Following Up: Still No Biden Learning Curve in Sight on the Middle East or China

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America First, China, energy revolution, Following Up, fossil fuels, globalism, Iran, Iran nuclear deal, Israel, Joe Biden, Middle East, oil, Phase One, Saudi Arabia, Sunnis, tariffs, The New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman, Trade, trade war, Trump

Talk about great timing! Just two days ago, I analyzed New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman’s new offering warning Joe Biden not to rush back into the Iran nuclear deal because this step could undo lots of the progress made by President Trump’s America First foreign policy approach in greatly improving the prospects for advancing and protecting U.S. interests in the region.

And just this morning, Friedman has published a piece based on lengthy interview with the apparent President-elect making clear that he has no interest in learning these valuable lessons of the recent past. In addition, Biden confirmed that his China policy plans are just as dominated by cynical doubletalk these days as during the 2020 election campaign.

As Friedman argued on November 29, Mr. Trump’s message that Israel and the Arab world’s Sunni Muslim monarchies (mainly Saudi Arabia) should no longer count on the United States to fight their battles accomplished this critical objective: It

“forced Israel and the key Sunni Arab states to become less reliant on the United States and to think about how they must cooperate among themselves over new threats — like Iran — rather than fighting over old causes — like Palestine. This may enable America to secure its interests in the region with much less blood and treasure of its own. It could be Trump’s most significant foreign policy achievement.”

But as Biden made clear in his conversation with Friedman, he either can’t or refuses to understand the key development that validates the Trump approach – the U.S. fossil fuel production revolution that has eliminated America’s overriding reason for treating the Middle East as a vital national security interest, and enabled Washington to adopt a Trump-ian take-it-or-leave-it approach safely.

Not that domestic energy independence means that completely ignoring Middle East affairs is always the best response. But it certainly does mean much greater scope for Washington to advance objectives with varying degrees of importance (notably, preventing a nuclear-armed Iran from dominating the region) in ways far less risky and costly than the lengthy wars and immense military commitments that have dominated globalist strategy.

And as Friedman has indicated, the President has started lifting the United States off its dangerous hook by leaving its Middle East allies no choice but to stop quarreling over trifles (like the fate of the Palestinians) and work together to take responsibility for their own genuinely critical and shared interests.

Biden, however, still believes that America remains so dependent on “getting some stability” in this long-unstable region that deep entanglement in Middle East affairs is unavoidable. Just as worrisome: He’s laid out a genuinely Rube Goldberg-esque rationale for treating the Iran nuclear deal as his strategy’s linchpin. As Friedman describes his blueprint (based on this interview and other conversations with top Biden aides):

“[O]nce the [nuclear] deal is restored by both sides, there will have to be, in very short order, a round of negotiations to seek to lengthen the duration of the restrictions on Iran’s production of fissile material that could be used to make a bomb — originally 15 years — as well as to address Iran’s malign regional activities, through its proxies in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

“Ideally, the Biden team would like to see that follow-on negotiation include not only the original signatories to the deal — Iran, the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, Germany and the European Union — but also Iran’s Arab neighbors, particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.”

To which the only reasonable response is “Good luck with that” – especially given the lack of consensus on Middle East goals among this highly diverse group of countries, and, equally important, the wildly varying stakes in success between governments inside and outside of the Middle East,

On China, the big and encouraging news is that Biden has decided not to remove the steep, sweeping Trump tariffs “immediately.” That position of course makes at best little sense given how disastrous he called these levies’ impact.

Otherwise, the former Vice President showed that his China policy statements could be even more thoroughly dominated by doubletalk and cluelessness than they were during the campaign.

Most troubling was how Biden contended (correctly) that “leverage” is the make-or-break factor in negotiating with China, and then quickly added “in my view, we don’t have it yet.” Even leaving aside Beijing’s at-least-suggestive decision to sign a Phase One trade deal whoppingly one-sided in favor of a country whose markets it needs desperately to secure adequate levels of prosperity, why did the apparent President-elect go out of his way to advertise supposed American weakness? Indeed, this perverse practice looks like an emerging habit of the Biden foreign policy camp.

As Biden told Friedman, he continues insisting that this leverage can be created in large measure by creating a “coherent strategy” behind which the United States and its European and Asian allies can unite. But as I’ve pointed out repeatedly, many of these countries (notably, Germany, Japan, and South Korea) have made too much money trading with China at the U.S.’ expense to support any position but a complete return to the pre-Trump era of actively coddling and enabling the People’s Republic.  (See, e.g., this analysis.)

At the same time, the apparent President-elect deserves credit for recognizing that gaining sufficient leverage to deal with China successfully requires (in Friedman’s words) “developing a bipartisan consensus at home for some good old American industrial policy — massive, government-led investments in American research and development, infrastructure and education to better compete with China.”

Finally, however, Biden still accepts the completely unjustified pre-Trump view that, without the kind of one-sided, pro-U.S. enforcement mechanism at the heart of the Phase One agreement, Washington can negotiate away most of China’s wide-ranging trade predation with precisely enough worded paper agreements. As I’ve explained, the only genuine hope for progress along these lines is the kind of dispute-resolution system set up in Phase One – in which Washington serves as judge, jury, and court of appeals. 

A few days before he spoke with Friedman, Biden told another journalist that he knows the nation and world are “totally different” from his Vice Presidential days and that therefore his administration would not be “a third Obama term.”  His conversation with Friedman, though, strongly indicated that he meant “except for the Middle East and China.”  

Im-Politic: Final Grades on the Final Debate

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battleground states, climate change, crime, crime bills, election 2020, energy, fossil fuels, fracking, green energy, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, marijuana, narcotics, natural gas, oil, presidential debates, progressives, racism, systemic racism, Trump

I got something massively wrong about the second (and final) presidential debate of 2020. I thought that my frantic live-tweeting covered every important aspect of the Thursday night event. Upon reading the transcript, I realized there was lots more to say.

Let’s start with the 30,000-foot picture. There’s no question that President Trump performed more effectively than in the first debate. Even his most uncritical admirers, like Fox News talker Sean Hannity, have conceded as much (Check out the video of his post-debate show, in which he acknowledges that long-time Republican political operative Ari Fleischer was right in faulting Mr. Trump’s first debate performance as too overheated.)

