossible position militarily, and because U.S. allies have been too cheap to pay for their own security.

Worst of all, though, far from moving U.S. forces away from the front lines of a Russian attack, Mr. Trump consistently has been moving them closer, by cautiously but steadily stationing more in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. And numerous reports have suggested that Poland is exactly where at least some of the 9,500 U.S. troops leaving Germany will be heading.

Because a final decision to transfer the troops to Poland hasn’t been made yet, there’s still hope that this potentially disastrous mistake can be avoided. But that outcome seems unlikely without a serious intervention from a Trump advisor influential enough to produce an about-face. Anyone out there know how I can get a hold of Jared, Ivanka, or Melania?

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: How Bad Will it Get?

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Baby Boom, CCP Virus, Cold War, coronavirus, COVID 19, Edward Harrison, Federal Reserve, Great Depression, Great Recession, health security, military spending, moral hazard, recession, recovery, secular stagnation, small business, start-ups, technology, Trump, uncertainty, unemployment, World War II, Wuhan virus, {What's Left of) Our Economy

How bad economically? That’s a CCP Virus-related question everyone’s understandably asking these days. In fact, last night one of my social media friends expressed the super-bear case pretty compellingly:

“I can’t see any way this is not going to destroy us. No one will have any money, so they won’t buy anything, won’t pay their bills, can’t pay rent or mortgages. No spending power means no employment. More layoffs. certainly as soon as stores open there wil be a rush to sell everything, a rush to normal, hoping for the best, but I think this is pretty much The End of life as we know it.”

And an economy-watcher I know with an unusually good feel for finance is awfully pessimistic, too – and has been right so far about the virus’ impact on output, employment, and the markets.

I’m feeling even less confident than usual in my economy crystal ball (that’s a low bar). The main reason of course is that the current U.S. nosedive, as I (and nearly everyone else) have observed, isn’t a standard recession or depression. That is, it hasn’t been caused either by some built-in weakness in the economy that finally becomes too big to ignore or paper over, or similar problems in the financial system that wind up wrecking the “real economy.” We can’t even blame the current crisis on some outside economic shock, like the boost in global oil prices that wreaked such economic havoc in the 1970s.

Even so, here are four somewhat related, extremely tentative thoughts that I hope will help readers form their own judgments about the American economy’s future. Spoiler alert: They’re pretty pessimistic.

First, the fundamentally biological nature of the crisis creates the kind of uncertainty that’s unprecedented in modern times, and that consumers, businesses, and investors will hate even more than usual. For example, what if there’s a second wave? Or a third? How will these three groups of economic actors respond to attempted restarts of economic activity that, however gradual or rolling, turn out to be premature?

Worse, what if the CCP Virus is here to stay for the time being, and treatments can only become good enough to reduce it to the status of a really nasty flu? And what if it mutates into something requiring qualitatively different cures?

Second, because of all these possible biology-rooted uncertainties, I fear that many of the standard arguments for expecting a relatively quick, strong rebound should be thrown out the window. All of them, after all – including President Trump’s – apparently assume that the timeout mandated in most of the economy’s consumption (and that therefore inevitably undermines its business spending) is creating lots of frustrated demand that will burst into actual spending once the crisis passes.

One big historical precedent cited: the aftermath of World War II. At that time, officials inside the federal government feared that growth would fizzle at best for two main reasons. First, the massive boost to growth and employment delivered by wartime military spending would dramatically fade. Second, this pessimism was no doubt greatly reenforced by the nation’s immediate pre-war experience – a lengthy and deep depression that showed no signs of ending until the global fascist threat inspired a pre-Pearl Harbor military buildup.

But after the war, consumption came back with a vengeance – because the main threats on everyone’s mind were decisively defeated; because so many Americans had lots of income to spend; because Washington laid the ground for more income-earning with programs like the G.I. Bill, along with war-time advances in science and technology that boasted phenomenal peacetime uses; and because baby-making boomed along with consumption, juicing demand for more housing in particular.

And let’s not forget the Cold War! The household spending binge did slow in 1947 and 1948. But by 1949, defense spending began rising again, and it really took off from 1951 on, once the Korean War in particular convinced policymakers that a global Communist threat was alive and here to stay.

Today, however, determining when the major threat is finally over is much more difficult. Unemployment is sure to rise much higher than the 5.9 percent pre-Korean War peak (in 1949), meaning that not only will incentives to save remain stronger, but that much more income is being lost. And nothing like a post-World War II Baby Boom was even in sight before the CCP Virus struck. Indeed, the arrows were pointing in the opposite direction. A post-virus repeat seems unimaginable.

