Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Fair-Weather U.S. Allies?

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alliances, allies, China, East China Sea, Eastern Europe, France, Germany, globalism, internationalism, Japan, NATO, North Atlantic TYreaty Organization, North Korea, nuclear deterrence, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Pew Research Center, Russia, South Korea, Soviet Union, United Kingdom

Establishment analysts and commentators have looked at the results of the Pew Research Center’s recent survey on overseas attitudes towards U.S. foreign policy under President Trump and decided that their most important findings are that his America First approach is costing America valuable influence on the global stage.

Even if you don’t find those conclusions transparently self-serving – since the vast majority of these analysts and commentators are staunch supporters of a more traditional globalist or internationalist approach – consider this alternative interpretation: The Pew survey strongly suggests that the globalist strategy, which has been in place for decades, has failed miserably in a crucial respect. Even though its core principles have required that the United States accept enormous cost and risks (including nuclear) on behalf of allies all over the world, the Pew researchers have found that even under President Obama – a pretty run-of-the-mill globalist – the populations of these same allies had little appreciation for these American burdens.

For me, the most glaring example is South Korea. As RealityChek readers know, for years I’ve been noting that the rapid recent progress of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program means that the United States’ longstanding commitment to use nuclear weapons if necessary to defend the South from a northern invasion or simply to deter such an attack is now qualitatively more dangerous than in the past. For if North Korea has not already developed the means to launch a nuclear strike that could take out an American city – or two or three – it’s not far from achieving that goal.

The North’s progress was glaringly obvious in 2013, when Pew last asked South Koreans if they believed that “In making international policy decisions, the U.S. takes into account the interest of countries like ours a great deal/fair amount.” Yet that year, only 36 percent of South Koreans answered “Yes.” This year, only 24 percent of South Koreans gave that answer.

Japan is also protected by an American nuclear umbrella – at least in principle. As with the case of South Korea, it hosts large American military forces whose presence aims to bolster the credibility of that promise. And North Korea has actually fired missiles over Japanese territory – meaning that the threat it poses to Japan and to those U.S. forces is anything but merely theoretical. (If only because the American forces in Japan that defend the islands are supposed to help their comrades-in-arms if war breaks out on the Korean peninsula.) Japan is also alarmed by Chinese encroachments in the East China Sea.

But in 2013, only 38 percent of Japanese agreed that American foreign policy takes their interests into account even a fair amount. This year, that number is down to 28 percent.

The security situation in Europe is not nearly as fraught. But Russia has certainly taken actions that arguably threaten the security of new members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that used to be part of either the old Soviet Union or the Soviet bloc. And as NATO allies, these countries are also entitled to nuclear protection from the United States even though their fates had never before been considered vital American interests and even though Russia retains nuclear forces more than large enough to devastate the United States many times over.

Yet although the new NATO members either border Germany (like Poland) or are located pretty close by, and even though Germans presumably would not want to see Russia reestablish dominance, even in 2013, only 50 percent of Germans believed that Washington takes their interests significantly into account in its foreign policy. The 2018 figure? With Russia at least as menacing? Nineteen percent. And the Germans are anything but outliers, as Pew found roughly the same trend in France and in the United Kingdom (although the share of their populations detecting any meaningful American regard for their interests in 2013 was a good deal lower than in Germany – just 35 percent and 40 percent, respectively).

A common retort by globalists and by allies is that allied populations have no reason to be especially grateful to the United States because these alliances serve crucial American interests, too. But what they forget is that populations (especially from countries whose governments have been champion security free-riders) that don’t believe the United States cares much about them aren’t likely to be populations likely to support the American military when push comes to shove in their regions – as opposed to calling for some version of accommodating the aggressors.

Not that I’m criticizing allied populations. At least in their initial stages, any conflicts will take place almost exclusively on their territories. And P.S. – these kinds of strains were troubling alliance relations for decades before Trump. But the by the same token, the Pew results underscore two truths about U.S. alliances that should be disturbing globalists more than ever.

First, the nuclear risks they still appear to be entirely satisfied with are being run for stakes (the security of relatively small, unimportant countries, as opposed to Japan and the entirety of Western Europe) that are less rationally justifiable than ever. And second, when the United States needs to lead the resistance to aggression, it may have fewer followers than ever.

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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.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Case that Trump is…and is not…a NATO Disrupter

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energy, Europe, George H.W. Bush, Germany, Mainstream Media, Marc Fischer, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Soviet Union, Trump, Trump Derangement Syndrome, Washington Post

Marc Fisher’s column in today’s Washington Post on the approach taken to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by President Trump and his successors is one of the more schizoid articles on American foreign policy that I’ve ever seen.

On the one hand, Fisher makes the absolutely crucial – and typically overlooked – point that since its founding (back in 1949), the United States has seen the alliance as a means not simply to contain the old Soviet Union (and now the Russian follow-on state). It’s also been seen as a means to contain Germany – specifically, (in Fischer’s words) to “enmesh Germany so thoroughly in Western alliances that it never again became a dominant, destabilizing force.” And P.S. – that’s also why Washington was so enthusiastic about Germany joining the European Union (originally through various predecessor organizations).

Even better, the author discusses how this strategy has had historic benefits (helping build a Western Europe that was free and peaceful for decades) and costs (discouraging Germans, especially after unification, from grappling seriously with the challenge of becoming a “normal” country, complete with robust defense capabilities, without reverting back to dangerous militarism).

But despite the valuable history lesson, Fisher’s article at least flirts with Trump Derangement Syndrome in two important ways. First, he fails to distinguish between German ambivalence about more assertive foreign and defense policies, and current German policies like signing energy supply contracts bound to send billions worth of euros in revenue to a Russian government that Berlin professes to view as a threat to European security and the broader “global liberal order.”

