Our So-Called Foreign Policy: That North Korea Nuclear Threat? Time to Buck Up!

Tags

deterrence, foreign policy establishment, missile defense, national security, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Robert E. Kelly, South Korea, The National Interest

Yesterday, I wrote (again) about how America’s foreign policy establishment continues trying to keep the wool over their compatriots’ eyes about how the main U.S. security alliances (especially with South Korea) are exposing the nation to the threat of nuclear attack (in this case, from North Korea). Now I’m wondering if this same (bipartisan) group may start to change tactics. The evidence? An absolutely stupefying post in The National Interest that tries to assure Americans that such an attack wouldn’t really be so bad.

Let me repeat that: A (rightly) respected foreign policy journal has just posted an essay arguing that it’s “risky threat inflation” to believe that North Korea’s nuclear weapons represent an “existential” danger to the United States – i.e., one that could destroy it as a functioning society.

In a literal sense, the author, political scientist Robert E. Kelly, is right. Even when the North Korean dictatorship builds nuclear-tipped missiles capable of hitting the American homeland, the United States would probably survive as a political entity. The main reason, as the author notes, is that for the time being, the North’s arsenal will almost certainly remain too small to land on more than a few targets inside the geographically vast continental 48 states and their “widely dispersed population.” So just as Manhattan withstood the September 11 attack, the nation in more or less its current form could probably withstand a North Korean strike.

But this kind of literalness, of course, is the literalness of children. And nothing makes the terrible truth clearer than Kelly’s own words. For example, he writes that

>“The humanitarian costs of even one nuclear detonation would be enormous, of course, and the national psychological shock would be akin to nothing in U.S. history, bar perhaps the Civil War. But this is not the same thing as hitting the United States hard enough that its society begins to fragment and its government collapse.”

>“Large numbers of civilian casualties, even in the millions, and the loss of several American cities is not existential. Horrible, yes. A dramatic reorientation of American life, absolutely. But not the end of America.”

>“Even Imperial Japan in 1945, after months of punishing U.S. bombing, managed to ride out the nuclear detonations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki without a national breakdown.”

>“Assuming…that North Korea strikes Washington and America’s other large cities, it is not obvious that the United States would then fall into some manner of political anarchy or revolution.”

There is, to be sure, a weird twist to Kelly’s analysis. The “threat inflation” risk that’s principally troubling this South Korea-based analyst is not the kind that would cow Washington enough to prevent U.S. nuclear retaliation against North Korea following an unprovoked Northern strike against American territory. Instead, what he’s worried about is that American leaders could grow so (mistakenly) terrified of the North Korean nukes’ destructive capability that the Trump administration would try to take them out with preemptive airstrikes and thus “ignite a disastrous regional conflict.”

Which means that he’s worried mainly that South Korea and its neighbors would come under destructive attack, not the United States. But the arguments he marshals could certainly be used, at least in theory, to stiffen allegedly flaccid public spines in the event of any kind of U.S.-North Korea showdown. And as I have written repeatedly, such a confrontation would be practically unthinkable were the United States not committed to protect the militarily free-riding South, and worse, were tens of thousands of American troops and their families not deployed right in the line of Korean fire, expressly to deny a President any real choice about using nuclear weapons (and invite retaliation) once they were attacked.

Kelly’s article, however, does have one (unwitting) virtue. His description of the likely devastation from even a smallish North Korea-scale attack should be enough to make any reader wonder what possible upside to defending South Korea could come close to justifying this completely unprecedented kind of downside. The question holds even for those who insist that such an attack is unlikely (because North Korea must know that the United States would respond with an annihilating all-out retaliatory strike) and that therefore the risk is worth running in order to maintain deterrence on the peninsula. And it especially holds for missile defense optimists. For if all of them are wrong, America will suffer literally millions of deaths, countless wounded, long-term radiation poisoning of survivors and the environment, and gargantuan material losses. Even a single warhead penetrating anti-missile systems would wreak virtually unimaginable physical and psychological havoc.

Whether running such risks to deter attack – nuclear or not – on the United States itself is debatable, and although I disagree with them, pacifists and anti-nuclear activists have long made counter-arguments that deserve consideration.