But there are plenty of questions left unanswered about the second debate’s impact on the Presidential race. For the record, I’m sticking with the assessment I offered after the first debate: Given his lead even in most battleground state polls, because the Trump campaign and other Trumpers (including Hannity) had set the bar so low for “Sleepy Joe,” all Biden needed to do was show up and not screw up massively in order to win.

Those battleground polls have tightened somewhat, Biden’s perfectly fine first debate performance raised the bar for the second debate, and I’m far from thinking that the race is over. But I’d still rather be in Biden’s shoes than in Mr. Trump’s. And time keeps running out for the President. All the same, it’s important to remember that we haven’t seen any major post-debate nationwide or battleground polls come out yet, so there’s simply no hard evidence to go on at this point.

The time-is-not-the-President’s-friend point, though, brings up my first new debate-related point: Mr. Trump’s improved performance alone (whether he “won” or not either on points or according to the public), indicates that he erred in rejecting the Commission on Presidential Debate’s offer to hold the second debate virtually, due ostensibly to CCP Virus-related reasons.

Especially if Mr. Trump had by that time begun heeding the advice of supporters urging him to dial it down (which isn’t at all clear), he lost an opportunity to square off again against Biden in real time. And although there’s no adequate on-line substitute for the atmosphere and resulting pressures of in-person encounters, the President did lose a valuable opportunity to reassure voters unnerved – rightly or wrongly – by his first debate tactics.

Getting down to specific points, on Thursday night, two issues really do demand further discussion. First, I might have been mistaken in my tweeted view that the Biden comments on natural gas fracking and energy (and related climate change) policy wouldn’t be terribly important.

I did agree that the former Vice President did nothing to help himself in key energy states like Pennsylvania, where voters might worry that his various positions – and the prominence of staunch fossil fuels opponents in Democratic ranks now – would guarantee relatively rapid closures of the coal mines and gas and oil fields that created so much employment in their regions. But I stated that, because these subjects had been aired so thoroughly already, few energy voters’ minds would be changed.

What I clearly underestimated was the impact of an extended discussion of energy and climate subjects before a nation-wide audience. If I’d been right, why would the Trump campaign have almost immediately put out an ad spotlighting Biden’s assorted statements on these topics. And why would the Biden campaign have spent so much time trying to explain the Biden position?

Looking at the transcript helped me understand why energy- and climate-related anxieties in the energy states might have been elevated by the Biden debate remarks. For on the one hand, the Democratic challenger insisted that he was “ruling out” “banning fracking” and claimed that

“What I will do with fracking over time is make sure that we can capture the emissions from the fracking, capture the emissions from gas. We can do that and we can do that by investing money in doing it, but it’s a transition to that.”

And whereas previously, Biden had responded to a primary debate question about whether fossil fuels would have any place in his prospective administration by declaring “We would make sure it’s eliminated and no more subsidies for either one of those. Any fossil fuel,” on Thursday night, the former Vice President referred to transitioning from “the old oil industry”–presumably to some (undefined) new kind of oil industry.

Nonetheless, it would be reasonable for energy states residents to question these assurances of gradualness and transformation instead of elimination given Biden’s continued contention that “global warming is an existential threat to humanity,” that “we’re going to pass the point of no return within the next eight to ten years,” and that the energy sector in toto needs “to get to ultimately a complete zero emissions by 2025.” Last time I checked, that’s only five years from now.

Moreover, given the notable split within the Democratic party on climate change and energy issues between progressives and centrists, the Biden statements suggesting that major fossil fuel industries will survive during his administration in some form could depress turnout in their ranks for a candidate who clearly needs to stoke their enthusiasm.

The second set of issues I should have tweeted more about entails crime and race relations. I think Biden deserves a great deal of credit for calling “a mistake” his support for crime bills of the 1980s and 1990s that, in the words of moderator Kristen Welker “contributed to the incarceration of tens of thousands of young Black men who had small amounts of drugs in their possession, they are sons, they are brothers, they are fathers, they are uncles, whose families are still to this day, some of them suffering the consequences.”

He was also correct in pointing out that President Trump – who quite properly pointed to some noteworthy achievements of his administration on behalf of African Americans – took a sweepingly harsh line on crime himself in previous decades.

But two positions taken by Biden should disturb even supporters. First, his argument that “It took too long [during the Obama administration] to get it right. Took too long to get it right. I’ll be President of the United States, not Vice President of the United States,” clearly throws his former boss under the bus. In fact, he also implicitly blamed Obama for the failure to resolve the problem created by children living the United States born to illegal immigrant parents.

The second such position was Biden’s argument that “No one should be going to jail because they have a drug problem. They should be going to rehabilitation, not to jail.”

I personally can support this view when it comes to hard drugs. But marijuana? For whose use so many American blacks have been jailed – and so many more than white Americans? (I’m not a big fan of the American Civil Liberties Union these days, but the data in this study are tough to refute.) Mandatory (government-funded?) therapy for potheads? That could use some rethinking.

But like I said at the outset, I expressed views on many other debate-related subjects on my Twitter feed (@AlanTonelson). So there’s no substitute for following there, as well as checking in with RealityChek, for the most up-to-date thinking on the election — as well as everything else under the sun.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Through the Looking Glass With the New US GDP Report?

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CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, durable goods, exports, GDP, goods, Great Depression, Great Recession, gross domestic product, imports, inflation-adjusted growth, non-durable goods, oil, real GDP, real trade deficit, services, trade deficit, Wuhan virus, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Today’s U.S. government report on the shrinkage of the American gross domestic product (GDP) in the first quarter of the year is fascinating not because it can provide any idea about how bad the CCP Virus-induced economic downturn is right now, much less how bad it will get. Instead, it’s fascinating because it provides (and confirms) some insights on which sectors of the economy have been the biggest winners and losers, and which could fare best and worst going forward.

First, a vitally important explanatory point: When you read that the economy contracted by 4.8 percent between the last three months of 2019 and the first three months of 2020 after factoring in inflation, remember that this figure is an annualized figure. That is, it doesn’t mean that the nation’s output of goods and services (the definition of GDP) fell by that amount all at once during the first quarter. It means that if the contraction that did occur continued at the same pace over the course of a full year, the cumulative drop would add up to 4.8 percent. (NB: The real decline was 4.87 percent, even though the Commerce Department rounded it down to 4.8 for some reason.)

