Im-Politic: Fin de Trump? Again?

Tags

2016 election, Donald Trump Jr., establishment, healthcare, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Immigration, Jared Kushner, Mitch McConnell, Paul Manafort, Paul Ryan, Republicans, Russia, Russiagate, Trade, Trump, Vladimir Putin

The latest Trump-Russia revelations make me feel like the Bill Murray character in “Groundhog Day.” I’ve already written posts to the effect that “[Candidate] Trump could really be in trouble this time.” I’ve also already written posts to the effect that “[Candidate] Trump could really be in trouble and this time it could be different.” Like practically everyone else I read and communicate with, I’ve been wrong on these scores, but I’ll be plowing the same fields again – if only because the circumstances are so extraordinary, and especially because so much is still unknown.

First, my bottom lines: I remain skeptical that the emails Donald Trump, Jr. released yesterday (after he was told they’d be published) will result in the end of his father’s presidency in any direct sense (i.e., impeachment and removal, or resignation). I remain equally skeptical of meaningful (and I know that’s an important qualifier, as I’ll discuss below) Trump-ian collusion with Russia’s government (which includes lots of operatives without official positions) to undermine his chief presidential opponent Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

I am, however, more convinced than I had been that what is different about the newest disclosures is that Washington will remain preoccupied with “Russiagate” for most of the rest of the President’s (first?) term, that they’ve just about ruled out any meaningful policy accomplishments through 2020, and that one reason is that Mr. Trump will have bigger reasons than ever to toe a standard Republican establishment policy line that’s highly unpopular even with his own base, but that’s still gospel with a Washington wing of the party whose loyalty is vital to his survival.

Second, let’s knock down the main talking points offered by Mr. Trump’s aides and other supporters (full disclosure: I support much of his agenda, and most of his establishment-bashing). As should be obvious, the failure of the Russian lawyer actually to produce any damaging information on the Clinton campaign does not absolve the president’s son – or son-in-law cum adviser Jared Kushner, or then campaign manager Paul Manafort, of the charges that they tried to cooperate with foreign agents to affect an American political campaign (the heart of the politically salient collusion charge).

The email exchange showed that this information was the principal reason that all three figures attended the meeting. Their motives are completely unaffected by the false pretenses under which they acted.

Just as obvious, and just as bogus, is Trump, Jr.’s claim that he and his colleagues viewed an offer from Russia as nothing special because the Russia-gate charges had not proliferated. Manafort, for example, formally joined the Trump campaign manager on March 29. Certainly by May 2 – a month before Trump, Jr. first heard about the supposed Russian information – Manafort’s longstanding lobbying for pro-Russia politicians in Ukraine was making news. As a result, even if the president’s son was politically inexperienced enough not to recognize the potential dangers, Manafort himself, a veteran Washington operative, surely knew the score.

Even more important, the Russia business ties of Trump, Sr. himself were being scrutinized and fretted about at least as early as March 15.

Have any laws been broken? Beats me. That’s now officially the responsibility of Robert Mueller, te Justice Department’s Special Counsel, to determine. But much of this uncertainty centers on how much is known about this meeting, and how much is known about similar activities. Further, neither impeachment nor the future of the Trump presidency will necessarily hinge on such legal questions. A president, as I’ve noted previously, can be impeached for anything the House of Representatives believes satisfies the definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors” – which itself is a political, not a legal, concept. The Senate, moreover, can remove a president from office for equally political reasons.

So public opinion will be crucial. There are no signs yet that Russia-related charges have significantly damaged President Trump’s support either with the general public or among Republicans. But the more such Russia-related material keeps coming out, the likelier such erosion becomes.

Nor will the president’s political support depend completely, or even largely, on politicians’ often less than steely backbones. The new Trump, Jr. emails – and the continuing and utter failure of anyone in the Trump circle (including the president himself) to provide straight, durable answers to perfectly reasonable questions – understandably revive questions of how extensively individuals associated in any significant way with Mr. Trump or his campaign worked with the Russian government to sway election results.

Until yesterday, as I’ve written, I’ve felt confident that no important collusion evidence would emerge because none had yet been leaked – even though the matter had been probed for months by several official and many unofficial investigations, and even though bureaucrats at the highest levels have been positively eager to reveal incriminating Trump information even if national security could be undermined.

In addition, it’s never been clear to me why Russian interference with the election ever required cooperation from the Trump campaign – or any other American source. As long as Moscow was so motivated, its formidable hacking and disinformation capabilities were amply capable of producing the desired results on their own. Moreover, the U.S. intelligence community’s January report on the Russian interference campaign itself reported that Russian leader Vladimir Putin was wary of praising candidate Trump too enthusiastically precisely for fear of generating a backlash.

