Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why the Public Knows Best

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Alexis de Tocqueville, Barack Obama, Democracy in America, Financial Times, globalism, Joe Biden, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, public opinion, Trump

Since the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville came out in 1835 with his classic Democracy in America, insightful foreign analysts have used their outsiders’ perspective to help Americans themselves learn much about their own country.

The Financial Times‘ new editorial about the Never Trump-y globalist approach to foreign policy sure to be taken by a Biden administration continues this tradition – however unwittingly. In the British newspaper’s enthusiasm for a return to a pre-Trump U.S. international strategy, it valuably reminds Americans of how far that globalism has taken these American foreign policy traditionalists from the objectives that should always make up the nation’s overriding priority in world affairs.

The editorial contains the usual mindless paeans to content-free “multilateralism, free trade and an active American role around the world. That is, it regurgitates the idea that America’s best bet for maximal security and prosperity lies in pushing practices and positions that in the end are nothing more than means (in other words, tools, or tactics) that may or may not be useful in the kinds of circumstances that ultimately require countries to conduct foreign policies in the first place – those where a valued objective needs to be achieved.

But what really stands out about the article is its inadvertant acknowledgement that the agenda of the globalist President-elect and his establishmentarian team is not only highly unpopular with the public, but rightly so.

It’s become standard operating procedure for foreign policy professionals and self-appointed thought leaders to bemoan Everyday Americans’ reluctance to recognize the importance of globalism’s devotion to (quoting from the editorial) “restoring US leadership,” playing “global policeman,” and the like, and here the Financial Times writers don’t disappoint.

Much more unusual is their acknowledgement that there exists a “perceived disconnect between the Washington view of US interests and middle America’s more immediate concerns for its physical and economic security.”

A longtime hallmark of globalism has been to equate the two – and insist, in fact, that preserving that physical and economic security simply isn’t possible without globalism’s characteristic energetic international engagement in every dimension imaginable.

To be sure, the editorial’s use of the word “perceived” signals its belief that any such disconnect exists only in the minds of the uninformed or the shortsighted. But its use of the phrase “more immediate” inadvertantly indicates that the disconnect has a basis in reality. For although this wording doesn’t flatly deny the linkage, it carries the suggestion that the nation’s physical and economic security can be achieved to a significant, and even for the time being, an adequate extent without assuming all of globalism’s labors.

Globalists can still (and no doubt will) maintain that, even if true, this minimalist version of success can’t last indefinitely without completing more ambitious tasks – specifically, eliminating the very sources of threats to that American physical and economic security. To which critics of globalism can and should reply that this challenge is so formidable, and therefore costly and risky, that its pursuit risks turning the utopian into an enemy of the good.

Further, given how cloudy the personal crystal balls of even the most brilliant globalists undoubtedly are, and therefore how unpredictable many future challenges and opportunities will inevitably be, a more modest strategy of coping, reacting, muddling through, and avoiding “stupid stuff” (an unusually sound bit of non-globalist advice from globalist former President Barack Obama) logically makes the most sense – and doubly so for a country like the United States that’s already blessed with the kinds of strengths and advantages that can enable a low-risk, low-reward foreign policy to deliver results that are eminently acceptable, especially compared with many of the alternatives.

A final theoretical reason to pursue globalist foreign policies might be called the spiritual case – condemning the low-risk, low-reward alternative as utterly uninspiring. This supposedly lackluster nature matters crucially because, as explained in last Monday’s post, so many globalists seek foreign policy careers and push for their characteristic proposals not to help achieve ostensibly mundane aims like ensuring narrow-bore security and prosperity for their country, but out of loftier hopes to prove America’s historical worth by curing various global ills and slaying various global dragons. As a sympathetic author I quoted wrote of the globalist Biden team, they’re “eager to leave their mark on American foreign policy—and the world.”

But as even the Financial Times editorial writers point out, seeking global goals for there is absolutely no domestic political mandate could be a formula for “sparking a counter-reaction” strong enough to return “Trumpism to the White House in four years time.” All Americans have major stakes in hoping that a new administration learns this lesson sooner rather than later.

Im-Politic: Evidence that Trump Would Be Foolish Not to “Run on China”

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2020 election, CCP Virus, China, climate change, coronavirus, COVID 19, cybersecurity, Democrats, environment, Gallup, human rights, Im-Politic, Jobs, Joe Biden, Pew Research Center, polls, public opinion, Republicans, tariffs, Trade, trade deficit, trade war, Trump, Wuhan virus

Monday I laid out the case that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has cheer-led every major Washington policy decision in recent decades that has enabled the rise of a wealthy, powerful, and worst of all, hostile and dangerous China. So it’s at least awfully interesting that the day after, a new poll was released making clear that the Trump campaign’s decision to brand the former Vice President as “soft on China” is not only on the mark substantively, but a smart political move.

The poll, conducted by the Pew Research Center, shows that Americans of all political stripes have turned into strong China critics. And especially important – there’s much more going on here than blaming Beijing for the CCP Virus outbreak. Respondents across-the-board now strongly agree that China poses a major threat to a wide range of U.S. interests – including on the trade front, where President Trump’s tariffs were widely reported to be devastating pretty much every major group of actors in the American economy, from businesses to consumers, and from farmers to manufacturers.