Even seven decades after the end of World War II, the former remains understandable, at least to some extent. There can be no excuse for the latter, and President Trump has been absolutely right to call Germany on the carpet in this respect.

Second, Fisher calls the Trump-ian approach to NATO, and to defense burden-sharing issues a major and troubling departure from longstanding U.S. policy because it’s been (or seemed to be) uniquely ignorant of the Germany issue. Yet he belittles Mr. Trump’s claim to be a long overdue disrupter of hidebound American NATO strategies by noting that, in 1992, former President George H.W. Bush’s administration “bluntly warned” Germany that “the United States would pull its troops out of Europe if the Germans and other Europeans didn’t cough up the money and manpower to take more responsibility for their own defense.”

Unless Bush 41 was simply blowing smoke, I’m hard pressed to see the difference between this position and President Trump’s hard (and harsh) line. Fischer could have made this case – which is entirely conceivable given the long history of similar, indeed transparently hollow, threats from Mr. Trump’s globalist predecessors. But he didn’t. Moreover, the President’s rhetoric hasn’t (yet) gone as far as Bush 41.

The way I see it, major changes in America’s approach to NATO (and to its alliances in East Asia) are urgently needed, and Mr. Trump hasn’t gone nearly far enough down this road. It’s also clear that, in some important respects, the Trump-ian approach of loud bark and modest bite has given his administration the worst of all possible worlds – widely accused by the U.S. and many foreign chattering classes of ostrich-like isolationism, yet failing (to date) to secure for the United States any of the benefits of a genuine America First global strategy. Worse, as I’ve just argued, Mr. Trump actually seems determined to increase some of the threats the United States faces from continuing the alliance status quo.

So I’m not knocking Fisher for criticizing the President’s NATO policy. What a shame, though, that he didn’t limit himself to spotlighting the Germany issue, and proceeded to fall into the kind of Trump-induced incoherence that has rightly cost the mainstream media so much credibility.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: What’s Really Wrong with Trump’s NATO Policies

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alliances, allies, America First, Crimea, Eastern Europe, Korea, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear deterrence, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Soviet Union, The National Interest, tripwires, Trump, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

As this year’s summit of the leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) begins, it’s nothing less than vital for Americans to understand two points about President Trump’s approach to the Atlantic alliance:

First, the President’s globalist critics are right in pointing out that Mr. Trump is thoroughly, and even dangerously, mishandling U.S. relations with NATO.

Second, these critics completely misunderstand why the President is off-base.

The heart of the globalist case against Trump-ian NATO policies goes generally like this: Mr. Trump drastically underestimates the contribution made by the alliance to U.S. national security interests not only in Europe but around the world. Especially worrisome are his threats to reduce America’s military presence in Europe if other NATO members don’t boost their defense budgets to agreed on levels, and the chance that he could strike some kind of a deal with Russian leader Vladimir Putin at their upcoming meeting that would in some way accept Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and designs on Ukraine. The result would be the kind of appeasement that could encourage more Russian aggression against former satellites of the old Soviet Union that are NATO members today, and against the Baltic states, other new NATO members that were part of the Soviet Union proper after being taken over in 1940.  

Yet this critique fundamentally misreads the Trump NATO strategy – at least as it stands this week. Many of the latest alarm bells were set off by a Washington Post report describing a Pentagon investigation of “the cost and impact of a large-scale withdrawal or transfer of American troops stationed in Germany” – where most U.S. forces in Europe are deployed.

Although semi-denied by the Defense Department, the alleged finding seemed consistent with Mr. Trump’s suggestions that if the NATO allies don’t pick up more of the alliance’s military spending burden, America’s commitment to their defense might weaken. (Interestingly, a similar statement was made earlier this year by Defense Secretary James Mattis, who is generally considered a national security traditionalist who values America’s alliances much more than the President).

But widely overlooked in the latest trans-Atlantic tumult are Mr. Trump’s actions – which should speak louder than words. And many of them were nicely summed up in this Associated Press article:

“Notwithstanding Trump’s grumbles about America shouldering the defense burden of Europe, his administration plans to boost spending to support it.

“In the aftermath of Russia’s annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine in 2014 and its subsequent military incursion into eastern Ukraine, the Pentagon ramped up joint exercises in eastern and central Europe and spent billions on what it calls the European Deterrence Initiative aimed at Russia. After spending $3.4 billion on that initiative last year, the Trump administration has proposed boosting it to $6.5 billion in the 2019 budget year.”

It’s bad enough that a U.S. decision to increase the American military footprint in Europe will completely kneecap the Trump administration’s efforts to push more allied military spending by convincing the allies that continued free-riding and foot-dragging will carry no cost. Far worse is the focus of this new U.S. spending on beefing up the American/NATO presence in Poland and the other new alliance members in Eastern Europe. Indeed, that article about studying cutting American forces in Germany reported that one option being considered was moving some – presumably permanently – to Poland, which borders Russia.

The Poles and the other countries once under the Soviet thumb are understandably heartened by these possible moves. Troublingly, however, this apparent Trump gambit indicates that he’s just as ignorant about the paramount reason for overhauling U.S. NATO strategy as his globalist critics: Because of the alliance’s expansion to cover so many countries so close to Russia, because Moscow has recently been responding so sharply, and because NATO legally requires the United States and all other allies to rally to the defense of any NATO member under attack, the chances have risen that America could become embroiled in a war with a nuclear-armed Russia.