At the same time, even the canniest political leaders and other figures don’t always behave logically or sensibly. It’s also now clear at least that many in the Trump circle have been less than canny or, when it comes to explaining controversial events, even minimally competent. As a result, as stated above, there’s now indisputable evidence of receptivity to collusion by three extremely influential Trump aides (including two family members).

If the June Trump, Jr. meeting represents the extent of the collusion, there’s still an excellent chance that the president ultimately will survive the Russia mess. After all, what kind of (serious) collusion effort, once started, would feature no follow up? But because no one close to Mr. Trump now enjoys (or deserves) much credibility on these matters outside hardcore Trump-supporter circles, Democrats now have the pretext they need to force the administration to keep trying to prove a negative – a challenge no one should relish. Special Counsel Mueller has a comparable justification for prolonging his own investigation considerably.

Yet even before the possible crumbling of the president’s political support, for either legal or political reasons or some combination of the two, the Trump administration’s Russia-related problems could profoundly impact the nation’s policy agenda – and not in a good way if you’ve hoped Mr. Trump would be an agent of serious change. Here’s what I mean.

Recall that last year, Mr. Trump did not simply assume the leadership of the Republican party after winning its presidential primaries. He engineered a hostile takeover, supplanting a party mainstream that strongly opposed him on his two signature issues – trade and immigration policies. The shocking Trump fall victory, however, gave the incoming president crucial leverage in this relationship, and for a very powerful, concrete reason. The Republicans’ establishment leaders in Congress gave his campaign, and especially the inroads he made with new constituencies, abundant credit for saving the party’s control of both the House and Senate.

Once the Russia-gate charges and Team Trump’s failures to address them adequately began gaining critical mass, though, the dynamics of this relationship began changing dramatically. President Trump’s future became more dependent on the establishment GOP’s support. Therefore, he needed to warm to its establishment agenda – notably their budget and healthcare proposals – despite the poor poll numbers they’ve been drawing. Additionally, his ability to reach across the aisle on promising areas of bipartisan agreement, like infrastructure, turned into a function of the overall party’s flexibility – which seems pretty limited to date.

Since such vast new – and, due to the Trump circle’s constantly changing responses, legitimate – investigative frontiers have been opened up by the new emails, the Trump wagon now looks to be hitched to the Congressional Republican star more tightly than ever. That’s not to say that House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will never stray from their party’s orthodoxy. McConnell, at least, has hinted that bipartisan compromise may be needed on healthcare. Moreover, the party establishment is by no means united on all major issues, either. Consequently, intra-party divisions may widen the scope for bipartisanship (as has generally been the case to avoid or mitigate various budget crises).

But the main point here is that at this point, these decisions are likeliest to be driven by the establishment, not the president. And the tragedy, at least for anyone rooting for the president or any of his agenda, is how many of the resulting White House political and policy wounds will have been entirely self-inflicted.

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

Tags

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Following Up: Germany’s Merkel on NATO and Defense May be Leading, but Could Lack Followers

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allies, Angela Merkel, Europe, Following Up, Germany, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Pew Research Center, polls, Russia, Trump

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who’s not known as a bomb-thrower, at least chucked a pretty good sized grenade into newly volatile relations between the United States and the European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Merkel told a crowd at a political rally today that “The times when we could fully rely on others have passed us by a little bit, that’s what I’ve experienced in recent days.” She clearly was referring to her experience with President Trump, a longtime skeptic of the Atlantic alliance, at NATO’s summit last week. And Merkel continued, “For that reason,” Merkel continued, “I can only say: We Europeans really have to take our fates in our own hands.”

These remarks don’t count as full-fledged bombs for several big reasons. First, as I noted in a recent post, the Trump refusal to endorse explicitly NATO’s Article Five pledge to aid militarily any member under armed attack might have the transatlantic foreign policy crowd in a state of hysteria, but the clause is ambiguous and German and other European leaders have always known – and fretted – about this.

Moreover, U.S. allies repeatedly have discussed creating a meaningful defense capacity of their own with varying degrees of independence from the United States. So far, they’ve never followed through – mainly because American leaders typically responded with renewed pledges of undying loyalty. So the allies understandably felt perfectly free to continue free-riding.

But let’s say that This Time It’s Different (and sometimes it is, otherwise, we’d have no history). What’s interesting to say the least is that Merkel is going to face some major obstacles with her own people and many others in Europe. How do we know this? Let’s simply look at that Pew Research Center NATO poll I posted on yesterday.

Now some sharp RealityChek readers may be wondering why I’m using this Pew data, since yesterday’s post demonstrated many fatal flaws. Here’s the answer: My criticism of Pew focused on its failure to inform American respondents that the nation’s NATO commitments created any risks. That’s important given how ignorant so many Americans remain about even major foreign policy realities, because they’re so physically isolated and insulated from the rest of he world.