The same cautionary note goes for all the terrifying predictions for the second quarter in particular, to the effect that inflation-adjusted GDP would plummet by 20 percent of 30 percent. They’re annualized rates, too.

No doubt about it – even the new annualized numbers are terrible. (And unless otherwise specified, all the following statistics will represent sequential – i.e., quarter-to-quarter – rates of change.) That’s not because they’re the worst that Americans have seen lately. That dubious honor goes to the fourth quarter of 2008, during the Great Recession, when real GDP sank at an 8.66 percent annual rate. Instead, it’s because the main shutdowns of business didn’t start until mid-March. Since the first quarter ended on March 31, a genuinely appalling amount of damage took place in a very short period of time.

As a result, surely the numbers for the second quarter will be much worse, as the lockdowns themselves spread for weeks thereafter, and their effects have had time to sink in (even though the second quarter figures presumably will reflect some of the cautious easing and reopening that’s begun). Also possibly leading to more depressing future results: Today’s first quarter figures are the first of three reports for the first quarter we’ll be getting this year. As Washington gathers more complete information, the reported nosedive could well get steeper.

The principal ray of hope comes in the nature of the downturn. It was literally ordered by America’s national, state, and local governments. Whatever recession or depression that’s begun says little about the fundamentals of the economy pre-virus – unlike typical recessions, which result from weaknesses in expansions that for various reasons finally come to light, or are brought to light by the Federal Reserve (in many cases) – which in modern times, has reacted to signs of economic excesses (like accelerating inflation), by raising interest rates (that is, increasing the cost of borrowing for everyone) and trying to bring price changes back under control. (And yes, a big exception was the Fed’s record during the previous, so-called Bubble Decade, when its principal aim seemed to be to juice growth at all costs – in that case, at the risk of scary degrees of financial instability.)

All the same, the biological roots of this economic slump create great uncertainties about the rate of recovery, since no one can know how quickly Americans will return to patronizing service sector business in particular, which comprise the vast bulk of the economy, and so many of which largely serve customers in person.

In that vein, it’s more than a little interesting that output in services shrank in the first quarter at a much faster annual rate (10.63 percent) than goods output (1.35 percent). Dig a little deeper, though, and you see that the numbers for goods are sharply divided. After-inflation output of durables (products supposed to last for three years or more either in use or on the shelf – like autos and appliances) plunged by 17.12 percent at annual rates. But constant dollar production of non-durables (notably processed food but also chemicals and paper and textile and plastics and others) actually increased – by 6.77 percent.

Those goods and services figures are contained in the “personal consumption expenditures” category of each GDP report. And overall, such consumption dropped by 7.78 percent annualized in the first quarter. Notably, that’s a much worse result than anything seen during the last, Great, recession (which, by the way, was the previous deepest economic slump experienced in the United States since the Great Depression of the 1930s). During that most recent downturn, personal spending’s decrease bottomed out with a 3.72 percent annualized fall in the fourth quarter of 2008.

No – to get to a worse consumption figure than just recorded, you need to go all the way back to the second quarter of 1980, during a horrible period marked by a painful recession and roaring inflation partly produced by sharp oil price increases. Then, such spending cratered at a 9.01 percent annual rate, and the entire economy shrank by 8.23 percent annualized.

Of course, the American economy entails more than just personal consumption (although, as known by RealityChek regulars, such spending represented a big majority of all economic activity– 69.27 percent of real GDP at present – even after the big decreases in the first quarter). Business investment amounted to 14.03 percent of GDP after inflation, and its levels were off considerably, too, in the first quarter – by 8.92 percent.

No doubt, that’s going to worsen, since the lower personal spending, as well as the lower business spending itself, mean that so many businesses will be short of customers for the time being. Even so, the Great Recession numbers were much worse. From the fourth quarter of 2008 through the second quarter of 2009, this “non-residential fixed investment” tumbled at double-digit quarterly rates, with the bottom coming during the first quarter of 2009 (a 30.14 percent plummet!).

And what about America’s trade performance? The constant dollar trade deficit narrowed by 9.25 percent – from $900.7 billion (again, that’s an annualized figure) to $817.4 billion. That deficit number is the lowest quarterly figure since the $761.4 billion recorded in the fourth quarter of 2016. Yet the rate of decrease was almost matched by that of the fourth quarter of last year (9.03 percent). To find a comparable result, you’d have to go back to the fourth quarter of 2013 (9.24 percent).

One big question: How much of this latest drop was due to oil? We know that the general answer is “a lot” – even though in principle these results take into account (i.e., factor out) the recent crash in oil prices. Nonetheless, a dramatically slowed U.S. economy is going to consume less oil overall (ditto for a recessed global economy, something to ponder since the United States is now an oil exporter). So we’ll need to look at the volume numbers and then compare them with those of previous quarters when the trade deficit dropped significantly for a fuller picture.

What is clear so far, though – in terms of the real overall trade deficit, the first quarter 2020 decline pales before those experienced during the Great Recession. In particular, the real trade gap decreased by 15.08 percent annualized during the first quarter of 2009 and by 18.13 percent during the following quarter.

In line with the consumption findings, moreover, services trade performed worse than (the much greater amount of) goods trade. The goods deficit was 7.39 percent narrower in the first quarter of 2020 ($0.9995 trillion annualized) than during the fourth quarter of 2019 ($1.0792 trillion annualized). But the services surplus rose by only 2.07 percent (from $188.2 billion annualized to $192.1 billion).

Especially revealing were the import and export findings. For goods, exports were off by only 0.30 percent – from $1.7823 trillion annualized to $1.7769 trillion. But for services, they dropped by 5.85 percent (from $758.6 billion annualized to $714.2 billion).

The services export and imports decreases were the biggest on record – by far. And although figures only go back to the first quarter of 2002, can anyone seriously doubt that these results reflect the numerous international travel bans sparked by the United States – and so many other countries?

Because services play such a predominant role in the economy, and because services that need to be delivered in person, like dining out and travel, represent such big shares of the economy (just short of 3.25 percent of all private sector output for restaurants, bars, and lodging places alone as of late 2019, and a much bigger 11.06 percent of the private sector workforce), it seems reasonable at this point to expect these sectors to keep taking particularly powerful blows at least as long as the virus remains a pandemic.   