P.S. It’s not like Pew has ever itself shown any signs of being critical of China. Indeed, its introduction to the results includes this moral equivalence-friendly assessment: “…with the onset of an unprecedented pandemic, the stage has been set for both sides to cast aspersions on the other.”

The finding Pew emphasizes is a dramatic rise in unfavorable American views of China since Mr. Trump’s inauguration. When he entered office at the beginning of 2017 , the respondents Pew interviewed disapproved of China, but only by a narrow 47 percent to 44 percent margin. The most recent results show unfavorable ratings thumping favorable by 66 percent to 26 percent. The latest negative reviews garnered by Beijing, moreover, represent its worst such showing since Pew began asking the question in 2005.

And as Pew points out, looking at this divergence over time makes clear that China’s ratings began deteriorating long before the virus appeared. In fact, the sharpest increases in Beijing’s unfavorables and sharpest decreases in its favorables started in 2018 – when the administration began announcing and imposing steep levies on huge amounts of prospective imports from China.

Indeed, China’s image among Americans is now so bad that it’s shared among Democrats and Republicans alike. Frustratingly, the survey doesn’t measure the attitudes of declared political independents, but the latest figures show that 72 percent of Republicans and those “leaning” Republican hold unfavorable views of China, and that 62 percent of Democrats and their “leaners” agree. And both negatives are up sharply since the trade war began – or more accurately, since the United States started fighting back.

Not that trade is the only China-related concern expressed in the Pew survey, or even the strongest. Pew gauged U.S. opinion on several China-related issues, and the biggest worries were voiced over “China’s impact on the global environment.” Fully 91 percent of respondents labeled it as a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” problem for the United States, the former responses hitting 61 percent. Next came “cyberattacks from China,” rated as problems by 8 percent of those surveyed, and as “very serious” problems by 57 percent.

Coming in third and fourth were the economic issues. Eighty five percent saw the U.S. trade deficit with China as a problem, including 49 percent calling it serious. And for “the loss of U.S. jobs to China,” the numbers came in at 85 percent and 52 percent, respectively. Interestingly, those latter results nearly matched those for the issue of “China’s growing military power” (84 percent and 49 percent, respectively).

Important to note, however, is evidence that, high as they are, the economic concerns have been leveling off in recent years, while the environmental concerns have been rising (along with those centered on human rights). That’s not necessarily great news for Mr. Trump, whose focus has been on the jobs and overall economy impact (along with the technological threat from China – which is a major source of public China-related concern).

Much better news for the President – Americans aged 50 and older (whose voter turnout rates have long been high) – hold the most negative views of China. Yet this year, Beijing’s image has turned negative for Americans in the 18-29 age class for the first time ever. And for both groups, disapproval of China surged starting in 2018.

Of course, China’s not the only issue on which Americans will be voting this fall. But the latest Gallup results, for example, show that virus-related issues have surged to the top of their rankings for the “most important problem facing the U.S.” If the President can link the virus with the overall China challenge in voters’ minds, his odds of reelection would seem to be pretty good. His biggest obstacle? Possibly the companion Gallup finding that right behind the virus on the list of national problems is “The government/poor leadership.”

Im-Politic: New Evidence that Trump-Russia is a Voter Nothing-Burger

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2016 elections, 2020 elections, collusion, foreign policy, Gallup, Im-Politic, midterm elections, polls, public opinion, Russia, Trump, Trump-Russia

I know that it’s only one poll, and that poll results can be pretty dodgy. (See “2016 U.S. Presidential Election.”) But the results of a new Gallup survey on Americans’ views towards U.S.-Russia relations seem well worth spotlighting anyway, especially given the continuing unrelenting headlines being generated by the alleged Trump-Russia scandals, by all the evidence of Russian meddling in American politics, and various investigations of the above.

Gallup asked respondents whether it’s “more important to improve relations with Russia” or “more important to take strong diplomatic and economic steps against Russia.” And by a healthy 58 percent to 36 percent margin, the “improve relations” option won out. Just as striking is that a hard line against Moscow is strongly opposed even though 75 percent of the public believes that Russia interfered in the last presidential election, and 39 percent believes that such activities “changed the outcome.”

As predictable these days, these views are sharply divided along partisan lines. But what’s less predictable is that the Democrats come across as the most intense partisans by far. To be sure, their support for a “hard” vs a “soft” line toward Russia wasn’t overwhelming – 51 percent for the former, 45 percent for the latter. But it contrasted sharply not only with the opinion of Republicans (who favored a softer line by a lopsided 74 percent to 22 percent margin). Democrats’ views also differed significantly from those of independents (who favored a softer line by 55 percent to 37 percent).

And this Gallup survey makes it tough to blame supposed public apathy or ignorance for these findings. Specifically, two-thirds of respondents told Gallup they were following news about Russia and the 2016 election “closely” and 33 percent reported following such developments “very closely.” Gallup contends that this level of attention is “slightly above” the norm for their news attentiveness results going back to 1991.