But European publics – which were also surveyed by Pew, and whose views I’ll discuss below, are substantially different. After all, they live much closer to Russia, NATO’s main concern. So even if they’re by no means foreign policy experts, the continent’s war-torn past is something much more apparent to them, and especially to their parents and grandparents. Just as important, they’re the ones who will have to live with the worst consequences of poor governmental national security decisions. And if the views they expressed to the Pew researchers are representative, Merkel could well find it almost impossible to help create an independent European defense effort worthy of the name.

Interestingly, Merkel herself implicitly acknowledged that not all the forces jeopardizing European unity are coming from Washington. As she observed, the United Kingdom just voted to withdraw from the European Union last year. And of course she knows how strong anti-EU sentiments remain throughout Europe, and how many stem from resentments over the outsized role Germany has played in dealing with (and allegedly contributing to) recent economic crises like the one that’s engulfed Greece.

Yet what Merkel may not yet know about her compatriots and other Europeans should trouble her even more. For example, according to Pew, German support for NATO is strong (67 percent view the alliance favorably). But only 40 percent of Germans agree that their country should use military force to defend a fellow NATO ally under attack. Fully 53 percent would want Germany to sit out the conflict.

Merkel might draw some comfort from seeing that Germany’s commitment to NATO’s core mission is the weakest among the countries surveyed. But it’s not whoppingly lower than the support for going to war registered in the two other major European military powers, the United Kingdom (45 percent) and France (53 percent). Further, the Pew results show that a distinct minority of those surveyed in NATO’s European members view Russia as a “major threat to their nation.”

Merkel, however, isn’t the only national leader who should be paying close attention to these Pew findings. If they’re accurate, President Trump and the rest of Washington need to ask themselves whether America can count on any prompt, significant assistance from NATO Europe if push comes to shove.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Desperately Seeking Adult Polling on NATO

Tags

allies, burden sharing, defense spending, foreign policy, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear war, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Pew Research Center, polls, Russia, Trump, vital interests

There’s not much doubt that the main purpose of this recent Pew Research Center poll was to show the unpopularity in America of President Trump’s skeptical views of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Published just before this past week’s summit of the U.S. defense alliance with many European countries, the survey finds that “Today, roughly six-in-ten Americans hold a favorable opinion of the security alliance….”

So that seems to be quite the rebuke to a president who has faulted NATO as “obsolete,” accused many members of being defense free-riders, and during the meeting declined to promise unconditionally that the United States would help militarily any alliance member that came under armed attack.

Actually, the survey once again shows that polls on foreign policy issues tend to be among the most incompetently and misleadingly crafted polls of all. I say this because the Pew researchers failed to raise in any of their questions any of the most important issues Americans need to think about as they assess the value of NATO. Maybe the best way to make the point is to present question possibilities that would make these issues clear.

First: Would you favor the United States militarily defending a NATO ally if embroiled in an armed conflict with Russia if this aid might result in a Russian nuclear attack on the United States?

Second, Would you favor the United States militarily defending a NATO ally if embroiled in an armed conflict with Russia, and running that risk of nuclear war, if the ally in question had never been considered by any U.S. president going back to Franklin D. Roosevelt to be a vital or even significant security interest of the United States?

Third, Would you favor the United States militarily defending a NATO ally if embroiled in an armed conflict with Russia, and running that risk of nuclear war, if the nuclear war risk existed largely because NATO’s European members collectively refuse to pay for militaries that could repel the Russians on their own?

In other words, a poll that measured Americans’ true beliefs about and support for NATO would be one that reminded them that, as with most of what’s important about life, different positions and decisions have important potential downsides as well as important potential upsides. And until pollsters begin informing Americans about the real choices they face on important questions of both domestic and foreign policy, it will be painfully obvious that theirs is yet another portion of the chattering classes in desperate need of some adult thinking.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Trump’s Real NATO Mistake

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allies, Article Five, Baltics, Barack Obama, Charles de Gaulle, Cold War, Europe, France, Germany, NATO, NATO expansion, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear deterrence, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Poland, Russia, Soviet Union, tripwire, Trump, United Kingdom

President Trump’s tireless critics are at it again, accusing him of calling into question America’s “sacred” and allegedly legally binding obligation to come to the military defense of any of its European allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) if they come under armed attack.

As charged by the author linked above (from the reflexively establishmentarian Brookings Institution), the president’s refusal to endorse this obligation explicitly in his speech today at alliance headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, will “raise grave doubts about the credibility of the American security guarantee and provide Russia with an incentive to probe vulnerable Baltic states.” Sounds awful – and unprecedented – right? Actually, not even close.  But as you’ll see, Mr. Trump could be on his way to creating another big – and completely unnecessary – problem.

In the first place, in concrete terms, Article Five legally obligates the United States to do absolutely nothing specifically if one of its NATO allies comes under assault. The clause simply requires treaty signatories to “assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”

And this flexibility-preserving wording is no accident, or product of jargon-addicted diplomats or international lawyers. It resulted from the U.S. Congress’ insistence that the American government and the people to which it owes its first loyalties to retain the legally recognized right to decide when to go to war. And keep in mind: Congress was determined to reserve the right to stay out of a conflict in Europe as the Cold War was reaching its height.