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: So Far, So Good for Trump on Iran

Tags

America First, globalism, Iran, Middle East, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, oil, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Soleimani, terrorism, Trump

On the one hand, anyone hoping for the success of President Trump’s America First foreign policies (which, as I’ve written, could be a lot more America First-y), would be dumb as a post to jog a victory lap following Mr. Trump’s remarks this morning about the situation in Iran and the Middle East.

On the other hand, any American genuinely hoping for the security of his country and not blinded by Trump Derangement Syndrome can’t help but be impressed by how encouragingly events in the Middle East have unfolded since the killing of Qassem Soleimani, who had commanded Iran’s military efforts to expand its influence throughout the region.

First, all signs indicate that the Soleimani killing has delivered to Iran (and probably its proxies) two messages as vital as they’ve been convincing: If you kill Americans, or attack American embassies and other regional and other foreign assets, the leaders who planned these actions will get the axe. If this interpretation is wrong, then the Trump critics will need to explain why Iran retaliated by “targeting” Iraqi bases with accurate ballistic missiles but then missing the mark – conveniently avoiding striking the U.S. forces housed there.

The Never Trump-ers will also need to explain a stunning statement from an Iranian government that has never displayed any hesitancy about personalizing its conflict with the United States: Foreign Minister Javad Zarif’s claim that the President has been fed misinformation about Soleimani and his country’s foreign policy. If that wasn’t a peace, or de-escalation feeler, I don’t know what could be.

Therefore, the immediate bottom line seems awfully favorable to the United States: Iran lost a leader described as the country’s second most important political figure, and an American ally (for lack of a better term for Iraq) lost some structures.

Moreover, Iran hasn’t even entirely gotten away scot free with last night’s actions. Mr. Trump announced tighter sanctions against an economy that’s already being decimated by U.S.-spearheaded curbs on trade and investment. He announced a pressure campaign to secure more involvement in the Middle East by America’s NATO allies – who defied many Never Trumper predictions and generally lined up with the United States both on the Soleimani killing (over which they shed no tears) and on Iran’s retaliation, and who have a much greater stake in Middle East stability. And the President declared that further U.S. responses haven’t been ruled out (although if they take the form of cyber assaults, we may never hear about them, at least for many years).

Meanwhile, let’s review – for now, anyway – how many Never Trumper talking points stand as truly loony and indeed downright disgraceful:

>that the President is too psychologically unstable and specifically insecure to avoid plunging the United States into an endless cycle of retaliation and counter-retaliation;

>that the Soleimani killing was a “wag the dog” effort to distract the nation’s attention from impeachment and even to spark a rally-round-the-flag popular reaction that would aid his reelection campaign; and

>that because of the President’s incompetence, the Trump administration’s foreign policy decision-making apparatus is dangerously chaotic.

This Trump success doesn’t validate the President’s entire Middle East policy by any means. First and foremost, the region remains too dysfunctional and explosive to justify confidence in any optimistic predictions.

More specifically, however, as I’ve complained elsewhere, Mr. Trump still seems wed to the globalist goals of both protecting the Middle East against Iranian aggression, and fostering the region’s “peace and stability” – through a combination of more U.S. forces for the near-term future, anyway; more effective cooperation with regional allies; more of that aforementioned involvement by America’s fellow members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In a phrase, “Not gonna happen.”

Additionally, this conviction is all the more puzzling given the President’s statement today that

“Over the last three years, under my leadership, our economy is stronger than ever before and America has achieved energy independence.  These historic accomplishments changed our strategic priorities.  These are accomplishments that nobody thought were possible.  And options in the Middle East became available.  We are now the number-one producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world.  We are independent, and we do not need Middle East oil.”

Even better, the observation was made in the context of seeking a greater regional role for countries remaining highly dependent on these energy supplies.

Yes, a terrorism threat remains. But as I’ve also written, it’s ultimately (meaning ASAP) much better handled by further securing America’s own borders rather than by chasing endlessly mushrooming Jihadist groups around a completely failed region. And if you’re worried about Israel, there can be no legitimate doubt that the Israelis can handle themselves with continued American military aid – especially since Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu just again made clear (if accidentally) that the country has a nuclear arsenal.

In other words, Mr. Trump’s latest Iran-related gambit combined some elements of operational America First-ism (a focus on actions that affected American lives) and of rhetorical globalism. The more closely he hews to the former, and relegates the latter to political cover for an eventual wind-down of decades of often disastrously counterproductive U.S. intervention, the more grateful his countrymen will have cause to be.

Im-Politic: Muddled Iran Deal Messages from the Democrats

Tags

allies, Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker, Democratic Party, Democrats, election 2020, foreign policy, Im-Politic, Iran, Iran deal, Iran nuclear deal, JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Kamala Harris, McClatchy News Service, Obama, oil, Persian Gulf, sanctions, Trump

The usual gang of political observers and commentators (apologies to the soon-to-be-departed Mad magazine) seem to agree that this year’s Democratic candidates for President haven’t been paying much attention yet to foreign policy. Here’s my explanation: The more many of them say about the subject, the clearer their ignorance and incoherence will become, and the last few weeks have just provided a splendid example – public positions stake out on whether to rejoin the 2015 international deal aimed at curbing and slowing Iran’s nuclear weapons development.

You’ll recall that the Iran deal (officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) was signed by the Islamic Republic on the one hand, and China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States on the other. Under its terms, Iran agreed to certain restrictions on its nuclear program in return for substantial relief from various, mainly economic, sanctions imposed by some of these individual countries, along with the United Nations as a whole, in retaliation both for Iran’s nuclear and some other activities deemed unacceptable threats to international security.

Even the deal’s backers conceded some serious flaws, but insisted that its terms were the best possible given divisions among the United States, its allies, and Russia and China about how hard to press Iran (generally due to differences over the value of resuming commerce as usual with Iran). I initially bought this line, too. But as I recently wrote, ensuing developments – mainly the devastating impact on Iran’s economy of unilateral U.S. sanctions reimposed by Washington once President Trump withdrew from the agreement in May, 2018 – makes clear that Iran’s interlocutors had much more leverage than they (including then President Obama) claimed, and that a better deal was always possible.