But running such risks to deter attack on another country, whose loss, however terrible, Americans unmistakably could withstand (in spades) strikes me, anyway, as lying far outside the bounds of rationality. At the very least, it demands the type of open, explicit debate that the foreign policy establishment remains determined to avoid. If Kelly’s post brings this debate closer, however unintentionally, I’ll be the first one to thank him.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Former White House Economists Serve Up Steel Trade Fakeonomics

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competitiveness, durable goods manufacturing, imports, manufacturing, multi-factor productivity, national security, productivity, steel, steel-using industries, subsidies, tariffs, Trade, Trump, White House Council of Economic Advisers, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Just because none of the signers displayed the slightest ability to foresee the approach of an horrific national and global economic crisis is no reason to laugh off the letter released by former White House economists warning President Trump not to impose national security-related tariffs on steel imports. Instead, the letter should be laughed off because none of the signers appears to know anything about manufacturing competitiveness.

According to the letter, endorsed by fifteen former Chairs of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, steel tariffs of any kind “actually damage the U.S. economy” partly because they “would raise costs for manufacturers, reduce employment in manufacturing….”

If you think about it for just a minute, what these economists are really arguing is that American steel-using industries can’t possibly achieve reasonable levels of competitiveness without continuing supplies of a key input that are kept artificially cheap by massive subsidies from governments in China and elsewhere. That’s some recipe for preserving and extending free market and free trade practices around the world.

Even worse, however, is that even this dubious claim is directly contradicted by the best data available – including the newest multi-factor productivity statistics released by the Labor Department yesterday.

These data in particular strongly reinforce worries not only that American manufacturing is suffering major productivity problems, but that these problems have been worsening for many years. And just as important, they show that the steel users in particular have suffered from absolutely no shortage of artificially cheap steel.

For example, from 2009 (when the current economic recovery began) through 2015 (the latest data, multi-factor productivity in these industries (which measures the output resulting from a wide range of inputs, including materials like steel) has fallen by 2.17 percent. In durable goods industries as a whole (a super-sector that uses a lot of steel), it rose by 3.92 percent, which sounds OK. But it’s much weaker multi-factor productivity growth than these sectors achieved during the last recovery (which was considerably shorter): 22.27 percent.

What happened to steel imports from 2009 through 2015, measured by value? They surged by 71.87 percent. And these purchases were kept at that level mainly because during the last year of that stretch, steel imports sank by 20.91 percent. In other words, between 2009 and 2014, steel imports jumped by 117 percent – and presumably left over lots of steel for use by durable goods manufacturers the following year.

Steel imports soared during the previous, 2001-2007 recovery as well (by 156 percent). But whereas they increased at roughly double the rate during the first six years of the current recovery, steel users recorded multi-factor productivity gains that were 5.7 times greater.

During the long 1990s expansion (which technically lasted from 1991 to 2001), steel imports increased by only 28.67 percent. And even so, durable goods manufacturers managed a total productivity gain of 22.72 percent – just about the same improvement as during the import-happy early 2000s, even though import growth was only a seventh as great. And this productivity advance was orders of magnitude better than that of the current recovery, even though import growth has been less than a third as strong.

Now it’s true that durable goods productivity numbers have been boosted significantly by the spectacular performance of the information technology hardware sector (whose use of steel is relatively modest). But examining multi-factor productivity trends for much bigger steel users also yields head-scratching results if you take the former White House economists as gospel.

For example, during the first six years of the current recovery, when steel imports rose by nearly 72 percent, multi-factor productivity for fabricated metal makers actually sank by 4.02 percent. In machinery, it was down 0.93 percent. In electrical equipment, appliances, and components, multi-factor productivity dipped fractionally.

Transportation equipment is the only big steel-using sector where multi-factor productivity grew impressively during this period – by a total of 11.09 percent. But during the final year – 2014-15 – it dropped by 4.39 percent. And again, these companies were benefiting from plenty of artificially cheap steel.

So it’s clear that the former White House advisers’ steel trade analysis is anything but data-dependent. That leaves as their only anti-tariff argument their fears about setbacks in American diplomacy – where they possess no special expertise or even knowledge. Far better for these macro-economists to stick to macro-economics – though again, the overall U.S. performance here should inspire no confidence in their judgment, either.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Trump Steel Trade Critics Offer Recipes for (Continued) Failure

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Barack Obama, China, European Union, globalization, Japan, national security, Russia, steel, tariffs, The Washington Post, Trade, trade law, Trump, World Steel Organization, World Trade Organization, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The case for bold new Trump administration steps to ensure the U.S. steel industry’s continued viability is so clear that even opponents can’t help but (unwittingly) make it.