And worse still, the more American units are stationed in Europe, and the more permanent these deployments (so far, they’re periodically rotated in and out), the greater the odds that such a conflict will go nuclear – because defending Russia’s neighbors with conventional forces alone will prove impossible, and because the American forces will become a tripwire whose defeat or impending defeat would generate heavy pressure on any U.S. President to respond with a nuclear strike that would risk Russian retaliation.

A resulting, and tragic, irony: The security of Germany and the countries of Western Europe have for decades been considered vital American interests, primarily because their industrial and technological strength and potential could dramatically affect the balance of global power. The security of the countries to the East have never been considered vital American interests, partly because they have never remotely possessed these capabilities or potential, and partly because geography will always make them fatally vulnerable to Soviet or Russian ambitions.

So the possibly emerging Trump position amounts to assuming greater risks (including of nuclear attack on the American homeland) for assets of much less value.

As I’ve written, the continuation of status quo American policies on the Korean Peninsula poses similar nuclear risks to protect an ally – South Korea – that’s certainly impressive economically but hardly decisive to U.S. safety or prosperity.

I’m still firmly on board with President Trump’s declared intention of replacing longtime globalist foreign policies with an America First approach. But like everything else in life, this transformation can be carried out badly and well. Without a major course change, Mr. Trump’s policies could easily wind up leaving the nation with the worst of both international strategies.

P.S. If you’re interested in seeing how I would deal with the above dilemmas, check out my new article in The National Interest – on what a genuine America First foreign policy would look like, and why it would be far better than its predecessor, or the strange hybrid the Trump administration has created to date.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: North Korea, China, & the (Inevitable) Limits of Diplomacy

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agriculture, China, commodities, diplomacy, energy, Iran, Kim Jong Un, LIbya, Made in China 2025, manufacturing, Muammar el-Qaddafi, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Saddam Hussein, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, tariffs, technology, Trade, trade deficit, tripwire, Trump, Ukraine

Diplomacy has sure taken a beating these last few days. And revealingly, that looks like a good thing.

Let me explain: I have no problem whatever with countries trying to resolve their differences peacefully, through dialogue and compromise. But in the nuclear age, and especially after America’s Vietnam debacle, this age-old concept has turned into a foreign policy magic bullet in the United States – including among the nation’s bipartisan globalist establishment. So the collapse (for now) of plans for a summit between President Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, and the failure so far of the President to make any headway in curbing China’s predatory trade practices, could be welcome developments. For these developments could remind Americans of diplomacy’s limits in promoting U.S. national interests (the overriding priority of the nation’s foreign policy), and how even on crucial issues of war and peace, it can be completely pointless and even dangerously distracting.

On North Korea, there have always been strong grounds for skepticism that negotiations could achieve America’s main objective – the complete elimination of Kim Jong Un’s nuclear weapons. It’s true that Kim has appeared more interested in economic reform than his father or grandfather – who preceded him in power. Therefore, in principle, he would be more responsive to economic carrots and sticks. On the one hand, he might be amenable to surrendering his arsenal in exchange for foreign investment and aid (along with security-related concessions from the United States like formal recognition of his regime, a peace treaty ending the decades-long state of war between Pyongyang and its enemies). On the other hand, he might be more concerned about the impact of the sanctions that President Trump has both broadened and intensified.

Yet it was always difficult to believe that Kim would prize any of these considerations above his regime’s defense against overseas threats, and for these purposes, nuclear weapons are hard to beat. As widely noted, he’s surely been impressed by the gruesome fates of fellow autocrats who gave up their nuclear hopes (Libya’s Muammar el-Qaddafi) or who hadn’t the chance to develop these weapons (Iran’s Saddam Hussein).

Further, Kim also is no doubt aware of a third recent example of a country paying heavily for signing away its nuclear weapon status: Ukraine. In 1994, that nation agreed to dismantle the large nuclear force stationed on its soil when it was part of the Soviet Union, and left there after the USSR’s demise. In return, it received security promises from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia that its territorial integrity would be respected. A quarter century later, Moscow has seized effective control over much of the country’s eastern half.

Moreover, if a Trump-Kim summit and follow-on negotiations resulted in a compromise that left the North with some kind of nuclear arsenal, this “victory” could eventually become disastrous for America and its homeland. For there would be no guarantee that Kim would have truly abandoned his family’s goal of dominating the Korean peninsula through nuclear-aided conquest or intimidation of the South. And as long as large U.S. ground forces remained in South Korea, the outbreak of war would still threaten to draw Washington into a conflict with a foe capable of hitting its territory with nuclear warheads.

That still-live prospect should be an awfully powerful reason for switching to a strategy I’ve long advocated – ditching diplomacy, withdrawing the U.S. troops in South Korea that expose the United States to nuclear danger, and permitting North Korea’s neighbors to handle Kim and his nuclear ambitions any way they wish.

Trade diplomacy with China doesn’t threaten to turn an American city into a glowing ruin. But it’s all too likely to result in open-ended talks that do as little to combat the economic and security threats created by Beijing’s trade predation as previous negotiations involving President Trump’s predecessors. As I’ve recently written, even if his administration could come up with a coherent set of priorities, adequately verifying any Chinese compliance with U.S. positions is a pipe dream.

But this latest American attempt at trade diplomacy faces two other seemingly insuperable obstacles. First, the President’s objective of reducing the U.S.’ massive bilateral trade deficit with China appears to neglect the makeup of this deficit – which matters more than its size. Specifically, his proposals to date envision narrowing the trade gap mainly by boosting American exports of farm products and energy to China.