Enter the 2020 Democrats. Understandably, they’re seeking to criticize the Trump foreign policy record whenever they can, and many have attacked his decision to pull out of the JCPOA. But most of these attackers have implicitly expressed agreement with the Trump view that the deal can and must be improved.

Take Flavor of the Month Kamala Harris. According to the first-term California Senator, Mr. Trump deserved the blame for the recent rise in tensions in the Persian Gulf that culminated in alleged Iranian attacks on oil tankers and an American drone because he “put in place a series of events that led to” those moves. By this she of course meant Iran’s apparent decision to follow through on its threats to defend legitimate interests it sees as threatened by (a) the United States’ overall economic “maximum pressure” campaign aimed at ending Tehran’s alleged regional aggression, and (b) more specifically by the Trump administration’s cancellation of sanctions waivers that had permitted other countries to buy some of the oil Iran desperately needs to sell in order to stay afloat economically.

As the Islamic Republic stated, it would seek to press the other signatories to convince the United States to back off the sanctions by pulling out of several provisions of the nuclear deal (chiefly, those limiting its ability to create bomb-grade uranium) and by preventing any other countries from importing any Persian Gulf oil themselves.

How would Harris respond? She told a CBS News reporter, “Well frankly, I believe that we need to get back into the Iran nuclear deal.” That’s certainly logical, since respecting the deal’s terms would require that Washington drop its sanctions, presumably granting Iran the economic support it’s seeking and eliminating any reason for attacking Gulf shipping.

But she then (unwittingly, it seems) endorsed the position of the President and other critics that deal improvements are urgently needed – and possible: “I would strengthen it. I would include ballistic- ballistic missile testing. I think that we can strengthen what we do in terms of monitoring and verification, of progress.” Never mind, of course, that there’s no sign to date that any of the other signatories agree.

And to compound the confusion, Harris proceeded to pivot back to praise for the agreement as-is: “But there’s no question that a lot of negotiation with a great deal of depth took place over a long period of time to reach that agreement, and it was it was an agreement that was being complied with by all parties.”

My head is spinning, and yours should be, too.

But evidently Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota understand Harris’ message perfectly. Because it’s their message, too.

In their initial presidential debate appearances, both these supporters of the original deal attacked the Trump pull-out but their support for reentry seemed linked to implementing changes.

Said Booker ““It was a mistake to pull out of that deal. Donald Trump is marching us to a far more difficult situation.” But he then promised, “If I have an opportunity to leverage a better deal, I’m going to do it.”

Klobuchar charged that the Trump pullout “made us less safe” because although the agreement “was imperfect…it was a good deal for that moment.” But apparently she now worries that – just a few years later – the moment has passed. For she suggested that (according to the McClatchy News Service summary cited above) “the agreement’s ‘sunset periods’ – caps on Iran’s enrichment and stockpiling of fissile material set to expire five to 10 years from the next inauguration– [are] a potential point of renegotiation.” Of course, the short duration of these caps was cited by deal critics as a major weakness.

A common aphorism holds that it’s “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.” If these Iran deal stances are any indication, most Democratic candidates are demonstrating major political smarts, at least, by avoiding foreign policy issues.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Time to “Lead from Behind” on the Gulf?

Tags

allies, America First, Barack Obama, Iran, oil, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Persian Gulf, Straits of Hormuz

It sounds like a global nightmare scenario like those described in Cold War thrillers like “Fail Safe” – Middle East militants from someplace start attacking shipping in the Persian Gulf, through which a third of the world’s oil supplies flow, and the international economy teeters on the brink of total collapse. Except such attacks are happening right now.

So the Trump administration’s counter-moves – sounding alarms, blaming Iran, and seeking to rally global support for some kind of forceful response – seem to make perfect sense.

Actually, however, there’s every reason to think that the global economy can ride out this apparent crisis just fine, and that as a result, the President is missing an opportunity to display the virtues of a genuine America First foreign policy.

Not that the Gulf doesn’t matter for global oil trade. An estimated 30 percent of the globe’s oil exports travel through it, and out to markets the world over through its narrow Straits of Hormuz. Moreover, many of the world’s leading economies depend on such oil for big (though significantly varying) shares of their total energy use.

But these countries so far have displayed no interest in taking military steps to protect the oil flow. Indeed, many have focused their efforts instead on questioning the U.S. claims about Iran’s responsibility.

It’s tempting to view these actions as simply the latest example of such American allies counting on the United States to pull their fat from the fire – and/or a worrisome sign that the Trump administration’s alleged “bullying” on issues ranging from China trade to sharing the burden for the supposedly common defense to dealing with Iran and its nuclear weapons ambitions and other aggressive policies has cost it precious credibility with America’s best foreign friends.

Yet there’s also a strong case to be made that in this case, the allies’ apparent dithering (a charge that would be justified by either of the above narratives) makes perfect sense. The reason? The world literally has been here before – in spades. That is, in recent memory, the Gulf has been a much more violent place, and a much more threatening environment for oil tankers specifically. And as described in this useful Washington Post review, most of the global economic consequences were pretty minor. Those that weren’t – mainly entailing oil price hikes – didn’t last especially long in part because, quite naturally, the higher prices generated more supply, which brought the prices back down after a few years.   

Moreover, even if “this time it’s different” in the Gulf, there’s an equally strong case that the United States should be following the allies’ lead. After all, they’re potentially the countries that are most seriously affected. Therefore, at least theoretically speaking, they have the greatest incentives to behave responsibly. If their economies do run into trouble, the U.S. economy certainly wouldn’t escape unscathed, given its extensive trade and investment with Europe and Asia.

But because thanks to its fracking-led energy production revolution, the United States no longer imports much oil from anywhere any more, the impact would be much less important. Chances are, moreover, that this impact would be far below a level that would warrant military action, much less taking charge of such operations.  And since the allies’ ambivalence indicates that their aid couldn’t be counted on, a major American-dominated military initiative seems even more foolhardy.  