The one interesting possible reason for purely economic optimism? A new military spending surge – perhaps spurred by worries about China? And new healthcare products investment might jump as well, possibly boosted by government incentives, to prevent a repeat of current supply shortages.

The third consideration weighing on my mind is the separation factor. Even if post-virus improvement is solid, I wonder how sustainable it will be. The main reason is that, at least during past episodes of major job loss (e.g., the last decade’s Great Recession that followed the global financial crisis), many of the unemployed face big difficulties returning to work in any form, and particular difficulties finding work at previous pay levels. Because the longer unemployment lasts, the harder these obstacles generally become, and because of the likely rate joblessness is likely to hit, this separation factor could become considerable even if unemployment insurance and other income supports do turn out to be generous enough to sustain such economic victims until the nation reaches “the other side.” 

The separation factor, moreover, may go beyond workers. I don’t by any means rule out the possibility that significant numbers of small business owners may call it quits, too – either because cratering demand for their products and services will kill off their enterprises, because the the government aid being offered doesn’t cover all their losses for long enough, or because they conclude that applying for the aid just isn’t worth the candle.

Sure, new start-ups will fill part of this gap. But all of it? Not if the abundant pre-crisis evidence of a significant drop-off in such entrepreneurism is any indication.

Fourth, also reenforcing the bear case: Although the roots of the current economic mess are dramatically different from those of the last near-meltdown and recession, the “whatever it takes” response of the federal government and the Federal Reserve are remarkably similar. As pointed out by Edward Harrison, the economy- and finance-watcher I cited above, on the one hand, the authorities probably don’t have a choice. On the other, this thick, pervasive safety net did produce an epidemic of “moral hazard” – financial decisions in particular that turn out to be bad but that initially look smart because confidence in some form of bailout reduces the perceived risks and costs of mistakes.

As I explained previously, the last outbreak of moral hazard took a painful pre-virus economic toll, as the resulting inefficient use of capital helped produce  one of the weakest economic recoveries American history. In fact, it’s produced a theory that I personally find as convincing as it is depressing (personally): secular stagnation. It holds that the economy has become so fundamentally unproductive and inefficient that the only way it’s been able to generate even adequate (not especially strong) levels of growth has been for government to inflate bubbles of various kinds (with all its moral hazard-creating spending and guarantees) that, of course, eventually burst. So it doesn’t seem at all unreasonable to believe that the upcoming recovery will be similarly feeble.

Even worse, according to Harrison, even the current official backstopping might not suffice to prevent defaults by the financially weakest businesses – which would generate their own harmful spillover effects.

I’m not saying that there’s no case for optimism – at least cautious optimism. The overall long-term historical momentum for improvement in living conditions the world over is very impressive. As a result, doom-saying has a lousy record in the post-World War II period in particular. Technological advance isn’t going to stop, and may not even slow much. Maybe most important, at least in the medium-term, the human desire to acquire and consume shows no signs of having vanished.

So maybe the safest conclusion to come to (however unsatisfyingly timid): This time won’t be completely different. But don’t bet on a simple, and particularly a quick, return to pre-virus times.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: An Asia Grand Strategy that Still Looks Like America Last

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Asia, Barack Obama, China, Defense Department, export controls, John McCain, military spending, neoconservatives, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, pivot, technology transfer, The Wall Street Journal, Trump

It looks like the Trump administration is going All Neocon on its Asia grand strategy. Or is it All Obama? Interestingly, both approaches have shared the same main features, and depressingly, both are dangerously incoherent and disturbingly resemble the course that Mr. Trump apparently has chosen to follow. .

The essence of neoconservative strategy in Asia consists of bloviating about the risks to America’s national security from China in particular, pushing for a stronger American military response, and with equal vigor backing economic policies that inevitably boost China’s military strength. And the quintessential example is Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona.

McCain has voted for his entire career in favor of the U.S. trade policy decisions that have enabled China to amass literally trillions of dollars worth of trade surpluses with the United States, and therefore finance an enormous military buildup that he himself has warned directly threatens American interests in Asia. He’s periodically voiced concerns about the lax U.S. export controls that have enabled China to secure some of America’s best defense-related technology. But he’s never sponsored any steps capable of solving this problem.