Moreover, Gallup reports that the more closely its sample members followed the story, the likelier they were to believe that Russia interfered and that its interference mattered. Indeed, ninety percent of the true newshounds accepted the meddling claims. But only 51 percent of this highly attentive group believed that the alleged Russian operations changed the outcome. And those respondents who were following such news only somewhat closely split nearly evenly on the matter (with 42 percent agreeing that the meddling affected the outcome and 40 percent disagreeing)

The same pattern was evident when it came to views on Russia relations options. Of those Americans following these stories very closely, a majority favored the harder line. But the margin was only 53 percent to 42 percent. The results for Americans following the Russia coverage only somewhat closely was the reverse – and then some. Only thirty-seven percent backed the hard line while fully 59 percent opposed it.

When combined with other Gallup findings that, through June, the constellation of Trump-Russia issues wasn’t even moving the needle in terms of Americans’ rankings of their top concerns, this new survey indicates that, unless a genuine smoking gun is uncovered, Democrats would be best advised to stress other anti-Trump messages in their campaigns this year to regain control of Congress. For if voters were strongly responsive, wouldn’t they be demanding that their leaders make Russia pay dearly for an attack on their democracy? At the same time, since voter turnout in mid-term elections is typically very low, hammering away at Russia and impeachment etc could possibly bring to the polls more “resistance” true believers and swing some close races.

The implications for the next presidential race – again, barring a smoking fun – seem clearer: In such a generally higher turnout race, voters are likely to be paying much more attention to the standard array of pocketbook and cultural issues (along with foreign policy, if crises break out) than to whatever’s left of the Trump-Russia controversy.

Im-Politic: A Vacuum at the Heart of The Vietnam War

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1968 New Hampshire Democratic primary, 1968 presidential election, Eugene J. McCarthy, hawks, Im-Politic, Ken Burns, Le Duan, Lyndon B. Johnson, Lynn Novick, military draft, North Vietnam, Patrick Hangopian, PBS, public opinion, South Vietnam, Tet offensive, The Vietnam War, Viet Cong, Vietnam

I was planning on waiting till I saw its end to comment on the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick PBS documentary series, The Vietnam War, since analyzing anything without seeing the whole seems like a great formula for missing something important. But the episode on the January-July, 1968 period (“Things Fall Apart”) covers such a critical period, forthrightly raises so many of most painful questions generated for both supporters and opponents of the war, and then fails so completely to answer them, that this segment seems worth its own posting.

To remind, those first months of 1968 created one of the war’s major turning points; principally, they witnessed the Tet offensive shockingly launched at the end of January by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces against a wide range of targets in South Vietnam. The ferocity and scope of the attacks seemed to discredit completely official American claims of solid progress versus the enemy, and led to levels of U.S. public backing for President Lyndon B. Johnson’s strategy dropping below critical levels, to Johnson’s stunning announcement that he would not seek a second term in office, and to the start of peace talks.

But even that description, which I tried to make as neutral as possible, can be challenged from several standpoints, and these challenges explain much of the frustration I felt watching “Things Fall Apart.”

First some truth in advertising. My strong opposition to the war dates to sometime around 1970 (somewhat later than that of many friends); I would have been a high school junior or senior at the time. Was some of it self-serving? You be the judge: I wasn’t technically a draft dodger, since I received an entirely legal, non-faked 4-F medical deferment. Also, by the time I received my very low (13) lottery number, in 1971, it seemed increasingly clear that the role of American ground troops was cresting, and there was no chance that I’d be flying over Vietnam in an air war that actually intensified. And of course, even at the conflict’s height, the vast majority of U.S. military personnel in the country were volunteers, and most of them were stationed behind the lines (though hardly out of danger).

But even though odds were my skin would have been safe had I been inducted or not, who could really be certain that American politicians would keep their Vietnamization promises over time? Moreover, I was able to avoid any service at all both through an accident of birth and thanks to family circumstances not available to so many of the young Americans who did fight and die or suffer physical and psychological wounds.

Everything I’ve learned since then about the conflict, however, has only deepened my conviction that U.S. military involvement in Vietnam was a ghastly, and in Constitutional terms, criminal mistake, which sought goals not remotely worth the sacrifice in American blood and treasure. It’s easy, consequently, for me personally to find the basic Burns-Novick narrative about early 1968 entirely convincing.

But there have so many flies in this ointment! For example, Tet no doubt was thoroughly discouraging to supporters of the war (including, at that time, yours truly). As The Vietnam War makes clear, Johnson administration assessments of the fight to keep South Vietnam in the non-communist world were invariably much rosier than circumstances warranted. In fact, just before Tet, U.S. officials were sounding especially optimistic that North Vietnamese and Viet Cong units were being “ground down,” and had lost their early momentum. How, then, could they stage attacks the length and breadth of South Vietnam, including fighting their way into the U.S. Embassy compound in Saigon, and holding out in the old imperial capital of Hue for a month?