Both sectors of the U.S. economy are obviously important. But neither can become a major driver of sustainable American prosperity, because they’re essentially involved in producing commodities – which have never added nearly as much value to national economy as manufactures. That’s why developing countries invariably view a transition from agriculture to industry as the key to their hopes for rising living standards, and why even wealthy energy producers like Saudi Arabia have resolved to focus more on manufacturing and other higher value activities.

And P.S. – that’s no doubt why the Chinese clearly consider this American demand the most appealing on the Trump agenda.

As for the intertwined threats of continued and rampant Chinese intellectual property theft, and of China’s master plan to lead the world in a wide array of “industries of the future” (the Made in China 2025 program), U.S. tariffs on the goods and services these policies already enable Beijing to produce and export could well deal its ambitions a major blow. And clearly, that’s the Trump administration’s aim.

But if so, why negotiate over these matters? The United States has made reasonably clear what it wants China to do. And it’s declared its intent to retaliate with trade curbs if China balks. If the Trump administration is serious about this approach, and confident that it will succeed, what is there left to talk about? Either the Chinese accede (in which case, as I wrote this week, towering verification challenges would remain), or they dig in their heels and the tariffs follow.

Further talks, unless they’re simply aimed at clarifying American positions, can only muddy the waters and encourage endless Chinese foot-dragging – including regularly throwing Washington a few crumbs of market share – by telegraphing a Trump reluctance to pull the trigger. All the while, the Chinese tech prowess ostensibly alarming Americans across the political spectrum will keep growing.

And as with the case of the Korean crisis, a far better American approach would be disengagement – i.e., a series of measures aimed at reversing the disastrously wrongheaded twenty-year U.S. effort to more closely link the nation’s fate to a country with which mutually beneficial commerce was never possible. The Trump administration has already taken some important steps in this direction. Chiefly, it has greatly tightened restrictions on Chinese takeovers of economic assets in the United States. And the President’s threatened tariffs have induced some factories to move from China to the United States. But as previously indicated, the administration also seems bent on helping U.S. companies invest more in the Chinese economy, which can only further widen the trade deficit and hand China more cutting edge American technology. And it’s given no hint of a comprehensive strategy to bring manufacturing supply chains now concentrated in China back to the United States.

The latter task, in particular, will entail a long-term effort – not exactly the American governing system’s strong suit these days. And success will also depend on thoroughgoing domestic policy reform. (See this article for one sensible list.) But compared with the apparent belief that, over any policy-relevant time frame, China’s will become an economy compatible with America’s, it’s the height of realism.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why America’s Alliance Strategy Can’t Have it All

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alliances, allies, burden sharing, China, defense spending, Financial Times, Germany, James Mattis, Japan, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, North Korea, nuclear war, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, smothering, South Korea, Trump

Decades ago (literally!) I came up with an insight that’s stood the test of time pretty well. When my main professional focus was American foreign policy, I began realizing that the best way to describe the U.S. approach to its major security alliances with East Asian and European countries was to call it a “smothering strategy.” That is, American leaders were trying not only to protect Japan and Western Europe specifically from communist aggression. They were also trying to make sure that those critical regions never exploded into major war again – and principally, that Germany and Japan never resumed their roles as aggressors.

The characteristic U.S. solution? Washington would try to smother these German and Japanese impulses by removing their need to conduct any kind of independent foreign policies of their own in the first place. That’s why the United States pledged to take care of both their national security interests (with dangerous nuclear defense commitments) and their economic interests (by opening its economy much wider to their exports than vice versa). As a result, for decades, Germans (and other Europeans) and Japanese could avoid the expenses of maintaining big military establishments and concentrate tightly on the peacetime pursuits of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness – not to mention building great wealth.

How good was this insight? To me, the proof of the pudding was America’s determination to preserve these alliances almost unchanged even after the Cold War ended, the Soviet Union disappeared, and China had not yet launched a drive to boost its influence in East Asia. To put it bluntly, U.S. leaders were still terrified that, if they were forced to face the world on their own once more, the Germans and Japanese would go bonkers again.

But this past week came some evidence that the smothering strategy is still firmly in place – despite the election of an American President who has complained loudly as a candidate as well as in office about how these arrangements are inexcusable rip-offs of the American public and especially taxpayers. At a big national security conference held each year in Germany, Trump administration officials expressed alarm at the prospect that some European initiatives to boost military spending that have barely advanced past the talking stage could might result in European forces at least sometime operating independently of their alliance with the United States – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) – and even excluding America.

According to a Financial Times account of the meeting, U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis reacted by insisting that these European Union “defence plans…enhance Nato’s common defence rather than detract from it. And he put down an important marker: there was, he said, a clear understanding that common defence is a Nato mission that belongs to Nato ‘alone’.”

In other words, the Trump administration has now fallen into both of the traps that ensnared U.S. alliance policy during the Cold War. It has assured the allies that its commitment to their defense is absolute – including the risk of fighting a nuclear war on their behalf – thereby gutting any incentives for them to stop “free riding” on the United States militarily and bearing a greater share of the defense burden. And it has made clear that, although it wants the allies to assume more responsibilities for their own defense, it opposes the allies gaining any more control over their own defense. Instead, the United States must remain firmly in charge.

As a foreign policy realist, who believes that national interests are much more important than particular alliances, and can clash with the preservation of these alliances, I don’t blame the Trump-ers for wanting to have their cake and eat it, too on this score – i.e., more allied resources to use as Washington wishes. Nor do I blame the Europeans for wanting as much defense assistance from Americans as they can get while continuing to skimp on their military budgets.