Just as important: The European allies recognized this right – and its implications – as well, especially after the Soviet Union’s development of major nuclear forces greatly increased the risk to the American homeland of nuclear attack if it plunged into war on the allies’ behalf. We know this for sure because the continuing ambiguity ultimately persuaded both the British and French to create their own nuclear forces. As former French President Charles de Gaulle warned, the United States could not reasonably be expected to endanger the existence of New York or Detroit to save Hamburg or Lyons.

Tragically, American leaders were so strongly opposed to its allies taking back control over their own fates that they strove almost fanatically to convince the Europeans that the United States could indeed be trusted. And Washington put its money where its mouth was, stationing hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, sailors, and air force personnel and their families on or around the European continent. The idea was to create a “trip wire” aimed at denying any U.S. President a real choice of rushing to Europe’s defense with whatever threats or means were necessary. For standing by in the face of aggression would mean a slaughter or American troops and possibly innocents by vastly superior Soviet military forces.

Even during this era of high East-West tensions, however, American leaders never completely lost sight of the desirability of shifting as much of the burden of nuclear risk as possible onto the Europeans – while maintaining as much control as possible over nuclear weapons use. The transatlantic feud over intermediate-range nuclear forces – which threatened to confine the nuclear damage of any East-West war to Europe, leaving the American and Soviet homelands unscathed – was only one prominent example. And even this U.S. aim was fatally muddied, or at best thoroughly confused, by the continuing enormous military presence in Germany, directly in the likeliest path of the Soviet conventional juggernaut.

After the Cold War ended, the tripwire was steadily dismantled, but American presidents continued to treat Article Five as an ironclad promise to defend NATO members militarily – as demonstrated by the 2013 Obama statement in the Atlantic article linked above. Moreover, once Russian military and paramilitary activity began to increase in Moscow’s “near abroad,” Washington began, hesitatingly, to be sure, to respond to the demands of the newest NATO members in Russia’s sights for U.S. tripwire forces of their own.

Hence the charges that President Trump’s latest statement could dangerously destabilize NATO’s eastern flank. But there’s far more to the situation. In the first place, there’s much evidence linking Russia’s new revanchism to NATO’s expansion eastward right up to Russia’s borders. Second, if Article Five were rigidly applied to new NATO members such as the Baltic states or former Soviet bloc countries like Poland, the United States would be running the risk of nuclear attack on behalf of countries that (a) are completely un-defendable with conventional military forces alone, because they’re right next door to Russia; and (b) consequently, have never been considered vital or even significant interests of the United States.

Troublingly, however, despite the latest Trump statement (or lack thereof), which arguably could inject the Eastern European countries with a needed dose of realism concerning their real options in dealing with Moscow, the president has so far continued the policy of incrementally responding to these countries’ requests for tripwires.

In other words, his big mistake isn’t casting doubt on America’s commitment to these and other European countries. For if the United States might have balked risking New York or Detroit for Hamburg or Lyons, it’s certainly not going to jeopardize an American city or two to save Warsaw or Vilnius. Instead, Mr. Trump apparently is trying to fence-straddle here, which could well create the worst of both worlds on both sides of the Atlantic.

Im-Politic: Trump’s Accusers on Mishandling Intelligence Have Lots to Explain Themselves

Tags

China, Im-Politic, intelligence, James Clapper, leaks, Russia, Stephen A. Hall, The New York Times, Trump, Washington Post

There was a funny article in today’s Washington Post Outlook section – not “ha ha” funny but funny in the sense that life serves up some coincidences that the adjective “embarrassing” doesn’t come close to covering.

The piece in question came from Stephen A. Hall, described as a 30-year veteran of the CIA’s Russia (and presumably Soviet) operations, and it went after President Trump for sharing intelligence information irresponsibly with Russia and thereby going far toward convincing valuable U.S. allies that his administration can’t be trusted with crucial strategic secrets.

Let’s leave aside the indisputable reality that the Soviet operations “run and managed” by Mr. Hall were completely blindsided by the fall of the Soviet Union – arguably the most important geopolitical development of the final half of the twentieth century. Let’s also leave aside that its Soviet operations were the scene of some of America’s most damaging intelligence failures when Hall was around. (Although I’m sure he wasn’t solely or even largely to blame.)

Let’s focus instead on an article that ran the very same day in The New York Times. It reported that “The Chinese government systematically dismantled C.I.A.spying operations in the country starting in 2010, killing or imprisoning more than a dozen sources over two years and crippling intelligence gathering there for years afterward.”