Certainly elites, especially in the media and politics, were shaken. Certainly, it was the predominant reason for Johnson’s decision about the 1968 presidential race. But the American people? There’s considerable evidence that Tet did not suddenly convince masses of the public that it the time had come for the United States to get out. This 2008 journal article ably summarizes the polling evidence giving grounds for doubt. As Patrick Hagopian of Britain’s Lancaster University has documented, Tet-period surveys generally confirmed and solidified popular dissatisfaction that had been growing since Johnson began greatly escalating the American military effort in 1965.

Just as important, many of the war’s critics actually wanted Johnson to take off the gloves and attack the foe much more energetically – and presumably decisively. In Hagopian’s words. “The majority of Americans identified themselves as ‘hawks’ before the Tet offensive, and their number actually peaked in the immediate aftermath of the offensive, indicating a wish to strike back against the communists. The Tet offensive therefore did not just increase opposition to the war, it intensified the views of hawks who saw the options as ‘fight or get out.’”

Indeed,as Hagopian notes, in the critical March 12, 1968 New Hampshire primary that helped convince Johnson to bow out of the race because of peace candidate Senator Eugene J. McCarthy’s strong showing, “the majority of those who voted for [the grassroots challenger] were Vietnam war hawks who thought that President Johnson was not escalating the war fast enough. This was a repudiation of Johnson’s policies, but it was a protest vote by the hawks and not by people who supported McCarthy’s antiwar stance.” Burns and Novick do refer to this result briefly in The Vietnam War, but it’s treated as a mere footnote and simply left hanging.

Fly in the ointment number two concerns the on-the-ground results of Tet itself. Here Burns and McCarthy admirably embrace a view that still appears far from the conventional wisdom:  Tet was not only a devastating military defeat for the communist side. It was a devastating political defeat. For the offensive’s planners, notably North Vietnamese Communist Party chief Le Duan, expected the attacks to end the war once and for all by sparking a nation-wide revolt against the “puppet” Saigon government. Yet the South Vietnamese populace overwhelmingly stood beside its leaders. And the big domestic political change in the country brought about by Tet was the effective destruction of the southern dominated Viet Cong as a fighting – and major political – force.

The trouble for the documentary is that the Burns and Novick treatment of Tet’s impact on the South Vietnamese people in “Things Fall Apart” clashes violently with their portrayal of that nation’s leaders and their following. In all the previous episodes I’ve seen (that is, all save the first), South Vietnam’s leaders were depicted as incompetent, corrupt, and often both. Their political support, meanwhile, was dismissed as minimal, especially in the countryside that contained some 80 percent of South Vietnam’s people. Further, what the filmmakers tell viewers time and time again is that in the eyes of this highly nationalistic demographic, the Saigon government was also crippled politically by its heavy dependence on foreign (U.S.) backing, and that the American soldiers who strove to prop them up were generally seen as “invaders.”

Yet when this population had the chance to throw out these purportedly illegitimate leaders, most refused.

One possible explanation is that the Saigon government was seen as the lesser of two evils, but this is not an argument that Burns and Novick make. The filmmakers allude to public backing for neutralist and/or Buddhist leaders who favored a negotiated solution to the war, but these references never go beyond the allusion phase – at least not through the end of “Things Fall Apart.” So the South Vietnamese reaction to Tet (and this also includes the Burns-Novick description of a hitherto inept South Vietnamese military that made a major turnaround during Tet and often fought valiantly and effectively) is left as a total mystery.

As a result, also left completely unexamined is the potentially earthshaking but logical (at least) conclusion that can be drawn from these two flies in the ointment – that from a purely military perspective, U.S. leaders had a more accurate understanding of the war than is widely recognized. Specifically, after Tet, the tide on the battlefield had finally turned to a generally neglected extent, and that more persistence may well have produced a conclusion much better for the United States – and even arguably for the South Vietnamese people – than the total victory won by the North. Indeed, why had Hanoi at long last agreed to negotiations in 1968 after only a partial American bombing halt? Because it was still confident of triumphing militarily?

So how come I’m still an opponent of the war? For the reason stated above. No attainable goal in Vietnam could reasonably justify the price paid by America – more than 58,000 dead; some $1 trillion in 2011 (likely a conservative estimate); a broken, divided society; a wounded, distorted economy. Nor am I persuaded by an argument made by some revisionist scholars and other analysts – that the benefits extended well past Vietnam, and that the war is best seen as a delaying action that enabled the whole of East Asia to avoid communist rule and establish the foundations of its more recent stability and prosperity. If these were indeed products of Vietnam, the price for the United States still would have been wildly excessive, in my opinion.

But these subjects are much more deserving of public national debate than they’ve received so far, especially since the United States has found itself in several other unpopular, unsuccessful wars in spite of defeat in Vietnam, and surely stayed out of several other likely unpopular conflicts because of it. They also deserve much more discussion that devoted by Burns and Novick. The Vietnam War has been touted as a documentary that will help Americans better understand an historic episode that continues powerfully shaping the present in more ways than I suspect many recognize. Its treatment of crucial questions in “Things Fall Apart” makes me wonder whether it will even approach achieving this goal.

Im-Politic: A Moral Quandary Surrounding American Morals?