But as an American, I wish the administration would recognize two fatal flaws in this alliance strategy status quo. The first is the un-realism of straining to freeze alliance structures in place when the common enemy that represented their raison d’etre has been gone for nearly thirty years. The second entails the needless dangers created by continuing to provide nuclear guarantees – and the tripwire forces needed to draw it into Armageddon – for these allies when not even the partial revival of Russian and Chinese threats (along with North Korea’s development of ever more advanced nuclear weapons) has fostered consensus in how to handle them.

Of course, dissolving these alliances will entail risks. But the risks of trying to square these circles look far greater. And when considering the nuclear threats they now pose (from those North Korean as well as Chinese forces that are much more capable of credibly threatening the United States with nuclear attack, along with Russia’s Cold War holdover arsenal), they look harder to justify than ever.

Im-Politic: Where’s the Collusion?

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2016 election, collusion, Donald Trump Jr., Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Jeff Sessions, Michael Flynn, Robert S. Mueller III, Russia, Russia-Gate, Special Counsel, Trump

Although you wouldn’t know it from the Mainstream Media coverage (see the especially egregious front page or home page of yesterday’s Washington Post), the biggest story told by the Justice Department indictments of Russians said to have meddled in American politics and the 2016 presidential election was not the additional evidence of this campaign’s existence, and how it undermines President Trump’s numerous statements denying or belittling Moscow’s efforts.

Instead, it was the evidence that, after eight months of investigation, Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III has presented no reason to believe that anyone connected with the Donald Trump’s presidential campaign colluded with Russia to help him win the White House; that what his probe has found is a Russian meddling campaign with multiple, overlapping objectives that aimed to help several 2016 presidential hopefuls and roil American politics in many ways even (and especially?) after Election Day; and that this apparent Russian effort began long before anyone other than (possibly) Mr. Trump thought he would seek the presidency.

Interestingly, finding number two dovetailed with my post from a week ago, which spotlighted a New York Times story which made the point about Russia’s post-election aims going far beyond propping up President Trump.

Despite the media focus on the indictment’s description of the Russian campaign and its contrast with the president’s alleged indifference to it, it’s crucial to remember that this document is an indictment, not a legal conviction. The defendants still deserve the presumption of innocence when their day in court comes (assuming any will ever stand trial).

And despite the media focus on the Trump denial angle, it’s even more important to recognize how devastatingly the indictment undermines the collusion charge that’s constituted the main fear about Russia’s interference.

First, the indictment makes only one mention of any contacts of any kind between anyone involved in the Trump campaign and these alleged Russian operatives. It comes in paragraph 45:

“Defendants and their co-conspirators also used false U.S. personas to communicate with unwitting members, volunteers, and supporters of the Trump Campaign involved in local community outreach, as well as grassroots groups that supported then-candidate Trump. These individuals and entities at times distributed the [interference] ORGANIZATION’s materials through their own accounts via retweets, reposts, and other means. Defendants and their co-conspirators then monitored the propagation of content through such participants.”

Of course, the word “unwitting” is decisively important. It means that, the view of Special Counsel Mueller, the Trump-ers who were communicating with the Russians had no idea that they were dealing with agents of a foreign government. So by definition, they couldn’t have been colluding with Moscow.

Just as important, even though by now of course Mueller and his team know about controversial contacts between obvious agents of the Russian government and various Trump-ers that previously have ignited major controversy, the indictment never mentions them. These include the Russian U.S. ambassador’s two encounters with then-Senator Jeff Sessions, which ultimately led to Session’s recusal as Attorney General from the “Russia-Gate” investigation and Mueller’s appointment in the first place; and his conversations with former Trump administration national security adviser-designate Michael Flynn during the transition.

Nor does it mention the meeting in Trump Tower in New York City between one of Mr. Trump’s sons, his son-in-law and now senior White House aide Jared Kushner, and then-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, with a lawyer Donald Trump, Jr. was told was “a Russian government attorney.” Trump, Jr. was also told that this attorney (who, for what it’s worth, has denied any connections with the Kremlin) was offering what was described by the Trump, Jr. friend who instigated the eventual meeting as

“some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father. This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump…..”

Reportedly, the Special Counsel is investigating the meeting. But also, reportedly, his focus is not on the event itself but on statements that the President himself and top aides made on the subject that appear to be misleading, and that therefore could represent obstruction of justice. Obstruction of course is a serious offense, but the Trump Tower meeting itself clearly is more germane to the all-important collusion charges.

Moreover, the Special Counsel has had full access to the contents of all the wiretapped conversations between the other aforementioned prominent Trump supporters or advisers and the Russians with whom they met. (According to the CNN post linked above, the Trump Tower meeting was not wiretapped.) And apparently – again after months of investigation – nothing said at these meetings has convinced Mueller and his staff that collusion, or any indictable offense related to the Russia-Gate narrative, took place.

The second way in which the indictment undermines the collusion charge is by specifying that Mr. Trump was not the only political candidate that the Russians supposedly sought to bolster in the 2016 campaign, and that they actually began working against him immediately after the election.

According to paragraph 2, the Russian defendants:

“conspired with each other (and with persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury) to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.”

In paragraph 6, the indictment states that “Defendants posted derogatory information about a number of candidates, and by early to mid-2016, Defendants’ operations include supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump…and disparaging Hillary Clinton.” This charge restates the preceding point that supporting Mr. Trump was not the interference operation’s only goal. So does paragraph 10 (e), which refers to the Russians’ “stated goal of ‘spread[ing] distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general.”