Thus this morning, The Washington Post editorial board praised – or at least seems to have praised – the Obama administration’s imposition of the tariffs on imports of Chinese steel because the world’s overwhelming source of overcapacity is China. The Post also urged the White House to remember that in order to avoid “international destabilization,” it’s critical to keep relying on “global institutions such as the World Trade Organization.”

Yet as the paper implicitly recognizes, none of these approaches has succeeded. What else can reasonably be concluded from its acknowledgment that the although the world’s “major governments, including President Barack Obama’s administration, have long recognized” the problem of Chinese fueled steel overcapacity,” the glut continues to create “unsustainable downward pressure on producers’ prices….” That’s “unsustainable” as in “can’t be sustained.” As in “if the downward pressure isn’t stopped, steel producers will start going under.”

The Post, however, has left out some crucial information. Specifically, the pressure on global steel producers has been far from uniformly felt. According to the latest (2015) figures from the World Steel Organization, which represents most of the global industry, the United States runs the world’s largest steel trade deficit by far measured in volume (which leaves out the distortions created by falling prices). At 26.5 million tons, it was nearly 80 percent greater than that of the world’s next biggest net steel importer (Vietnam, at 14.9 million tons), and nearly seven times greater than that of the European Union (3.9 million tons).

China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and others are running surpluses, with China lapping the pack at 98.4 million tons and Japan, universally described as a staunch U.S. ally, coming in second at still-impressive 34.9 million tons.

These skewed trade patterns, moreover, are unmistakably affecting national steel output. For example, according to the World Steel Organization, in 2010, as the world’s recovery from the Great Recession was becoming established, the United States accounted for 7.46 percent of global steel output by volume. In 2016, its share had shrunk to 4.95 percent.

China clearly has been the big winner, with its share of world steel production rising from 42.62 percent to 50.16 percent during this period. Japan has boosted market share as well – albeit only from 6.49 percent to 6.60 percent. The European Union and Russia have lost ground – but the losses have been minimal. The former’s global market share has dipped from 11.54 percent to 10.43 percent. The latter’s is down from 4.48 percent to 4.45 percent.

Even weirder: America’s economic growth during this period has outstripped the recoveries of all these countries except China, and its manufacturing sector has recovered (though not completely) thanks largely to a rebound in the steel-intensive automotive industry.

In other words, according to the Post editorial board, due to global overcapacity, the U.S. steel industry is facing unsustainable (and largely artificial) pricing pressure, the worldwide statistics make clear that this pressure is in a class by itself…and the Trump administration is being advised to stick with responses that have been manifestly incapable of preventing this dangerous situation.

It’s perfectly respectable to oppose as a solution the kind of national security-focused tariffs that the Trump administration is considering – even though the advantages they offer (they need no Congressional approval and they can be implemented relatively quickly as well as flexibly) are substantial. But if critics – domestic and foreign – are genuinely interested in solving the longstanding world steel problem in a timely manner, they’ll start proposing alternatives that haven’t already failed.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Trump’s China Strategy Seems Troublingly Silo-ed

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CFIUS, China, Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, Diplomatic and Security Dialogue, foreign direct investment, industrial policy, James Mathis, mercantilism, national security, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Rex Tillerson, semiconductors, Steven Mnuchin, super-computing, technology transfer, Trump, Wilbur Ross

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mathis are meeting with Chinese counterparts today in Washington, D.C. to conduct a “Diplomatic and Security Dialogue” – a stripped down Trump administration version of some of the ginormous official bilateral sessions the two countries have held periodically in recent years.

It’s unclear whether these talks will turn out to be more than the elaborate gabfests their predecessors quickly became. But it’s much clearer that their potential to contribute significantly to America’s security will be limited unless the administration starts taking many more urgently needed steps to move the nation’s Asia grand strategy into the twenty first century. And the major missing piece of this effort continues to be a serious effort to deny China the advanced technologies it will need to continue becoming a more formidable military competitor.

Some promising decisions have been taken, or are being considered. For example, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is thinking of launching a national security review of U.S. trade in semiconductors with an eye toward fending off what he describes as an increasingly dangerous Chinese challenge in this defense-critical sector. Mathis and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have both publicly called for updating the interagency U.S. government process for screening prospective Chinese and other foreign investments in all defense-related companies (the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS). And they along with Ross have strongly suggested that they’re thinking of redefining the relevant statute’s mandate to include economic dimensions of national security. Just as encouraging, prominent members of Congress are drafting legislation along these lines.