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abortion, Gallup, gay marriage, Im-Politic, marijuana, moderates, morals, polling, public opinion, social conservatives, social liberals, Trump, values

This’ll be one of those posts where I confess I just don’t know what the heck is going on. But the info seems so compelling – and possibly contradictory – that it can’t be ignored.

The first half of the puzzle comes from Gallup’s new finding that a large (81 percent) of Americans judge the country’s moral values to be “only fair” or “poor,” and that 77 percent believe that this problem is getting worse. Although I know there will be many who are tempted to respond with something to the effect of “Ah, Trump,” keep in mind that these numbers haven’t changed dramatically since the company began asking such questions in 2002. (Somewhat greater shifts – for the worse – are evident since the early 1990s, when Gallup’s questions were somewhat differently worded.)

Another intriguing result: More than a third of respondents rated the state of U.S. morality as “fair” – which isn’t necessarily negative. In fact, combining the 36 percent of Americans taking this view with the (dwindling) share who view it as “excellent/good” (17 percent) sums to a majority that’s arguably pleased with the nation’s ethics. And these sub-categories (called “internals” by polling insiders) have remained broadly stable over the last decade and a half as well.

Less intriguing: Over the last year, self-identified social liberals have become much more concerned about America’s morals, with the share perceiving a worsening spurting from 58 percent to 71 percent. Social moderates became markedly more pessimistic, too, and that definitely looks like a Trump effect. So does the less dramatic drop in the share of those considering themselves as social conservatives telling Gallup that moral decay intensified during that time.

But here’s where the real mystery comes in. Another Gallup survey, taken just a few weeks ago, reported “Americans Hold Record Liberal Views on Most Moral Issues”. Give the company credit: It’s recognized the apparent paradox: “Even liberals, who seemingly should be pleased with the growing number of Americans who agree with their point of view on the morality of prominent social issues, are more likely to say things are getting worse than getting better.”

Gallup offers two possible explanations, but I don’t find them especially convincing. The first, after all, assumes (at least logically) that social liberals believe that many Americans who have swung their way on gay marriage, marijuana legalization, abortion, and the like are still insensitive (at best) toward racism and poverty. Or even have become more so. The second assumes that liberals believe that these same, increasingly tolerant Americans keep displaying “lack of respect or tolerance for others,” or are getting even coarser.

Nor am I persuaded by another possible explanation that could well be proposed by social conservatives: that although they increasingly support more liberal moral positions and views, deep down inside, liberals and moderates recognize them as dangerous and therefore perceive American morals to be declining.

So I’m left in the dark, but certain something important is taking place within the national psyche. What do all of you think?

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Asia Nuclear Dangers Remain a U.S. Policy Blind Spot

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alliances, allies, Asia, China, deterrence, extended deterrence, Japan, Matthew Kroenig, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, public opinion, South China Sea, South Korea, Syria, The National Bureau of Asian Research

Eagle-eye RealityChek followers may have noticed the lack of a post Wednesday. Here’s my “note from home.” I spent much of the day doing something I hadn’t done for quite a while: attend a policy conference in downtown Washington, D.C.

I’ve been avoiding such events lately (unless I’m invited to speak) because usually I know ahead of time what all the participants are certain to say. (Yes, the policy scene in the nation’s capitol is indeed that stale, at least in the fields I know best.) So why waste time at such utterly predictable, formulaic exercises?

But last Wednesday’s event, sponsored by the private The National Bureau of Asian Research, was a little different. It dealt in large part with a subject I’ve posted on several times: the dramatic improvement in Chinese and North Korean nuclear weapons capabilities and what it could mean for American alliance strategy in the region and America’s own security. I wasn’t familiar with the speakers. And the foreign policy establishment has been pretty silent on this issue so far, so it was a chance to sample some representative views.

I’m glad to report that the presentations, especially by the lead speaker, Georgetown University political scientist Matthew Kroenig, helped me refine my thinking on these matters further. But they didn’t prompt any significant changes and, if anything, further convinced me that the nation’s foreign policy professionals still need a major wake-up call on how U.S. strategy in Asia is increasing the nation’s vulnerability to nuclear attack.

To review quickly: Since the end of World War II, the United States has promised to use nuclear weapons if necessary defend allies in Asia – specifically Japan and South Korea – from aggression. That strategy arguably made lots of sense when America possessed the world’s only nuclear weapons, and when, even after this monopoly was lost, it enjoyed a major nuclear edge over regional rivals. After all, Washington could not only hope to prevail in any conflict. It could reasonably hope to deter any such confrontation through the ability to threaten adversaries with nuclear destruction while keeping the American homeland completely safe.

Today, the strategic situation in Asia is substantially different. The United States retains substantial nuclear superiority over China and especially North Korea. But in addition to continuing to close the gap, as I’ve been reporting for years, both China and North Korea have made important strides towards developing what the specialists call secure retaliatory capabilities. That is, they’re developing forces that can be mobile enough, or easily enough hidden (mainly by putting them on submarines), to make sure that Beijing or Pyongyang can hit American targets with nuclear-tipped missiles as soon as Washington brings its own nuclear forces into play. As a result, U.S. leaders could (understandably) be deterred from intervening in Asian conflicts for fear literally of losing Los Angeles, or Denver, or….