Paragraph 33 accuses Moscow of writing “about topics germane to the United States such as U.S. foreign policy and U.S. economic issues. Specialists were also instructed to create ‘political intensity through supporting radical groups, [social media] users dissatisfied with [the] social and economic situation and oppositional social movements.”

Paragraph 43 refers to “operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about [Democratic nominee] Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump.” (Green Party candidate Jill Stein was also identified, in paragraph 46, as a politician backed by the operation.)

It’s clear that one of the Russians’ top priority was defeating Clinton. And the possibility still remains that Moscow believed it had so compromised Mr. Trump – e.g., through the salacious, though unverified, information in the Steele Dossier (compiled by a former British intelligence agent whose work of course was funded by the Clinton campaign) – that its ultimate aim was a Trump victory and an American president it could blackmail and manipulate on an ongoing basis.

Yet there’s another more obvious explanation for the anti-Clinton focus: She was widely viewed not only as the overwhelming favorite to win the Democratic nomination, but as the overwhelming favorite to win the fall election. Indeed, the latter belief lasted till election night itself. In other words, had one of the other Republican candidates defeated Trump, and become fully competitive with Clinton, it stands to reason that they would have become a major Russian target, too.

Further, the narrative emphasizing that the Russians viewed Mr. Trump as an ideal Manchurian Candidate completely falls apart upon considering two other indictment findings. First, the Russian interference campaign was conceived considerably before Mr. Trump declared his presidential candidacy – which on that day in 2015 was, to put it mildly, viewed as a long shot.

As stated in paragraph 3, “Beginning as early as 2014, Defendant ORGANIZATION began operations to interfere with the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election.” More specific references to a gearing up period in 2014 can be found in paragraphs 9, 10 (d) and (e), 29, 42, 58 (a), and in numerous descriptions of indicted individuals joining the operation and of their specific activities.

Moreover, as common sense would indicate, for an operation (especially one this substantial) to be running in 2014, planning, and the original formulation of the plan, would have needed to start even earlier. That’s why in paragraph 10, the indictment tells of the umbrella organization registering as a “Russian corporate entity” with the Russian government “in or around July, 2013.” If you had any inkling then that a Trump candidacy in 2016 was remotely conceivable, patriotism should impel you to join a U.S. intelligence agency immediately.

The second finding undercutting the idea of placing a manipulable traitor in the White House is the evidence presented that, almost immediately after Election Day, the Russians began stoking and coordinating both pro- and anti-Trump activities. You can read about them in paragraph 57. And then ask yourself how “protesting the results” of the election and fostering the idea that “Trump is NOT my President” were supposed to enable the victor to aid and abet a pro-Moscow agenda, as opposed to reducing his effectiveness?

For all I know, a new collusion bombshell charge, or an actual smoking gun, could be produced tomorrow in the media. New Mueller announcements or the various Congressional probes may seal the collusion case as well – perhaps with new evidence about the activities of Sessions or Flynn, or other individuals implicated in these events in various ways. (Although again, why haven’t the contents of the wiretapped conversation sufficed?)

But as long as they don’t, especially given the intense hostility of the President’s opponents – including those inside the government – the collusion case is going to look increasingly flimsy, and increasingly political. For if there really might be a traitor in the Oval Office, there’s simply no time to lose.

In the meantime, the “Russia-Gate” theory that looks best is the one I described last week – a chaos-focused operation aimed at whipping up as much American political division and sheer anger as possible, through whoever could advance this goal at any given moment, and whoever prevailed in 2016. Perhaps it’s too cynical (and partisan) to venture that the longer the scandal charges remain in the air, the more the Democrats and Trump’s establishment Republican foes benefit. But there’s no doubt that, the longer the Russia-Gate fight drags on, the better for Moscow and all of America’s foreign adversaries.

Im-Politic: A Neglected Russia Disinformation Objective?

Tags

2016 election, Barack Obama, Central Intelligence Agency, China, CIA, CNN, collusion, cybersecurity, Director of National Intelligence, disinformation, fake news, Im-Politic, intelligence community, James R. Clapper, John O. Brennan, Matthew Rosenberg, MSNBC, NBC, North Korea, Putin, Russia, The New York Times, Trump

Well then. Two passages in a New York Times article from this morning’s print edition were sure conversation-stoppers when it comes to the ongoing uproar about charges that President Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia to boost his election odds and ensure soft treatment from his administration. That is, if you read far enough into the long piece to encounter them. In fact, they’re so important that they should have been the main angle – or at the very least, the main theme of front-page stories from now until we ever find out what’s really happened.

The passages (which make the same critical point):

First, according to Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg, by some point last September (at the latest), American intelligence officials were worried that Russia had developed an “operation to create discord inside the American government.”

Second, and more specifically, the intelligence agencies viewed one key part of this operation as feeding information suggesting that Vladimir Putin’s regime could blackmail the President (and/or the candidate) to “United States intelligence agencies and pit them against Mr. Trump.”

And here, in Rosenberg’s words, is the context:

“American intelligence agencies believe that Russia’s spy services see the deep political divisions in the United States as a fresh opportunity to inflame partisan tensions. Russian hackers are targeting American voting databases ahead of the midterm election this year, they said, and using bot armies to promote partisan causes on social media. The Russians are also particularly eager to cast doubt on the federal and congressional investigations into the Russian meddling, American intelligence officials said.

“Part of that effort, the officials said, appears to be trying to spread information that hews closely to unsubstantiated reports about Mr. Trump’s dealings in Russia, including [a] purported video [depicting him in compromising sexual situations], whose existence Mr. Trump has repeatedly dismissed.”