The reason? An “intelligence breach” that according to The Times was “one of the worst in decades.” Indeed, the article continues, “The number of American assets lost in China, officials said, rivaled those lost in the Soviet Union and Russia during the betrayals of both Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, formerly of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., who divulged intelligence operations to Moscow for years.”

And when did Beijing manage in effect to destroy the American spy network in China? Reported The Times, “From the final weeks of 2010 through the end of 2012, according to former American officials….” Further, the article adds, this “previously unreported episode shows how successful the Chinese were in disrupting American spying efforts and stealing secrets years before a well-publicized breach in 2015 gave Beijing access to thousands of government personnel records, including intelligence contractors.”

Anyone remember who was in charge of the U.S. government and its intelligence community during those years? Aside from Barack Obama, there was also one James R. Clapper, Jr., who was named Director of National Intelligence in August, 2010, and who of course has emerged as one of President Trump’s chief critics. For good measure, Clapper was promoted to that position from the top intelligence job in the Pentagon.

More important: During his tenure as head of the nation’s espionage establishment – and during Mr. Obama’s in the Oval Office – evidently zero progress was made in identifying the moles and plugging the breach. To add possible insult to injury, Clapper also could well be one of the apparent scores of former intelligence officials who have been leaking oceans of highly classified information intended to damage the Trump administration.

Like most reporting about intelligence matters, The Times account of the CIA’s China disaster may be completely or largely or partly wrong. As a result, it will be interesting to see if there’s any pushback over the next few days. But if and until there is, Americans will be entitled to ask whether anything that the president has shared with the Russians has or is likely to damage the nation’s security or its relations with other intelligence services as the disasters associated with many of his leading attackers.

Im-Politic: Initial Thoughts on the Trump Wars

Tags

2016 election, Andrew McCabe, Director of National Intelligence, FBI, hacking, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, impeachment, intelligence community, James Clapper, James Comey, John McCain, Justice Department, Lindsey Graham, Loretta Lynch, Michael T. Flynn, Richard M. Nixon, Russia, Russiagate, Sally Yates, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Trump, Wategate

Since I’m not a Trump or intelligence community insider, I’ve refrained from posting any items on the last crisis that began surrounding the administration starting with the president’s firing of James Comey as FBI Director. (I have commented on some aspects briefly on Twitter.) But since I’m a strong supporter of many positions championed by Mr. Trump both during the campaign and – to a lesser extent – in the White House, I thought that RealityChek readers would be interested in some observations about aspects of the uproar that deserve more consideration.

First and most important: Both current and former officials in the federal bureaucracy and even the intelligence community clearly hope to end the Trump presidency, and have decided to leak to the equally anti-Trump Mainstream Media even the most highly classified material if it’s judged to be potentially harmful to the president. Yet no leaks have revealed any evidence supporting the central allegation against the president: the charge that he or close aides colluded in any way with Russian efforts to fix the presidential election in his favor.

Given that the president’s foes long viewed the prospect of his victory with alarm, and given that they have sought to de-legitimize this victory since it unfolded the evening of last November 8, the absence of such a smoking gun after so many months is absolutely startling. If this evidence exists, what are President Trump’s adversaries waiting for?

P.S. – this argument pertains to retired General Michael T. Flynn, who advised candidate Trump and briefly became his White House national security adviser. Flynn has certainly acted in several instances like he’s had something (or things) to hide. But he’s been tracked for months by intelligence officials who – again – have been anything but reluctant to make troubling findings public. And nothing has emerged pointing to working with Russia to undermine the campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

One possible explanation? Many anti-Trump-ers are waiting for the 2018 mid-term elections to get closer and closer, in order to boost the chances of a Democratic landslide before the administration had a chance to rebut the charges conclusively – and before Congressional Republicans have a chance to dissociate themselves from Mr. Trump. And maybe they’re being joined by some establishment Republicans, who hope to recapture their party from the Trump-ist forces. And maybe both factions are motivated mainly by the belief that Mr. Trump is such an unprecedented danger to the republic that any means are warranted to remove him from the Oval Office.

If so, however, some big legal issues pop up.  For instance:  Are individuals privy to information about crimes – and in fact major crimes – withholding them from law enforcement authorities? 

Second: Not only has no evidence of collusion been leaked. The former head of the entire intelligence community has just made clear that, during his own prolonged probe of Russia’s efforts to interfere with the election (a related but clearly separate issue, for which strong evidence exists), he saw none.

In March, James Clapper, who resigned as Director of National Intelligence soon after the election, had tantalizingly hinted at the existence of such material by telling a reporter that the intelligence community “did not include any evidence” in its January report on the Russian campaign “that had anything, that had any reflection of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. There was no evidence of that included in our report.”

But when pressed by “Meet the Press” anchor Chuck Todd to confirm whether such evidence existed, Clapper responded, “Not to my knowledge.” And when asked under oath in Senate testimony on three months later whether that statement was still accurate, Clapper stated, “It is.” In other words, Clapper’s probe, which reflected the work of 16 intelligence agencies including his own Director’s office uncovered no collusion evidence.