And most recently, the administration has announced a big new effort to ensure continued American leadership over China in super-computing (although the semiconductor industry isn’t happy with some other features of Mr. Trump’s stance on federally sponsored research and development).

Moreover, the Trump administration is responding to the Chinese challenge much more promptly than its predecessor, which prioritized this cluster of problems very late in its tenure. Its proposed responses to mercantile Chinese industrial policies in technology industries were especially weak beer.

But as with the Obama administration, Team Trump seems to be paying little attention to the continued outflow of cutting-edge defense-related American knowhow to China – including to entities that are unquestionably controlled by the Chinese government. It’s unmistakably paying much less attention to these investments than to spending billions more to upgrade American military forces in East Asia – which of course could wind up facing Chinese weapons based on U.S. tech advances.

Today’s U.S.-China talks in Washington are due to be followed up later this summer by a session devoted to economics. Maybe by then, President Trump and his advisers will be pursuing the comprehensive, integrated approach that meeting the China challenge adequately requires?

Making News: Podcast of Laura Ingraham Show Interview on Trump China Summit On-Line Now

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China, Making News, national security, North Korea, The Laura Ingraham Show, Trade, Trump, Xi JInPing

I’m pleased to announce that the podcast of my interview this morning on Laura Ingraham’s nationally syndicated radio show is now on-line.  Click on this link for a great discussion of President Trump’s summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and what it could mean for America’s national security and economy.  My segment begins at about the 25-minute mark.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Making News: New Lifezette Column Calls America-First Approach Key to Trump China Summit Success

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Asia, China, foreign policy establishment, Lifezette.com, Making New, national security, North Korea, Trump, Xi JInPing

I’m pleased to announce the publication of my latest op-ed article:  a column on Lifezette.com that previews this week’s summit between President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.  The piece, which you can read at this link, argues that Mr. Trump and the United States will achieve the best results if the president rejects promptings from the foreign policy establishment (including some of his own top aides!) to stay the course on America’s security-focused Asia strategy. Instead, it urges the president to return to the America-First economics and trade emphasis that marked his campaign.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of media appearances and other developments.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Following Up: That Latest (Disgraceful) Court Decision on Trump’s Immigration Order

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Congress, Constitution, due process, Elena Kagan, executive order, Following Up, Immigration, Muslim ban, national security, presidency, refugees, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, Supreme Court, terrorism, travel ban, Trump, U.S. Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit, visas, Washington State

The decision last Thursday by a federal appeals court to uphold blockage of President Trump’s recent Executive Order on immigration and refugee policy exemplified the challenge I noted when I started blogging here at RealityChek: “So much nonsense out there, so little time….” Just as I often struggle each day to decide which outrage in the public policy world against fact-based, adult thinking should be addressed, I’ve struggled to decide which sad excuses for a legal argument made by three appellate judges in the Ninth Circuit to focus on in this post.

But two groups of contentions stand out as especially dangerous and disingenuous. Both decisively influenced the judges’ determination to keep the Executive Order from being enforced on procedural grounds pending a further judicial decision on the merits of the case.

The first is the panel’s unanimous ruling on how much due process to protect Constitutionally guaranteed rights is legally deserved by foreigners outside America’s borders who have not been awarded legal resident status. That is, how many boxes do the relevant U.S. officials need to check in order to reach a legally valid decision to deny a refugee applicant admission? In these refugee cases, the Supreme Court has held that the only such obligation is providing a “facially legitimate and bona fide” reason for a judgment reached by a State Department consular officer.

The Ninth Circuit panel, however, claims that this standard (and the already established appeals process) is insufficient when refugee applicants “have a relationship with a U.S. resident or an institution that might have rights of its own to assert.” And it has ruled that the Trump Executive Order failed to meet this standard.