Several years ago, an anonymous Obama administration official created a stir when he described the President’s approach for intervening in the Libya civil war as “leading from behind.” Critics definitely had a point when they charged that such strategies were difficult at best to reconcile with the then prevailing globalist foreign policy strategy that defined vital U.S. interests in sweeping, near-universal terms and emphasized the need for active, practically ceaseless American global engagement. But following the allies’ lead in the current Persian Gulf crisis seems like just the ticket.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why Trump Needs to Go Real America First vs the Saudis

Tags

America First, globalism, Iran, Israel, Jamal Khashoggi, Magnitsky sanctions, Middle East, Mohammed bin Salman, oil, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Saudi Arabia, terrorism, Washington Post

Earlier this year, The National Interest published a lengthy article of mine arguing that President Trump seemed to be repeating a mistake that has doomed previous efforts to replace a failed, longstanding globalist strategy with a fundamentally new foreign policy much better suited to the country’s real strengths and weaknesses. And just this morning, this prediction was borne out by the Washington Post‘s editorial writers (best viewed as among the many unofficial spokespeople for globalist approaches that fill the Mainstream Media) in a piece they wrote on Mr. Trump’s approach to the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi authorized at top levels by the Saudi Arabian monarchy.

My article made the case that globalism would never be rejected unless the President made a clean, fully explained, break with the assumptions on which it was based. Instead, it pointed out, he seemed to have settled (wittingly or not) on an approach that might be called “globalism on the cheap.” That is, Mr. Trump’s actions appear to reflect a belief that most and even all of globalism’s supposed economic and security benefits can be realized, and supposed goals achieved (both entailing shaping the entire global environment in ways America allegedly needs in order to be acceptably safe and prosperous) while reducing its costs (e.g., subsidizing the defense of free-riding allies, and their economies with lopsided trade arrangements). The essay also explained that, because similar claims made by globalism critics in the past turned out to be literally too good to be true, numerous chances for genuine and urgently needed foreign policy overhaul have been lost.

That’s why the Post editorial is so revealing. It shows that, because Mr. Trump’s rejection of globalism has been so partial (in this case, when it comes to the Middle East), he’s made himself vulnerable to the kinds of attacks that have vanquished earlier critics and squandered a golden opportunity to stake out a true America First position that would have been strategically sound and politically popular. In fact, the Trump Saudi statements have enabled his critics to slam him in two powerful ways.

First, the Post edit writers have restated the common charge that the President was “craven” in letting Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman off the hook for the Khashoggi murder largely because of economic considerations like the kingdom’s purchases of U.S.-made weapons and its cooperation in keeping oil prices low. As the editorial puts it, Mr. Trump, “cares not a fig for American values….And if he can sell one or two more fighter jets, who cares if a journalist is murdered?”

Small wonder that his decision has been so unpopular even with many of his supporters in Congress. Just as bad, the President’s rationale is so narrow that it’s been easy to undercut on its own terms (e.g., by questioning the actual importance of Saudi Arabia’s imports to the U.S. economy).

But the editorial’s second line of attack is much more important, and is worth presenting in full. The President, according to the Post, is

“undermining the basic understanding that has worked to the United States’ advantage since World War II under presidents both Republican and Democratic.

“Those leaders all accepted that, with less than 5 percent of global population but more than 20 percent of the global economy, the United States, more than any other nation, depends on and benefits from predictable rules. It needs a world where business executives can go forth and come home without fear of kidnapping, where ships can ply the oceans without armed escorts, where contracts are honored and disputes fairly adjudicated. It needs a world where journalists can report and inform Americans on the true conditions on the ground.

“Previous presidents understood that the way to achieve such a world was to enlist allies who would live by the United States’ rules in return for protection — safe in knowledge that the United States would not use its preeminence to squeeze them for every last dollar. They would go along because the United States stood not just for itself but for rules that benefited everyone and for values they cherished, as well: freedom, human dignity, the rule of law. By championing good — albeit imperfectly and inconsistently — the United States did well.”

As my National Interest piece explained, this by-now-standard defense of globalism has the decisive sources of U.S. security and prosperity exactly backward. Far from depending on a placid world largely knit together by alliances and institutions dominated by like-minded countries, the real guarantors of U.S. power and wealth are America’s…power and wealth – i.e., its own assets – along with an unmistakable willingness to use them when advisable.

Further, this power and wealth have been indispensable both in instances when unilateral action has been desirable or unavoidable, and in ensuring that the specific forms taken by various cooperative (“multilateral”) ventures advance American interests – an outcome globalists wrongly take for granted.

These America First-supporting conclusions, by the way, are so valid that it’s become routine for even globalists unknowingly to acknowledge them – as did the Post’s editorialists when they (rightly) accused the President of failing “to see that Saudi Arabia is far more dependent on the United States than the reverse.”

But Mr. Trump’s own failure to recognize the real U.S.-Saudi power balance is far more frustrating for backers of new America First foreign policies. And in a Middle Eastern context, it’s manifested in much more than his views on the Saudi market for American arms exports.

For example, it’s also apparent from his conviction that keeping world and U.S. oil prices relatively low depends on Washington making nice to Riyadh – whereas the Saudis have learned that overly expensive and/or skyrocketing oil prices hurt them (badly) as well. After all, until recently, they’ve reduced American and worldwide economic growth, and therefore reduced the oil revenues on which the kingdom is completely reliant economically. More recently, because of the U.S. energy production revolution (a development vigorously – and correctly – championed by the President), the higher global oil prices rise, the more American oil and natural gas come on stream to the world market, and take market share from the Saudis and other Middle Eastern and foreign exporters.

And, as I’ve written repeatedly, the President’s partial America-First-ism is clear from his belief that it’s vital for U.S. national security to support Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Muslim countries (along with Israel) in order to contain Iran’s regional ambitions.

So what would a real America First approach to the Khashoggi murder have been? Nothing less than the long overdue beginning of a U.S. strategic withdrawal from the hopelessly violent and dysfunctional Middle East based on the (equally long overdue) understanding. This decision would be described an explained in high profile presidential speeches and other declarations that, with the following points, would put the globalists on the defensive for a change: that the United States no longer needs the region’s oil nearly so desperately; that terrorist threats originating in the Middle East are best met by securing America’s own borders, rather than by battling jihadist networks all around the world; and that any Iranian threat to the U.S. homeland is eminently deter-able with U.S. nuclear forces.