The issue was briefly muddied during that same hearing by former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. Like Clapper, an Obama administration appointee to her latest position, Yates initially answered the question about collusion by demurring. She explained that her “answer to that question would require me to reveal classified information. And so, I — I can’t answer that.”

As noted by questioner Senator Lindsey Graham – no admirer of President Trump – the FBI that Yates helped supervise as the second-in-command at the Justice Department was part of Clapper’s Russia investigation. After Yates indicated that the FBI was conducting its own separate counter-intelligence inquiry into Russia’s activities, Graham asked Clapper if the evidence found by the Bureau at that time “was not mature enough” to justify including in the broader intelligence community report.

Responded Clapper: “[T]he evidence, if there was any, didn’t reach the evidentiary bar in terms of the level of confidence that we were striving for in that intelligence community assessment.”

So again, a protracted look into Russia’s Election 2016 hacking produced no evidence of collusion that the intelligence community as a whole believed was solid enough to justify even hinting at in its publicly stated conclusions.

Third: One highly damaging allegation that’s been made over the last week was the Washington Post‘s claim that Comey requested more resources from the Justice Department for his investigation just before he was fired. The clear implication: The president became convinced that Comey was ramping up his investigation – which began in July – and decided to fire him in order to deny him the funds needed to do the job adequately. Such an action, of course, would at least strongly resemble obstruction of justice.

This article, however, too, looks fishy. Post reporter Ashley Parker did include an on-the-record flat Justice Department denial, but needless to say, government spokespersons lie or dissemble all the time. Much more difficult to dismiss: Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe – who had been Comey’s former top deputy – stated in his own sworn testimony to Congress that he was unaware of any such request.

Yes, it’s true that Comey might have made the request without telling McCabe. But how much sense does that make? Nor can anyone accuse McCabe of being a Trump toady. His wife, Jill, had run for office in 2015 as a Democrat and had accepted $500,000 in campaign contributions from the political organization of a long-time Clinton family ally, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe.

Finally (for now!), comes the subject, as reported in The New York Times, of Comey’s alleged memo claiming that President Trump asked him to drop his Russia investigation in a February meeting. The former FBI Director will surely have the chance to confirm, deny, or otherwise elaborate on this story and the conversation in his own testimony under oath to Congress.

As suggested by prominent Trump critic Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, if this request was made, we’re talking about a genuinely Nixonian case of obstruction of justice. (The “smoking gun” tape that played such a decisive role in Richard Nixon’s impeachment and removal in 1974 centered precisely on a decision by the former President to order the FBI to stop its Watergate investigation.)

As Mr. Trump’s critics like to say, however, the Times article “raises questions” – indeed, big ones. First, it’s crucial to note that, as Nixon himself admitted, his actions were intended to cover up criminal activity. As noted above, there’s no evidence yet of a Russia-related crime committed by the Trump administration.

More immediately, Comey has not exactly been shy about loudly expressing, acting on, and widely sharing his concerns about obstacles to official inquests and other behavior he considered improper. In 2004, he threatened to resign as Deputy Attorney General over post-September 11 domestic surveillance programs he viewed as illegal. Last July, he famously held a press conference in which he took the extraordinary step of moving beyond his position’s investigative role to explain extensively his decision to recommend against indicting Hillary Clinton for using a personal email system as Secretary of State. And earlier this month, Comey said – again, under oath – that he took this step because he unilaterally decided that his superior, Attorney General Loretta Lynch had lost credibility as a Clinton investigator because of her meeting with the candidate’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, in June.

It’s certainly possible that Comey has decided to keep firsthand evidence of clear Trump criminality under wraps for going on three months now. But it sure looks out of character.

All of the above notwithstanding, there’s no question that the President’s undisciplined and often contradictory statements understandably have created major suspicions – which are by no means confined to his enemies’ ranks. The consequently confused efforts by his surrogates to clean up these messes have only compounded the problem. And even if the administration had its communications act together, one indisputable lesson of Washington and other scandals is that shoes keep dropping. Moreover, numerous continuing global business ties and burgeoning official responsibilities of the President’s children, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and his family keep failing valid smell tests.

At the same time, the clearly organized Dump Trump effort by numerous persons with detailed knowledge of seemingly the full range of the federal government’s most sensitive activities suggests that “RussiaGate,” at least, could be different. Not in the sense that damaging claims won’t continue to be made, but in the sense that the anti-Trump-ers might have already leaked their worst.