At the conference, the presentations did deal with these developments, but they were unmistakably treated largely as abstract, long-range hypotheticals – not as concrete challenges bearing down on America very quickly. Just look at the event’s title: “Approaching Critical Mass: Asia’s Multipolar Nuclear Future.” Nothing in it about the United States. I tried to bring the discussion closer to earth by asking whether they thought that any American president would defend Asian allies knowing that the explosion of even a single nuclear warhead over a major U.S. city was a live possibility.

Georgetown’s Kroenig responded and made some strong points. First, he noted, American leaders have continued the policy of “extended deterrence” in Asia despite the Chinese and North Korean improvements, and the peace has been kept, meaning that Beijing and Pyongyang apparently remain deterred. Second, he pointed out, it’s not beyond America’s capacity to strengthen its own nuclear forces, and at least restore some of its diminished nuclear margin – even to the point of restoring high confidence of taking out rival nuclear forces in a preemptive strike.

Third, as Kroenig correctly observed, deterrence calculations are usually not black and white, either-or propositions. In America’s case, once it lost that monopoly on delivering nuclear weapons across oceans, it’s experienced some vulnerability to nuclear attack. As a result, the real challenge U.S. leaders face is continuing to convince potential enemies that nothing they could conceivably hope to gain from attacking American allies could approach what they could conceivably lose.

But if I’d had the chance to follow up aggressively (which is considered bad form at such events – another reason I’ve been passing them up), I would have made the following responses:

First, although both China and North Korea have so refrained from making dramatic military moves in Asia, that’s not to say that they’ve been deterred. After all, the North keeps conducting nuclear weapons tests. And with increasing boldness, the Chinese keep asserting territorial claims in the East and especially the South China Sea. Moreover, as I’ve reported, the Japanese and South Koreans seem less and less impressed with the credibility of America’s commitments, and seem increasingly eager to acquire nuclear weapons themselves.

Second, even if abundant resources suddenly became available, it’s far from certain that more and better U.S. nuclear forces will restore enough American superiority to offset Chinese and North Korean gains – much less be able to threaten their nuclear forces adequately. As I reported in May, a highly regarded defense consulting firm has recently contended that “the United States and its allies are already at a point where they cannot guarantee the complete removal of the threat of a North Korean nuclear attack.” And without “complete removal,” Pyongyang could still have Washington over a barrel.   

Third, precisely because of this risk, and precisely because Washington has never leveled with the American people about the (growing) dangers of its Asia strategy, there’s a real chance that U.S. leaders could find themselves in a showdown with Asian adversaries without the full support of the public. President Obama found out how painful that experience could be – and the kind of hit American credibility could suffer – when he backed down from his threat to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons.  Imagine the impact of an Asian nuclear crisis taking this turn.  

In fact, as I remarked to some fellow conference attendees as we were filing out, if Americans were fully aware of their leaders’ Asia intentions, they’d probably get angry enough to vote cast their presidential ballots for a rank political and policy amateur with an apparently hot-headed personality. I was only half-kidding.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Obama’s Babble on Trade Politics

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BloombergBusinessweek, exports, free trade agreements, Korea, KORUS, Obama, politics, Populism, public opinion, TPP, Trade, Trans-Pacific Partnership, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Since his presidency began, Barack Obama has left little doubt that the substance of trade policy isn’t his strong suit. For example,

>Near the end of his first year in office, the president claimed that Asia’s generally protectionist economies actually want to buy American products, but that their imports from the United States were weak “partly because we just haven’t been as aggressive as we need to be….”

>Mr. Obama’s White House predicted that his 2012 KORUS trade deal would expand U.S. gross exports of goods to this new bilateral partner by at least $10 billion annually. But on a monthly basis, they’re down nearly 30 percent. From the first four months of 2013 (the first full calendar year during which the agreement has been in effect) to the first four months of this year, U.S. goods exports are down 6.65 percent.

>His administration routinely touts his Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal for creating a single market representing 40 percent of the entire world economy. But the president seems unaware that the United States makes up nearly two-thirds of this new trade zone.

Last week, in an interview with BloombergBusinessweek, the president demonstrated that his grasp of the politics of trade is no firmer. On the one hand, Mr. Obama dismissed his interlocutors’ suggestion that he has “not done a good job of selling the benefits of trade to people who feel that this is something that’s taking their jobs, taking away their future” by contending that “the majority of Americans, surveys show, still favor free trade. It’s just that those who are opposed feel it much more intensely.”

Moreover, he added, “If you talk to the younger generation here in the United States, they’re not knee-jerk anti-trade. They’re not anti-globalization. If you look at surveys, it tends to be older workers who are feeling displaced who are attracted to this notion of ‘let’s pull up the drawbridge and shut everybody off.’”

On the other hand, the president insisted that:

“if I am a CEO in a boardroom right now, I should be thinking about, how do I make sure my workers are making a decent wage? And if I’m a shareholder, that is something I should be paying attention to, too, because if you’re not, that’s when you start getting the kinds of political pushback that you’re seeing here in the United States. That’s how you start getting a Brexit campaign. Over time, you’ll strangle this goose that’s been laying you all these golden eggs. Share the eggs.”