In plainer English, if Rosenberg has it right, the Russians have not only been trying to put Mr. Trump over a barrel and make sure that he defeated his main rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton. They have not only been trying to shake Americans’ confidence in their democratic institutions by hacking into them and unleashing a flood of fake news onto its media platforms, social and conventional. They have not only been trying to cover their tracks by using such fake news and other tactics to discredit the Congressional investigations into election meddling and related reported outrages.

They have also – separately – been trying to whip up antagonism between the President and the intelligence community. Achieving this goal of course would both tend to hamper America’s own intelligence operations and broader foreign and national security policies, as well as undermine the nation’s political system and its underlying social and cultural unity. And the tumult engulfing the capital and the nation as a whole suggests that the Russians are succeeding with this disinformation campaign, and that the intelligence agencies are playing their hoped for role.

Not that this possibility lets Mr. Trump and his aides totally, or mainly, or partly off the hook when it comes to their Russia ties either before or after his election.  For this objective could well have been sought on top of an effort to turn Mr. Trump into a Manchurian Candidate and President, not instead of it. But it does raise the question of how many of the allegations have stemmed from simple, and completely fictitious, plants.

Something else noteworthy about this article: If it’s accurate, then the potentially disastrous loss of America’s cyber-weapons to Russia and perhaps other adversaries that keyed Rosenberg’s piece was just the latest disclosed possibly catastrophic intelligence failures that occurred during Barack Obama’s presidency, and on the watches of the former intelligence agency chiefs, like his Director of National Intelligence (the complex’s top job) James R. Clapper, and one of his Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John O. Brennan – both of whom have been particularly sharp Trump critics.

Two others? China’s penetration of the CIA’s operations in the People’s Republic, which reportedly resulted in the assassination or capture of “more than a dozen sources” (according to press accounts, the breach began in 2010, under Brennan’s predecessor, former General David Petraeus) and the failure to anticipate the speed of North Korea’s nuclear weapons development (which can be laid directly at Clapper’s feet, and which Brennan apparently missed as well).

Clapper, incidentally, is now a “national security analyst” for CNN. Brennan has just joined NBC and MSNBC in the same capacity. Good luck to you if you think there’s any chance these networks’ weekend talk shows tomorrow will raise any of this, including the Rosenberg article, with them?

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Establishment Goes Farther Off the Deep End on North Korea

Tags

alliances, allies, China, Cold War, deterrence, James Jeffrey, Japan, North Korea, nuclear war, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, South Korea, Soviet Union, The Atlantic, Trump

James Jeffrey’s new post in The Atlantic on the North Korea nuclear crisis has so much to commend it. (Yes, there’s a “but” coming, and it’s enormous, but let’s give him his due.)

The former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and Iraq valuably reminds readers of the dangers of assuming – as per the latest conventional wisdom – that North Korea’s motives for developing nuclear forces potent enough to threaten the American homeland are purely defensive. This confidence, he notes, may be convenient for justifying a call for the United States to clear the way for a negotiated solution to the crisis by backing off its longstanding insistence on Pyongyang’s denuclearization. But no one aside from Kim Jong-un himself can have any confidence in assessing what’s inside his head.

As a result, Jeffrey also recognizes that the nuclear deterrence strategy that helped prevent Soviet and Chinese aggression during the Cold War (and so far seems to be helping curb Russian and Chinese expansionism nowadays) is far from guaranteed to work against a leader with a history of erratic and even violent behavior, and who is heir to a regime with a similar history – including absorbing enormous sacrifices to “reunify” the Korean peninsula under its rule. (At the same time, Jeffrey seems to undercut these arguments at the end by calling the denuclearization goal unreasonable, and signaling his support for a compromise that would leave the North with “some nuclear capability” in exchange for “a ‘temporary’ diplomatic solution that stops North Korean development of systems that can strike the U.S.”

In addition, Jeffrey forthrightly explains that both the Cold War deterrence strategies and their latter-day Korean counterpart depended on a gamble that involved putting the U.S. homeland at risk of nuclear attack, and denying an American president any real choice but to push the nuclear button that would surely bring this about.

Finally, the author understands that U.S. security interests could be powerfully served – and deterrence on the Korean peninsula strengthened – by encouraging South Korea and Japan to develop their own nuclear weapons (although he never addresses the objection that neither country would likely go to these lengths as long as they can free-ride on the American defense guarantee).

So Jeffrey deserves great credit for going beyond conventional foreign policy thinking in many important respects. But in the most important respect by far, he’s solidly inside the consensus – which astonishingly, and let’s face it – derangedly – believes that there is any objective that the United States could achieve that’s worth any significant risk of nuclear attack on one or more major American cities.

Specifically, the author believes that North Korea may indeed have aggressive aims, and that the nuclear forces it will soon possess will be powerful enough to keep the United States on the sidelines if he attacks the South for fear that he will strike at the American territory. As a result, he believes that “the possibility of military action against North Korea could be understood not as a ‘good thing,’ but as the ‘least bad.’”

And although he does not call on the Trump administration to launch a “preventive war” to take out the North Korean nukes, he insists that steps that could result in such an attack on the United States, namely “a preemptive strike (or generating a credible threat of one to frighten China to act against Pyongyang), however awful, could be the least risky” way to a avoid several even worse alternatives.

And what are these alternatives? On top of the conquest of the South, and “abandoning 80 years of global collective security,” or watching “China intervene to ‘check’ Pyongyang, thereby pulling South Korea (and Japan) into China’s security orbit and ending the security regime the U.S. has maintained in the Pacific since 1945.”

I agree that these would be important setbacks for American interests. But would they be worse than watching several major U.S. metropolitan areas become burning, glowing wastelands? This is where I get off the boat – and I believe anyone with a lick of sanity should follow.