P.S. For those concerned about Israel’s security (and that includes me), the Jewish state is more than capable of protecting itself through a combination of its own military strength, its own emerging alliance with the Sunnis – which will also contain any possible headaches from Palestinian radicals – and continuing military and economic assistance from Washington.

In the process, Mr. Trump should announce some painful and specific slaps at the Saudis – like expelling, say, half of their staff from their embassy in Washington and imposing painful so-called Magnitsky sanctions on the personal finances of bin Salman and others at the most senior levels of the Saudi leadership. For nothing is more central to the concept of America First than that, barring truly vital strategic interests to the contrary (the reduction of which itself is a high America First priority), no one gets away with harming American citizens or legal residents (Khashoggi’s status) unjustly.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why the Khashoggi Incident Really Matters

Tags

Al Qaeda, America First, arms sales, Cold War, energy, globalism, globalists, Iran, ISIS, Islam, Israel, Jamal Khashoggi, jihadism, Middle East, oil, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, September 11, terrorism, Trump

Important though it is, the most important question surrounding the possibility that Saudi Arabia’s monarchy has killed Jamal Khashoggi is not whether the United States responds or how it responds if the kingdom did murder the dissident journalist – who happens to be a legal resident of the United States.

Instead, the most important question is really two-fold. First, do the many U.S. foreign policy traditionalists calling for severe punishment understand how such a move could undercut the decades-long approach toward the Saudis that they themselves have strongly supported? Second, and even more intriguing, do these globalists understand that the Khashoggi affair is simply the latest in a long string of signs that it’s well past time for the United States to adopt a genuine America First approach and leave the hot, dysfunctional mess that is the entire Muslim Middle East?

Given the prominence of maintaining good relations with the Saudis in the strategies of American globalists across the the board, it’s nothing less than jaw-dropping to see how many of them – liberal and conservative alike – are calling for strong counter-measures if Khashoggi is in fact dead at Saudi hands. Here’s a representative example from no less than former CIA chief John Brennan – who’s gone on Never Trump rampage in part because he views Trump’s foreign policy views as anathema. My astonishment, however, is justified even if much of the outrage is no more than outrage-signaling – posturing assumed to be safe because the Trump administration will eventually not upset the felafel cart.

After all, since World War II, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Persian Gulf region has been valued as a prime source of the oil desperately needed for the world economy to function acceptably in peacetime, and crucial to prevailing over ruthless global enemies in hot and cold wars alike. Once the Soviet threat disappeared, the region’s oil retained all of its perceived importance, and the critical mass of the foreign policy establishment gravitated toward seeing first Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and then Iran’s theocracy as the prime threat to the world’s unimpeded access. Crucially, not even evidence of (unofficial?) Saudi support for the Islamic extremists of Al Qaeda who launched the September 11 attacks ever truly threatened the U.S.-Saudi connection. 

Indeed, in recent years, even far left-of-center American politicians joined widespread calls for Washington to create a Middle Eastern-dominated coalition to handle most of the fight against ISIS (a successor group to Al Qaeda). And one of the anchors of this arrangement was expected to be none other than Saudi Arabia.

As I’ve argued for years now, none of the arguments for a close, if informal, U.S.-Saudi alliance holds any more water. North America possesses all the fossil fuels needed by the United States, and thanks to the shale/fracking-led energy technology revolution, the Persian Gulf’s role as key global oil supplier is greatly diminished as well. The terrorist threats likely to keep emanating from the region are best dealt with through much stronger U.S. border controls, not repeated American military interventions or fantasies about the Muslim Middle East’s decrepit (and highly compromised) regimes becoming a strong, reliable bulwark against jihadism.

And those claiming that Israel’s security warrants continuing America’s Middle East policy status quo need to remember that Israel and Saudi Arabia (and most other Sunni monarchies) have now created a tacit alliance to counter Shi’ite Iran. Moreover, Washington can always keep selling or simply giving the Israelis all the weapons they need.

The situation has changed so much that the most compelling argument against steps like cutting off or suspending U.S. arms sales to the Saudis has been advanced by President Trump: a boatload of revenue and jobs would be lost by the American economy, and the Saudis could always turn to alternate suppliers (like the Chinese and, more credibly – because their military equipment is still better – the Russians). In addition, don’t forget this irony: Consistent with its anti-Iran goals, Israel and its own impressive defense-related technologies could also partly fill the vacuum left by a U.S. withdrawal from the Saudi market.

At the same time, there’s no shortage of countries living in dangerous neighborhoods that would remain or could become massive buyers of American weapons. And as pointed out here, the Saudi military has relied on so much U.S. equipment for so long that changing its complexion would be as complicated as it would be expensive. Not to mention the years it would take for a regime that faces imminent threats to complete this task.

As a result, even if Khashoggi miraculously reappears one day, or even if he doesn’t but the Saudis are innocent, here’s hoping that the uproar over his disappearance triggers some major rethinking of America’s Middle East policy. After all, to paraphrase a famous recent remark about governing, a policy firestorm is a terrible thing to waste.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: China, Manufacturing, the EU, & Canada (sort of) Led the New Trade Deficit Surge

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Canada, China, EU, European Union, exports, imports, Made in Washington trade deficit, manufacturing, Mexico, NAFTA, North American Free Frade Agreement, oil, real trade deficii, recovery, services, tariffs, Trade, trade deficit, Trump, {What's Left of) Our Economy

With President Trump still threatening to slap $200 billion worth of tariffs on Chinese imports this week, this morning’s trade figures from the Census Bureau show that the U.S. goods deficit with China hit a new monthly record of $36.83 billion. The U.S. manufacturing trade shortfall reached an all-time high as well – $92.29 billion. And as talks to revamp NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) continue, America’s goods gap with Canada jumped by nearly 58 percent on month, but the merchandise shortfall with Mexico sank by more than 25 percent.

The goods gap with the European Union, meanwhile, reached record monthly heights as well ($17.59 billion). The sequential increase of 50.03 percent was the greatest since October, 2013 (58.87 percent) and was driven by the biggest monthly plunge in U.S. merchandise exports (15.72 percent) to the region since July, 2006 (16.62 percent).