That is, Mr. Obama is urging business leaders to wake up and head off a populist revolt that he’s supremely confident won’t take place – especially as nature keeps taking its course and transforms the American population.

There’s no doubt that a politician who has won the White House knows more than a thing or two about public opinion. But these incoherent views on trade politics also strongly suggest that Mr. Obama has been lucky in one key respect: For all the sporadic headlines they made, globalization-related concerns were still largely off voters’ screens during his presidential years.

Im-Politic: America’s Trade Revolt Now Looks Even Stronger Than You Think

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2016 election, Bernie Sanders, Congress, Donald Trump, House of Representatives, Im-Politic, Jobs, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, polls, public opinion, Trade

Last June, I wrote that, although public opinion polls on trade policy were yielding results that are all over the place, one body of evidence was pointing strongly to mounting voter opposition to Washington’s longstanding – and largely bipartisan – globalization strategy: The number of presidential candidates trying to make hay of the issue. Now a new study is supporting some of that hypothesis, – and in the process indicates that pollsters genuinely need to get their trade act together.

The authors are essentially the same Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) team that conducted some of the most influential research on trade’s economic impact of recent years. Its February report found that the damage to American employment and wages resulting from dramatic post-2001 U.S. trade expansion with China has been much greater and longer-lasting than economic theory would have predicted.

This week, these scholars are telling us that damage from import competition has contributed significantly to the popularity of White House hopefuls like Republican front-runner Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders. Moreover, the impact – which they contend dates to the beginning of the last decade – has been more pronounced among Republicans.

These conclusions are based on an examination of the district-by-district outcomes of the House of Representatives races in the 2002 and 2010 off-year elections. As the authors put it:

“[W]e find strong evidence that congressional districts exposed to larger increases in import competition disproportionately removed moderate representatives from office in the 2000s. Trade-exposed districts initially in Republican hands become substantially more likely to elect a conservative Republican, while trade-exposed districts initially in Democratic hands become more likely to elect either a liberal Democrat or a conservative Republican.”

If they’re confirmed by follow-on research, these MIT results will matter because they’d represent the first robust findings that trade issues have exerted major effects on national politics. It’s true that trade issues have become much more controversial nation-wide since a raucous debate broke out in the early 1990s over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It’s also true that, over that last quarter century, trade-related job loss in particular has impacted a handful of House and Senate races in unusually hard hit districts or states.

But it’s true as well that to date there’s been no reason to believe that opposition to or skepticism about trade deals and trade policies has significantly influenced the make up of the House or Senate, the presidential choices of the two major parties, or the final White House verdicts in November.

In fact, when’s the last time you can remember a Democratic or Republican presidential nominee running hard and consistently against American trade policies? Or even any of the leading contenders for these nominations? And when it comes to Congress, the trade critics’ important legislative priorities have carried the day lately only twice – when Bill Clinton’s requests for fast track trade negotiating authority were rejected in 1997 and 1998, and when the authority itself was allowed to expire in 2007.

But although politicians as a group haven’t been acting as if trade issues mattered to their constituents, the new MIT study also suggests that they may not have had the chance to examine much useful, accurate evidence. One of the authors told a New York Times reporter that “In retrospect, whether it’s Trump or Sanders, we should have seen in it coming. ”

It’s likely that the polls have obscured their vision for three main reasons. First, the exit polls conducted after most elections simply haven’t asked voters about trade issues. Ditto for many polls about the state of the economy at any time. Second, polls that have focused on trade rarely gauge salience – i.e., how high respondents rank the issue on their list of major concerns. Third, as I’ve noted repeatedly, the trade questions that are posed by pollsters are often completely worthless. Sometimes the wording is flat-out biased, stacking the deck in favor of “pro-trade” responses. Indeed, it’s all too typical for surveys to present sharp black and white, yes or no choices that have little if anything to do with the real choices faced by policymakers or the public at any given time.

No realistic person expects polling to be an exact science. But the new MIT study combined with the way both students and practitioners of politics have been blindsided by the Trump and Sanders campaigns shows how urgently pollsters need to change their losing trade game. At this stage, even minimal confidence would be welcome.

Meanwhile, the study and the Trump-Sanders successes should be signaling to trade critics that their efforts have been bolstering the cause of trade realism, despite the imposing money and political power arrayed against them. Their next challenge is capitalizing on today’s momentum and turning it into enduring policy change.

Im-Politic: Washington Week (Unwittingly) Nails it on Anti-Terror Strategy

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ABC News, Alexis Simendinger, border security, Ed O'Keefe, Gwen Ifill, Im-Politic, ISIS, Mainstream Media, Middle East, Paris attacks, PBS, polls, public opinion, RealClearPolitics.com, refugees, terrorism, Washington Post, Washington Week in Review

Let’s hear it for Washington Week in Review! Seriously! Like most news talk shows, it’s usually only useful for conveniently summarizing the Mainstream Media conventional wisdom on current events at home and abroad. But it’s latest broadcast shed important light (albeit unwittingly) on a major and positive development in American public opinion on dealing with the threat of ISIS terrorism.