Do you and the rest of the American people agree? I strongly suspect the answer to both questions is “Yes,” but re the latter, here’s what’s most outrageous, and indeed unacceptable: We have no way of knowing, because all wings of the nation’s foreign policy establishment have pursued a strategy of hiding these risks from the public.

That’s why I keep contending that, given North Korea’s impending ability to hit the United States with nuclear weapons, the only policy capable of eliminating this threat (to the extent possible) is pulling the American forces out, thereby removing any reason for North Korea to launch a nuclear strike on American territory, and allowing the powerful, wealthy countries of the region handle Kim anyway they wish. Alternatively, let’s at least put this question – literally one of life and death – directly to the Americans who have been hoodwinked for so long and who would pay the price of hewing to the status quo, and see what they think.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Can America Finally Stop Playing Uncle Sucker on North Korea?

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alliances, allies, America First, China, core deterrence, deterrence, extended deterrence, Kim Jong Un, Moon Jae-in, North Korea, Northeast Asia, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, sanctions, South Korea, Ted Galen Carpenter, The National Interest, tripwire, Trump

What comes after “patently absurd” – and maybe masochistically so? Whatever the phrase, it’s what would perfectly describe the point reached by U.S. policy toward North Korea and its nuclear forces over the last week. And the developments responsible are making it clearer than ever that, without further delay, President Trump needs to shift his Korean peninsula policy focus to getting the tens of thousands of American troops and their families stationed there far out of harm’s way.

First, South Korea’s newish President Moon Jae-in has once again just reminded anyone willing to listen that his top priority isn’t the declared U.S. imperative of eliminating North Korea’s nuclear forces – and in a verifiable way. It’s avoiding any kind of conflict in Korea, and counting on the combination of America’s own nuclear and conventional military forces to accomplish that goal.

Given the likely horrific costs of even a conventional conflict on the peninsula, that’s completely understandable on his part. In fact, if I were Moon, that’s what I’d be doing. And this need explains his enthusiastic response to a pretty modest (even by North Korean standards) diplomatic initiative from dictator Kim Jong-un. It also explains the South’s long-time failure to build armed forces able to handle the North’s armies on their own. Far better to rely on the more powerful threat posed to the North by U.S. nuclear forces to deter the North from even contemplating an attack. And far cheaper, too!

The problem is that whereas Moon’s strategy would have been acceptable in the period before North Korea developed nuclear weapons able to hit the American homeland, those days are either gone, or nearly gone. As a result, his strategy now poses completely unacceptable risks for the United States.

Not that Moon may not be entirely right in believing that a little more patience and a little more flexibility from Seoul and especially Washington can resolve the nuclear crisis peacefully. But what if he’s wrong, and North Korea simply uses any delay (and especially any resulting relief from economic sanctions) to make further nuclear weapons progress – including building more, improving their performance, and hiding them more effectively?

In that case, the odds rise that something goes wrong in this powder keg region and fighting breaks out after all. And since a conflict could easily result in North Korea destroying a major American city or two with its nuclear weapons, those odds are way too high for any sensible U.S. leader to accept. Even worse, as I’ve written previously, the American troops are stationed in South Korea, right near the border with the North, precisely to force a president to unsheathe U.S. nukes and risk retaliation in kind from the North. Can we all agree that American decisions to use nuclear weapons and run these risks should always be a matter of choice and not necessity? (For an excellent discussion of the dangers of such “tripwire” forces, see this first of three articles on the subject by the excellent foreign policy analyst – and my good friend – Ted Galen Carpenter.)

That’s precisely the truly vital U.S. goal that pulling the American troops out will accomplish – along with eliminating any rational need for Kim Jong-un even to consider using nuclear weapons against the vastly superior United States. Special bonus: A pledge from Washington to use nuclear weapons to prevent attack on its own soil (which political scientists call “core deterrence”) is infinitely more credible than a pledge to use these arms to protect another country (which is termed “extended deterrence”).

Once this unnecessary and unacceptable American vulnerability is removed, Washington should wish the South Koreans well with whatever diplomacy, or combination of diplomacy and a hedging military buildup, they wish to pursue.

Ditto for the policies of Northeast Asia’s other powerful countries, which brings us to the second reason for an American military withdrawal from Korea. Two of the peninsula’s neighbors – China and Russia – have taken indirectly free-riding off the U.S. nuclear pledge to South Korea to new heights. In recent weeks, both have been credibly accused of secretly shipping oil to the Kim Jong-un dictatorship in violation of UN sanctions that they both supported. (See, e.g., here and here.)

Breaking international commitments is hardly praiseworthy, but the obvious implication is that China and Russia are both OK with the status quo on the Korean peninsula. They may even be enjoying it – in the sense of the crisis fraying American nerves and tying down American forces. Or Beijing and Moscow may be struggling to prevent damaging fall-out from a North Korean economic collapse.

Either of these also would be perfectly reasonable judgments, and the Russians and Chinese should feel completely free to handle the North however they wish – maybe in tandem with South Korea, or some UN initiative. But only if the American troops are gone.

In this vein, especially interesting was this piece in The National Interest, which portrays Northeast Asia as a region marked by growing economic cooperation among major powers that historically have often been at each other’s throats. If so, why is the United States, located thousands of miles away, bearing such outsized risks for preserving peace – and the chances that the region could flourish?

The author, a professor at the U.S.’ Naval War College, seems to be saying, “Let Northeast Asia be Northeast Asia”. That sounds great to me – and like an idea that’s entirely compatible with “America First.”