Even leaving aside the convincing argument that existing law denies judges jurisdiction over immigration policy (which the panel rejected in a “preliminary” sense), just consider the precedent this conclusion would set. It would mean that unless a terrorist connection could be proved conclusively, a suspected ISIS fighter or adherent who applies for refugee or other immigration status from Iraq or Yemen or wherever could be entitled to enter the United States if he or she was a relative of a non-citizen legal U.S. resident. What would conclusive proof be? Heaven knows, since the case referenced by the Ninth Circuit panel only alleged that the rejection in question wasn’t sufficiently “detailed.” And who would decide how much detail is enough? Perhaps a U.S. court? Perhaps after looking over intelligence findings that are often unavoidably judgment calls? It’s hard to imagine a better way to start turning making a sieve of screening procedures vital in an age of transnational terrorism for protecting national security.

Think I’m kidding? Here are the actual circumstances of the immigration denial decision that the Ninth Circuit apparently finds so objectionable (and which was upheld in 2014 by the Supreme Court): An Afghan-born legal resident of the United States petitioned for her husband’s entry from Afghanistan, and asserted he deserved “priority (and judicially reviewable) status” like other “immediate relatives.”

And the basis for her claim that this application was unjustly turned down – i.e., that her petition was denied due process because the rationale wasn’t sufficiently detailed? A consular official told her husband that he would be kept out of America because by his own admission, he had been an official in Afghanistan’s former Taliban government, and that U.S. law aims to exclude foreigners who have engaged in “terrorist activities” – a description that certainly applies to the Taliban.

It gets better: The federal court that did decide that a former admitted Taliban official’s application deserved (unspecified) further consideration, which resulted in the case being appealed to the Supreme Court? It was the Ninth Circuit. And four Supreme Court Justices (Stephen Breyer, who wrote a dissent, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor, who joined with him) agreed.

The second especially disturbing aspect of the appellate court’s decision was the panel’s claim that it had, in accordance with “an uncontroversial principle that is well-grounded in our jurisprudence,” paid “substantial deference to the immigration and national security policy determinations of the political branches” – that is, the presidency and the Congress. The only such deference apparent in this decision is at the level of brazen tokenism.

Specifically, the three judges claimed to agree that “the Government’s interest in combating terrorism is an urgent objective of the highest order.” But they also stated that the judiciary has a responsibility to balance this interest with other legitimate considerations, namely the public’s interest in “free flow of travel, in avoiding separation of families, and in freedom from discrimination.”

The “freedom from discrimination” threat of course pertains to repeated charges – also made in court by plaintiff Washington State – that the Executive Order’s refugee provisions create a “Muslim ban.” The Order’s failure to include most countries with Muslim majorities renders that charge inexplicable. Moreover, as my previous post observed, religious persecution is one of the forms of persecution that must be demonstrated by successful refugee applicants. But what’s simply jaw-dropping is the nature of the specific balancing act the appellate court identified involving national security concerns on the one hand, and freedom of travel and keeping families together on the other.

Because here’s what the three-judge panel asserted could nullify national security judgments made by the president and Congress (in the 2015 law identifying the seven countries subjected to the travel ban as “countries of concern” requiring special screening). And P.S.: It’s also what the judges agreed (in line with claims by Washington State and Minnesota) constituted enough “damage” to the State’s “economy and public universities” even to rise to the level of adjudicability in the context of immigration policy:

>”two visiting scholars who had planned to spend time at Washington State University were not permitted to enter the United States”:

>”three prospective employees from countries covered by the Executive Order for visas [for whom the University of Washington] had made plans [to arrive] beginning in February 2017”;

>”two medicine and science interns who have been prevented by the Executive Order from coming to the University of Washington”; and

>”an unspecified number of “students and faculty at Minnesota’s public universities [who] were similarly restricted from traveling for academic and personal reasons.”

If this is a balancing act, it’s one with a heavy Ninth Circuit thumb giving critical mass to laughably marginal considerations – even assuming that any of these temporarily inconvenienced students and teachers have any preexisting right to crossing American borders.

It’s true that lawyers and judges often insist that “no issue is decided finally until it is decided correctly.” But the Trump Executive Order’s treatment so far in the judiciary, and the current make-up of the Supreme Court, tell me that national security could suffer greatly until this result is finally reached.

Im-Politic: On That Trump Inaugural Address

Tags

American First, foreign policy, geopolitics, Immigration, inaugural address, inauguration, internationalism, John F. Kennedy, national interests, national security, Trade, Trump

Wow! That was some inauguration address from President Trump! We’ve literally never heard anything like it either from an incoming president or a new president or a long-sitting president or a former president. In fact, it is so no-less-than revolutionary that I almost hesitate to comment so soon.