America’s combined goods and services trade deficit rose at its fastest pace (9.50 percent) since March, 2015 (35.63 percent), to $50.08 billion from a downwardly revised $45.74 billion. Total monthly imports of $261.16 billion were a new record as well, and total monthly exports fell for the first time since January – to $211.08 billion. Other all-time monthly highs were recorded for services exports ($70.29 billion), services imports ($47.22 billion), goods imports ($213.94 billion), and current dollar oil exports ($15.77 billion). Pre-inflation oil imports of $20.32 billion were the highest since December, 2014 ($23.58 billion). Though not a new monthly record in July, the goods trade deficit did increase that month at its fastest pace (6.11 percent) since November, 2016 (6.76 percent).

Although these July trade figures come too early in the third quarter to calculate trade’s drag on the current economic recovery through that period, if the monthly deficits remain in this neighborhood, trade’s subtraction from cumulative growth since the expansion began would rebound after falling during the second quarter. As of the revised second quarter figures, the increase in the real total trade deficit since mid-2009 had reduced inflation-adjusted growth during this period by 11.79 percent, or $398.50 billion. That was down from the $457.20 billion drag (14.33 percent) as of the final first quarter results.

The trade drag numbers are much greater for the Made in Washington trade deficit – that portion of U.S. trade flows most heavily influenced by trade agreements and similar trade policy decisions. As a result, it omits trade in services (where liberalization efforts remain at an early stage) and in energy (which is rarely discussed in trade diplomacy as such). The final first quarter figures pegged this growth drag at 17.37 percent, or $523.88 billion worth of lost constant dollar growth. As of the revised second quarter numbers, this growth bite had shrunk to 14.88 percent, or $502.90 billion worth of lost real growth.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Syria, Round II

Tags

air strikes, America First, chemical weapons, globalism, jihadism, John R. Bolton, Middle East, oil, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Syria, terrorism, Trump

About a year ago, when President Trump first ordered airstrikes to punish Syria for using chemical weapons in its civil war, I made the case for not jumping to the conclusion that the chief executive had betrayed his promises to carry out an America First-style foreign policy. This weekend of course came a second set of Syria strikes, with the same declared objective, and I still believe that they don’t herald a new burst of (futile, if not counterproductive) interventionism in the Middle East. My main reason: Mr. Trump’s own words in announcing the attacks.

At the same time, don’t think that I’m incredibly confident that I’m right.  

First, the reasons for some confidence about where Syria policy is headed. According to the President, he’s under no illusion that either limited American uses of military force or more comprehensive policies will cure what ails Syria or the completely dysfunctional and failed Middle Eastern neighborhood in which it lives. In his words, not only is he opposed to “an indefinite presence in Syria.” He declared more broadly:

“Looking around our very troubled world, Americans have no illusions. We cannot purge the world of evil or act everywhere there is tyranny.

“No amount of American blood or treasure can produce lasting peace and security in the Middle East. It’s a troubled place. We will try to make it better, but it is a troubled place.”

In other words, Mr Trump is rejecting the globalist premises of his post-World War II predecessors. Reflecting the ostensible (and, it seems, eternal) lessons of appeasing fascist dictators during the 1930s, they have held that aggression or turmoil or instability or (fill in the upsetting development of your choice) anywhere are all too likely to escalate into crises that will eventually threaten the United States.

As a result, American forces repeatedly have been ordered into backwater conflicts with no intrinsic potential to affect U.S. security, prosperity, or freedom in any tangible way. But given the consequent globalist resolve both to nip these problems in the bud, as well as to address their underlying causes, they have demonstrated plenty of potential to mire the country into a series of costly quagmires.

Therefore, even though Mr. Trump – like former President Barack Obama before him – has described the airstrikes as essential for upholding a global norm (decades-long international bans on the “ghastly,” “barbaric,” and “brutal” use of chemical weapons), he seems to believe that this military practice can be isolated not only from whatever deep-rooted economic, social, and cultural failures have produced the strife that has occasioned their use, but from that consequent conflict itself.

But I’m worried about three big caveats. First, as long as the Syria civil war lasts, the more apparent it will become that limited actions like airstrikes won’t prevent atrocities like chemical weapons use, and the greater the temptation for more ambitious measures judged likelier to achieve their aims – but also capable of triggering a conflict with Russia, which like the United States has officials and military personnel in Syria.

Second, although the President has portrayed Syria as a conflict from which the United States can soon walk away, this analysis depends on claims that deserve major skepticism, to say the least – like the final defeat of ISIS (and, by extension, all jihadist terrorism?), and the possible emergence of a regional coalition of Sunni Arab states that “can ensure that Iran does not profit from the eradication of ISIS” and spread its influence across the Middle East.

After decades in which the American people have been told (rightly) that the region can endanger their security (via that terrorism) and their prosperity (via its gargantuan oil supplies), these positions will invariably look like naive hopes if the President’s rosy scenario doesn’t pan out. In fact, they could well spur calls for deeper and more dangerous U.S. involvement – even from an understandably skeptical public.

What’s of course supremely ironic about that dilemma is that important elements of the Trump domestic programs look like much more promising ways to shield the nation from Middle East threats than the globalist strategy he’s partly embraced of “fighting ’em there so we don’t face ’em here,” and promoting prosperity by trying to control a dizzying array of events abroad.

As I’ve written repeatedly, it makes much more sense to deal with terrorism by “keeping them out of here” through the kinds of serious border security programs the President endorses, and to continue breaking the region’s strong choke hold on global energy supplies by supporting the production revolution that American energy companies have engineered at home.

The third reason for concerns about a more interventionist Trump foreign policy has to do with his appointment of John R. Bolton as his national security adviser. Bolton, a former (interim) U.S. UN ambassador during George W. Bush’s presidency, is a strong, lifelong supporter of using the American military to solve all manner of national security challenges abroad.

It’s true that, unlike most globalists, Bolton seems to believe that these challenges will stay solved without any kind of nation-building- or democracy promotion-type follow-on. Hence his unrepentant support for the Bush administration overthrow of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein  – without a serious plan for the war’s aftermath. In all, it’s worrisome for believers in an America First approach to foreign policy that Bolton’s often trigger-happy voice could often be the last one Mr. Trump hears before making a momentous strategic decision.

Bottom-line: The slope leading from America’s current approach to Syria and the Middle East’s turmoil in general to another major war isn’t completely slippery. But it’s hard to be confident that President Trump’s footing is completely secure, either.