The only certainty at this point appears to be that the various Trump Wars will rage on for months at a minimum – which means that the valid policy grievances of the president’s supporters and so many other Americans will continue to be neglected by their government.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: A Non-Hysterical View of Trump’s Syria Strikes

Tags

air strikes, America First, Bashir Al-Assad, chemical weapons, China, Middle East, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, summit, Syria, Trump, Vladimir Putin, Xi JInPing

I love the idea of the “procustean bed.” It’s a phrase inspired by Greek mythology that’s come to describe the deceptive practice of depicting every notable event or feature of reality as fitting into a preconceived view of how the world works. It’s become standard operating procedure in our highly balkanized, increasingly fact-challenged, and ever more hysteria-prone political culture, and it nicely explains most of the commentary and analysis that’s followed President Trump’s decision to attack a Syrian air base following chemical weapons use in that country’s tragic civil conflict.

I have absolutely no inside information here, but strongly believe that the likeliest explanation is one that can’t easily be spun to advance any particular agenda, and that focuses on a crucial variable bound to be neglected when the main objective is political.

Not that I’m ruling out any of the sets of talking points being pushed so aggressively by the nation’s chattering class. It’s entirely possible that the Syria decision shows that the president never intended to carry out the kind of broadly stand-aside foreign policy he most often (but not always) touted during his campaign, and that he has cynically betrayed his core, non-interventionist, voters. Or that he simply has a learning curve and is wisely admitting that the dangerous world he’s operating in doesn’t permit an America First approach to be carried out safely.

The Syria strikes could reveal how fundamentally incoherent his worldview and agenda are – and are likely to remain. Or how pragmatic he has become. Or how emotionally and thoughtlessly he reacts to perceived challenge or betrayal (specifically, by a client state of a Russian government he’s supposedly coddled until now). Or how cunningly he’s decided to undercut charges that he’s a puppet of Moscow’s. Or, given Mr. Trump’s utter unpredictability on so many fronts, the Syria attacks could simply underscore how he continues to be just as utterly unpredictable in the Oval Office as he was on the campaign trail – which could mean that the Trump move means absolutely nothing at all.

But although all these takes on Syria could in theory be true, I doubt their veracity mainly because they pay absolutely no attention to considerations that would weigh heavily on the mind of even the least competent chief executive (or presidential aides) – the international circumstances staring him in the face once the chemical weapons news came through.

That’s why there’s such a strong case for the following as the prime determinants of the Trump decision – and as reasons for interpreting its long-term effects with extreme caution. Specifically, when the president ordered the strikes, he was in the middle of a summit with the leader of a foreign power – China – that had rapidly emerged as America’s foremost economic challengers and as at least a potential strategic rival. The day before the summit with Xi Jinping began, North Korea conducted the latest of a series of ballistic missile tests it’s conducted since President Trump’s inauguration, and in defiance of multiple United Nations resolutions. And the day before that came the chemical weapons attack – which itself preceded a meeting in Washington, D.C. between Mr. Trump and King Abdullah of Jordan.

So during a week when the global spotlight shone on President Trump with unprecedented intensity came two apparent provocations. (I’m purposely leaving open the possibility that Syrian dictator Bashir Al-Assad is not to blame for the chemical weapons bombing, though I believe the evidence – particularly the reported flights of fixed-wing aircraft over the site – point to Syria’s guilt.) Further, both provocations came very early during the first Trump term – a period when foreign leaders would naturally feel strongly tempted to test a new president, and when all countries would view him with great uncertainty even were he a more conventional politician.

In my view, all these circumstances combined to convince the president that a forceful response of some kind was needed. And since North Korea can credibly threaten American allies with conventional military and even nuclear attacks, and Syria can’t, Assad was the inevitable target.

In other words, the Trump strikes right now are best seen as a simple message-sending exercise. And the messages itself were simple as well. Not that, “I’ve changed my foreign policy stripes” and not that “I’m ready to plunge much more deeply into the Syria and other Middle East conflicts” but that “I have my limits” and “I have no intrinsic qualms about using the vast military arsenal at my disposal.”

Because the extreme shortage of competent policy analysts with a Trump-ian worldview has left the president little choice but to rely heavily on conventional thinkers for briefings and advice on foreign policy and other matters, it’s entirely possible that his air strikes presage a more activist Middle East or overall international strategy. At the same time, nothing about the strikes makes such a transformation inevitable, and especially far-fetched (as they always have been) are claims that individual uses of military power are pointless (at best) unless carried out as part of a broader plan of action meant to win or acceptably resolve a foreign conflict.

Particularly in the case of the Middle East, where history and recent American experience clearly teach that no constructive solutions are possible (or at least not at acceptable cost and risk), and where due to developments such as the U.S. domestic energy production revolution, the national interests at stake are no longer unquestionably vital, individual military actions that send uncomplicated messages can have significant value in their own right – and all the more so as they inevitably will be heard in many other regions, including those that matter more.