A principal theme of this latest PBS show was the alleged disconnect, in the wake of the latest Paris terrorist attacks, between Americans’ clearly heightened fears of terror strikes at home on the one hand, and on the other their apparent view that limiting Middle East refugee admissions is a better response than crushing ISIS militarily with American forces.

As Washington Week anchor Gwen Ifill indicated, she was “surprised” that the political flashpoint created by these latest terror strikes “did not turn, as it has in the past, on questions of war and retaliation but, as we’ve been discussing, on whether refugees from the fighting in Syria should be allowed into the U.S.”

Similarly, The Washington Post‘s Ed O’Keefe agreed with Ifill that it was “incredible” that new poll findings released by his paper and ABC News indicated continued public reluctance to send large numbers of American ground troops to the Middle East to fight the ISIS organization that claimed responsibility for Paris – just as other polls revealed majority opposition to those refugee admissions.

And according to RealClearPolitics.com’s Alexis Simendinger, these results showed a lack of consensus among Americans who she described as “all over the map” on these issues and in fact (understandably, of course) “confused.”

In fact, as is so often (and seemingly increasingly) the case, the public here looks to be way ahead of its leaders – and much wiser. For these poll results are completely consistent with my oft-stated view that the best way to deal with the threat posed by ISIS is not to seek its decisive defeat on the battlefield – since the Muslim-Arab world’s culture and society are so terminally ill that a powerful ISIS successor is bound to appear eventually. Instead, as the poll indicates, the public understands that America’s anti-terrorism efforts are best focused on what the government can plausibly hope to control much more effectively – its own borders and their continued excessive porousness.

There’s an obvious way to fill this gap in the analysis offered by Washington Week and its counterparts: Include a typical Main Street American in the discussions. Ratings could well soar. And just as important, their supposed experts might actually learn something worth knowing.

Im-Politic: What the Polls are Really Saying About Obama’s Trade Agenda

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2016 elections, CBS News, Congress, currency manipulation, fast track, Financial Times, free trade agreements, Global Trade Watch, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Jobs, Obama, polls, public opinion, Reuters/Ipsos, The New York Times, TPA, TPP, Trade, Trade Promotion Authority, Trans-Pacific Partnership

I’m sure glad I’m not the Financial Times headline writer who told readers the other day that “Obama seems to be winning over public, if not Congress, on trade.” The writer blew it not because there haven’t been recent poll results containing good news for a president seeking a big new Pacific Rim trade deal and sweeping fast track negotiating authority from Congress. He or she blew it because such surveys have been showing such sharply contradictory results – as a new New York Times/CBS News sounding just reminded us. In fact, the headline was also off base in suggesting that any polls can be a reliable indicator of public on an issue like trade, which is poorly covered by the national media and partly as a result largely unfamiliar to many Main Street Americans.

As I wrote recently, the Pew Foundation findings stressed by the Financial Times contained some big apparent contradictions – chiefly, showing that Americans’ support for the idea of trade agreements keeps rising impressively, but that large pluralities believe the deals have significantly harmed the economy.

Meanwhile, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch has done an excellent job exposing the weaknesses in another recent poll – from Reuters/Ipsos – that seems downright incompetent. The survey reported majority support for “new trade deals,” but these agreements were described as seeking to “promote the sale of goods overseas.” Talk about a leading question!

In fact, as Global Trade Watch noted, a previous Ipsos trade poll found that when a specific feature of Mr. Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was included in a question (currency manipulation), nearly three quarters of Americans opposed the administration position. Moreover, that same survey showed 84 percent of the public agreeing that “protecting American manufacturing jobs” is more important than “getting Americans access to more products.”

The New York Times/CBS News results reported this morning contain more bad news for the president (and for that Financial Times headline writer). They show 55 percent to 42 percent public opposition to the president’s fast track request (which is accurately described). They show that although 78 percent of Americans have “heard or read…not much or nothing at all about the TPP (thanks, journalists!) they believe by a 22 percent to 16 percent margin that it will make fewer jobs available in the United States. (One third didn’t know or didn’t answer, and 29 percent doubted it would “make much difference.” And finally, 63 percent of respondents agreed that “Trade restrictions are necessary to protect domestic industries” while only 30 percent supported the view that “Free trade must be allowed, even if domestic industries are hurt by foreign competition.”

So for what they’re worth – and again, that’s open to big doubts – recent polls aren’t collectively sending any clear message on trade policy generally, and even muddier ones on the specific controversies Congress is dealing with today. But another body of evidence is less equivocal. As I noted in that recent post, most presidential candidates in both parties who have spoken out are running against Mr. Obama’s trade agenda. Others, especially Hillary Clinton, have conspicuously remained on the fence.

Of course, the primary voters these hopefuls will initially face are more partisan and ideological than the electorate as a whole. But candidates also know that their primary positions tend to stick with them during general campaigns. If on balance, this many professional politicians see fast track and the TPP as political losers, it’s hard to believe that they’re far off the mark.