What McCain has focused on has been boosting military spending and stationing more of these forces, in large part to counter burgeoning Chinese ambitions. And recent Trump administration moves make clear that the president and his top advisers have been listening. As The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month:

“The Pentagon has endorsed a plan to invest nearly $8 billion to bulk up the U.S. presence in the Asia-Pacific region over the next five years by upgrading military infrastructure, conducting additional exercises and deploying more forces and ships….The proposal, dubbed the Asia-Pacific Stability Initiative, was first floated by Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) and has been embraced by other lawmakers and, in principle, by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and the head of U.S. Pacific Command, Adm. Harry Harris. Proponents haven’t developed details of the $7.5 billion plan.”

The Journal account goes on to remind readers that the Obama administration had pursued its own military “pivot” to Asia, but that it was “disparaged by critics as thin on resources and military muscle.” And of course, the former president refused to respond effectively to China’s predatory trade practices, and only very late in his second term began rethinking flood of advanced defense-related knowhow to the PRC.

President Trump has of course spoken repeatedly of acting forcefully to overhaul America’s China trade policies. But his administration’s actions so far have fallen far short of this mark.

The mind-blowing upshot: In a military conflict with China, the United States forces could find themselves fighting against, and taking casualties from, Chinese units and weapons that have been paid for and researched by their enemy. Is that the kind of first so many Americans voted for?

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Trump’s Making Sense About NATO & Europe, Too

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2016 election, allies, Brussels attacks, Cold War, defense budget, Donald Trump, Earl C. Ravenal, Europe, intelligence, ISIS, Middle East, military spending, NATO, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, terrorism

Front-running Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has done it again: He’s scandalized the American political and foreign policy (and therefore media) establishments with his charge this week that the United States is spending too much on defending Europe via its membership in the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) alliance. And once again, he’s hit the nail much closer to the head than the nation’s political leaders and self-appointed national security experts.

Most of the responses to Trump make one or both of two main points: First, that the NATO commitment isn’t very expensive at all; and second, the aftermath of yet another major terrorist attack in Europe is the last time when anyone should be questioning this most important of U.S. ties to the Continent – including for America’s own sake.

Yet the first allegation is nonsense. In large measure it’s based on the costs of maintaining NATO as an organization. This sum is indeed miniscule compared with the overall U.S. military budget or the size of the whole American economy. But it also has virtually nothing to do with the real costs of fielding and deploying the military forces – both nuclear and conventional – that do the actual defending even in peacetime.

Surprisingly, this figure isn’t easy to identify. Why not? Because the Defense Department doesn’t break out most of  its budget by expenditures for major regions of the world. The one major exception: its funding requests for what it calls Overseas Contingency Operations – money used to pay for ongoing missions like Middle East wars (including attacks on ISIS), counter-terrorism campaigns, and the like.

Significantly, one Europe-related category is now listed. It’s called the European Reassurance Initiative, and as the Pentagon openly states, its components – notably increasing the American military presence in Europe – are mainly directed at newly assertive Russia. Last year, this program alone cost more than the U.S. contribution to the NATO budget – $789 million versus $514 million. And the Defense Department wants to quadruple the amount for next year.

At the same time, these totals don’t begin to take into account the full costs of the American military commitment to Europe. A rough idea of how great they could be can be gleaned from one of the few systematic efforts to analyze the geography of the defense budget – by the brilliant and iconoclastic former Pentagon official Earl C. Ravenal. Ravenal’s work unfortunately dates from the Cold War era, but it does provide a sense of the yawning gap between those NATO organization budget figures and truly comprehensive numbers.

According to Ravenal, the NATO commitment accounted fully half ($129 billion) of the 1983 $258 billion proposed Pentagon budget. Critics responded that even without NATO/Europe responsibilities, the nation would still need to maintain many of the forces both stationed on the Continent and assigned to it under various contingencies. But they never explained why. So Ravenal’s statistics look pretty reasonable to me.

The current (fiscal year 2016) Pentagon budget request is $585.2 billion; therefore, using the Ravenal methodology, we’d get just over $300 billion devoted to Europe’s defense. But this figure would also be highly misleading. After all, U.S. priorities have changed dramatically. During the Cold War days, the United States regularly maintained more than 300,000 troops in Europe, along with their families. Today, European deployments are down to about 50,000. Moreover, the United States keeps many fewer nuclear weapons in Europe as well (although these arms have always been relatively cheap.) Today, the region commanding the greatest American military resources is the Middle East. (And to add to the complications, many of the forces and other assets in Europe support Middle East deployments and combat, too).

Nonetheless, even taking these historical changes into account, it must be clear that the American commitment to Europe is costing at least tens of billions of dollars annually, and possibly more. Given these totals, given their likely increase, and given the risks (including nuclear) still run by the United States to help defend the Europeans, it sounds perfectly reasonable to ask whether Americans are getting adequate bang for this national security buck – especially considering how wealthy Europe is today, and how meager its own military spending.