But this is the blogosphere, so here’s the biggest takeaway I see so far: If Mr. Trump is as serious as he sounded about taking an “America First” approach to U.S. foreign policy, and trade and other international economic policies, he will not only turn the country upside down. He will turn the world upside down.

The main reasons are that literally since the Pearl Harbor attack, American leaders have defined this concept out of existence. That is, they have not believed that America’s interests can be separated in any meaningful and especially ongoing way from those of the rest of the world and its well-being. As I’ve written, this idea by no means reflects iron realities of America’s own situation, world politics, or America’s relations with other countries.

Instead, it springs from a distinctive ideology – best termed “internationalism” – that is as inherently subjective and imperfectly reflective of reality as any other ideology. And it’s fundamental assumption is that because the United States can’t be adequately secure or free or prosperous unless the rest of the world has achieved the same goals, the nation should assume whatever risks and expenses are necessary at least to generate progress regardless of the impact on America’s own circumstances. If you doubt this, recall (or take a look at) President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than half a century ago.

The way I see it, Kennedy’s ringing rhetoric about America’s supposedly infinite resolve and ability to defend freedom – especially in its Cold War context – pushed the United States much faster toward disaster in Vietnam, and produced similar fiascoes for decades afterwards. It’s also led Democratic and Republican presidents alike to sacrifice big and highly productive chunks of America’s domestic economy (notably manufacturing) on behalf of liberalizing global trade, fostering third world economic development, and buying and keeping allies.

So I’ve long argued for the imperative of a completely different grand strategy. It rejects as both delusional and dangerous – because unnecessary – the practice of indefinitely striving for a more stable and/or more secure world. And it concentrates on capitalizing on America’s considerable, matchless, and geographically and geologically based potential for more-than-adequate levels of security and prosperity. As a result, I’ve contended that any U.S. initiative in world affairs meet a strict, national interest test: It must strengthen or protect or enrich the United States in direct, concrete ways. And it must do so within a finite period.

This is essentially Trump’s stated approach – which internationalist critics on both the left and the right, at home and abroad, have denigrated as small-mindedly “transactional.” Of course, they also believe that it will destroy arrangements that have prevented great power war and global depression since 1945. My main point here is not repeating that the president and I are right and the naysayers are wrong, but to emphasize just how radical this possible change would be.

At the same time, I stuck “possible” into that previous sentence for good reasons. First, even if this is Mr. Trump’s plan, it’s not going to be put into effect right away. Barring existential crises, like major wars or the Great Depression or Watergate-like scandals, changes this big rarely take place quickly. Second, powerful forces remain aligned firmly against President Trump – in Big Business and on Wall Street, in the two major parties, and in the mainstream media and the rest of the national chattering classes. Don’t think they’ll give in easily. Indeed, from their backgrounds, it’s quite possible that several members of the president’s cabinet and leading advisory circles could be opposed, too.

Third, because events so often call the tune, especially in national security, it’s entirely conceivable that a series of real or apparent crises will result in a Trump foreign policy that’s mainly reactive – and continues along the same strategic lines. And fourth, some of the president’s ongoing rhetoric itself – i.e., on exercising global leadership, or on escalating the war on ISIS in the Middle East, or especially on “reinforcing old alliances” (as promised in the inaugural address) – don’t mesh easily (to say the least) with the idea of America First.

More optimistically (from my standpoint), the chances of changing America’s course on trade and immigration issues sooner rather than later seem higher. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, brought to you by former Presidents Bush (the 43d) and Obama, has now been scrapped. Mexico has announced that negotiations to transform the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and to deal with other bilateral issues, will start next week. Presidents also have impressive authority to impose various types of tariffs unilaterally, as well as to overhaul American approaches on other economic fronts – for example, on further curbing investments in the U.S. economy from China. And don’t forget how that Mr. Trump can repeal the controversial Obama executive orders on immigration with the stroke of a pen.

Finally, it’s important to note that any big change, even necessary big change, rarely comes without tumult. In addition, you can count on the mainstream media to exaggerate its severity whenever possible, as well as to blame Mr. Trump for much domestic and foreign turmoil even when he’s not remotely responsible. Even an alpha dog personality like the new president might find the visuals unnerving. I just hope that he remembers his own view that the alternative – allowing festering problems to become genuine calamities (including foreign military quagmires) – is likeliest to be far worse.

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.