But doesn’t the United States need European cooperation to help fight ISIS and other terrorist threats? Unquestionably, the more assistance the United States can get, the safer it will be. And since Europe seems to be such an important target for ISIS in particular, the ability to access European intelligence about the Islamic States would appear to be invaluable.

Three questions, however, need to be answered by the Establishmentarians. First, why would that intelligence access need to depend on keeping today’s NATO ties fully intact? Why couldn’t Washington and the Europeans be able to keep working together on the terrorism front without Americans underwriting Europe’s nuclear and conventional defense against other threats? Would the allies, for example, withhold this information if the United States drew down its military presence further? Fits of pique of course can never be ruled out. But wouldn’t the Europeans then risk losing their access to U.S. intelligence and other forms of assistance?

Second, just how good is European intelligence? According to this new examination of Belgium’s anti-terrorism efforts, little confidence is justified. In fact, overall European counter-terrorism activity is unimpressive at best. On the one hand, these countries will surely get up to speed in the wake of recent attacks. On the other hand, it’s nothing less than amazing that they’ve dawdled so long considering how much closer they are located to the Middle East than America is. So maybe once the initial outrage at the Brussels attacks fades, Europe will go back to business as usual, with all that implies about how helpful to the United States its countries can actually be.

Third, will the Europeans ever get their military act together?  Of course, these countries are potentially valuable as military allies in the air and ground fighting against ISIS in the Middle East. But there can be no question that the performance has lagged badly. And even though some signs of increased European military spending are finally appearing, they won’t turn into significantly greater capabilities for many years.

Some believe that Trump’s remarks simply represent an attempted bluff, and that his real aim is to convince the allies to bolster their capabilities. If so, the dynamics of free-riding are likely to doom this ploy as they have so often in the past. But if Trump is signaling a belief that U.S.-European security relations need major changes, and that a rigorous, unsentimental look at costs and benefits, risks and rewards could well justify much less U.S. involvement in the Continent’s defense, the result might easily be a much safer America, and a mainstay of foreign policy conventional wisdom that he’s made look just as foolish as the political conventional wisdom.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Which Paris Message Will ISIS Hear?

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Bill Gates, carbon emissions, climate change, Congress, counter-terrorism spending, France, ISIS, military spending, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Paris attacks, Paris Climate Conference, Security Council, terrorism, United Kingdom, United Nations

President Obama has made a pretty good point in arguing that going ahead with the global climate change conference in Paris this week despite the recent terror attacks on that city is an “act of defiance” against ISIS and other extremist groups – Islamic or not. Unfortunately, he and other major world leaders have missed a message they’re inevitably sending to the terrorists with other recent decisions – which signal the absence of anything close to similar resolve to develop a credible military strategy for defeating them.

No one should have any illusions that the Paris talks themselves will produce meaningful progress toward controlling the carbon emissions widely thought to be dangerously warming the planet. In fact, none of its decisions will be legally binding (although there have been some interesting attempts to parse this concept). But not only has the issue been persistently on the international agenda for decades. More than 170 countries – including the largest sources of the problem – have made specific proposals to reduce emissions. In addition, eight of the biggest emitters have collectively promised to double their supplies of renewable energy.

There also seems to be broad agreement on a specific goal – avoiding an average global temperature increase of 3.6 percent more degrees Fahrenheit. Even the private sector is joining in, led by Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ pledge to spend $2 billion of his own money to foster green innovation. This commitment is conditioned on greater government efforts, but other wealthy individuals reportedly are interested in contributing, too.

Contrast these developments – inadequate and flawed as they are – with global efforts so far against ISIS. In the wake of the Paris attacks, President Obama has declared only that the United States will “intensify” its current strategy – and that no major deployments of American ground troops will be made. The leaders of Britain and France have announced their intent to increase defense spending, but early indications are that at least some of the new counter-terrorism funds will come from other defense accounts – even though Europe faces a more aggressive Russia, too. Moreover, these increases come after years of major defense spending decreases and (at least in retrospect) shockingly inadequate budgeting against terrorism in particular.

And although the United Nations has condemned the Paris attacks and the Security Council has authorized military action against ISIS, no member state (as usual) is required to spend a penny or risk a single life to vanquish this “global and unprecedented threat to international peace and security” and no follow-up actions – or even words – appear in the offing. Moreover, let’s not forget that the U.S. Congress has failed even to pass a new authorization to use military force in the region in response to President Obama’s request.

So although it’s encouraging to see a business-as-usual attitude on climate change issues adopted by world leaders in defiance of terrorists, the lack of comparable resolve on the battlefield seems all too likely to overwhelm its intended effects.

Im-Politic: The Media’s Mindlessly Flailing Trump Coverage

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2016 elections, 60 Minutes, Bernie Sanders, CBS News, Donald Trump, Ester Bloom, Im-Politic, military spending, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, Obama, Rolling Stone, Scott Pelley, The Atlantic, Trade

What is it about covering Donald Trump that causes Mainstream Media figures to lose whatever judgment and common sense they may possess? Whatever the answer, if you doubt how completely thrown off their game they get when reporting and commenting on the Republican presidential front-runner, check out the recent high profile Trump features on 60 Minutes and in The Atlantic.

The most egregious example was provided last Sunday by Scott Pelley in his 60 Minutes feature on Trump. The CBS News anchor and managing editor may indeed be “one of the most experienced reporters in broadcast journalism” and a recipient of many of his profession’s leading awards. He was also clearly loaded for bear for his Trump interview. Yet his performance made painfully clear that he hasn’t the vaguest clue when it comes to U.S. trade policy and Trump’s critique of its failings. Moreover, Pelley obviously was so cocky that he didn’t even ask 60 Minutes‘ research staff to investigate either his known or his unknown unknowns and fill him in.

Thus Pelley dredged up the specter of launching “a trade war,” when Trump proposed tariffing Chinese imports to offset the impact of currency manipulation – which of course Washington has failed to respond to effectively for years. But when was the last time Pelley heard of a business declaring war on an indispensable customer? Why does he suppose China would be much different, especially given that its slowing economy makes Beijing more dependent than ever on selling to the United States – and not only for growth but for the jobs that are crucial to political stability, not to mention the leadership’s very survival?

Pelley seemed no more aware that – as Trump tried to remind him – like all treaties, trade agreements have “out clauses” and don’t bind signatories to their terms in perpetuity. So he couldn’t have been more wrong when he insisted that Trump would “have to live with” the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) even though he considers it “a disaster.” (Maybe Pelley relied for his information on Paul Solotaroff’s Rolling Stone Trump portrait earlier in the month, which took the same erroneously fatalistic view?) Further, apparently no one told Pelley that the decisive economic leverage the United States enjoys with China is positively dwarfed by its influence over Canada and Mexico, since it represented nearly 86 percent of the North American market as of last year.

And here’s an interesting historical footnote that was also missed by the vaunted 60 Minutes staff. During the 2008 presidential campaign, one of the candidates promised to renegotiate NAFTA using “the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage to ensure that we actually get labor and environmental standards that are enforced.” His name was Barack Obama. (And he ultimately backed away from this position.) But do you think Pelley, or CBS News, tried coming down on him like a ton of bricks? In fact, the organization’s main treatment of this subject was decidedly respectful.

The second example of Trump Disorientation Effect comes from The Atlantic and a new post from contributor Ester Bloom. Her Pelley-like determination to show up Trump entailed chiding his core constituencies for forgetting that the 1950s they seem to hold up as an example of the “national greatness” Trump promises to restore “were a time of Big Government. And Big Labor.” (Along with much higher marginal tax rates.) Cackled Bloom, “If bigger government, stronger unions, and higher taxes on the rich are what it takes to make America great again, Republican primary voters might be surprised to learn that the candidate who truly shares their values is not Donald Trump, but Bernie Sanders.”

Actually, as I’ve written, Bloom is onto something when it comes to overlap between the Sanders and Trump platforms. But her picture of the 1950s economy is even less accurate and more naive than that she attributes to Trump’s supporters, because it misses two defining features. First, the United States and its middle class-job creating industries faced no significant foreign competition. And second, much of the Big Government Bloom lauds consisted of a gargantuan Cold War-era national security complex.

The author actually hints at the Pentagon’s prominence with a reference to the decade’s “war-induced solidarity.” But her suggestion that Sanders and his backers (as well as Bloom herself?) would be just fine with this outsized military growth and employment role makes clear that her insight was intellectually isolated.

To be sure, Trump himself could help his own cause immeasurably if he defended his trade (and immigration) positions more cogently when establishment journalists try to savage them. He could invaluably educate the public as well. Because he hasn’t, voters seeking information on these critical issues are stuck with a Hobson’s Choice between an almost defiantly imprecise and mercurial office seeker, and arrogant, know-nothing reporters and pundits.