So everyone is best advised to hold their horses as they go about interpreting the Trump Syria strikes and especially about what futures they supposedly guarantee and rule out. Indeed, no one should heed this kind of advice more closely than President Trump.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Im-Politic: The Trump-ers and the Russians

Tags

2016 election, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Jeff Sessions, Logan Act, Michael T. Flynn, Russia, Sergey Kislyak, Trump, U.S. intelligence, Vladimir Putin

The more I read about the firestorm that has erupted over possible contacts between officials of and advisers to President Trump’s campaign for the White House, his transition team, and members of his new administration on the one hand, and the Russian government and/or its agents on the other, the less sense any of it makes to me.

That goes double – at least – for the charge that is only rarely made explicit but that is central to this entire uproar: that Trump’s outsider nature and supposedly authoritarian, anti-democratic instincts opened the door to an alliance with Russian leader Vladimir Putin that aided his November victory. More specifically, insinuations have been made that figures either officially or unofficially associated with Mr. Trump “colluded” with the Russians in their efforts to undermine Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid.

Of course, the fire keeps getting fueled by the failure of the supposed Trump-ist conspirators to provide forthright answers to questions about their recent contacts with Putin’s aides and surrogates. By their own belated admissions now, the president’s briefly serving White House national security adviser Michael T. Flynn and his Attorney General, former Senator Jeff Sessions, held either meetings or communications with Russia’s ambassador to the United States during the transition and campaign, respectively, that they did not originally acknowledge.

Nothing could have been easier, the entirely reasonable argument goes, than for them to have been up front right away. Flynn, for example, is alleged to have broken with an important American tradition that only one person serves as president at a time when he spoke with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about America’s anti-Russia sanctions. It’s true that former President Obama’s second term ran through midday, January 20, and that he and his officials alone possessed the authority to conduct the nation’s foreign relations. In addition, Flynn might have violated a law preventing private citizens from interfering with official American diplomacy – though it’s unclear whether the Logan Act applies to transition team officials like Flynn at the time.

But wouldn’t the former general have been much better off – let alone Mr. Trump – had he simply stated that he broached the subject of sanctions (as opposed to simply introducing himself and starting to get acquainted) because Russia is an important country and he wanted to help the administration hit the ground running?

And Sessions has now stated that his original answers at his Senate confirmation regarding such meetings assumed that the questions were focused on meetings dealing with his position in the Trump campaign and that concerned campaign matters. But why engage in such Clintonian parsing if everything was on the up and up?

After all, his first such contact with Kislyak took place at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, at a meeting co-sponsored by the Obama State Department. The second – also with Kislyak – took place in his Senate office, in September. As a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, what could be more natural than a lawmaker meeting with a representative of a major power? The answer? “Nothing.” Such events have become routine – and should be, if Congress is to play the important role in foreign policymaking assigned it by the Constitution. How difficult would it have been for Sessions to make these points in the first place?

One obvious retort is that the president’s enemies are so loaded for bear that even such reasonable explanations wouldn’t have satisfied them – and were likeliest to egg them on further. But it should be equally obvious that the real political prize here is the American middle, which historically has a knack for distinguishing the truth-tellers from the fear-mongers.

Even more bizarre, however (and that’s a high bar!), is the more fundamental notion that the Russians thought a concerted effort to fix the U.S. election was a stroke of genius. That may indeed have been the case – I sure don’t have any inside info on the Kremlin. But let me count the biggest reasons why Putin should have laughed out of his office anyone who made this proposal.

First, with his KGB background, Putin of all people should know that it’s almost impossible to keep any significant secrets in the American political world, let alone one this big. One major reason, of course – this plan would have had to have been kept from any number of foreign intelligence services as well, if only because so many other national governments have big stakes in American presidential elections, too.

Second, precisely because of these excellent chances of discovery, the upside of any successful election rigging would have been severely limited. Had Clinton won, after all, at least for the medium term, Moscow would have guaranteed that Barack Obama’s successor would have taken much harder-line anti-Russian positions across the board in American foreign policy. But even had the alleged plot succeeded, every word or action taken by Mr. Trump suggesting a more conciliatory policy would – as has been clear already – have come under the harshest suspicion. Indeed, the new administration has faced continuing heavy pressure to demonstrate what might be called some anti-Russia street cred – on top of already having named some prominent Russia hawks to key posts.

Third, the cost-benefit calculus of a political interference campaign looks even worse upon recalling the conventional wisdom that Mr. Trump was heading toward an historic defeat at the polls. Why take major chances on behalf of such a likely and big loser? In this vein, it’s fascinating to note that the January American intelligence community report on the Russian influence campaign suggested that the Kremlin (as with so many others) anticipated a Clinton win as late as election night.

Fourth, if Russian intelligence was even minimally competent, it would have known that a Trump presidency would have been more favorable to Moscow even without actively cooperation with his presidential campaign. For Mr. Trump had long criticized U.S. foreign policymaking for picking needless overseas fights that too often turned into bloody and hideously expensive quagmires (like the second Iraq war). And for even longer he had insisted that America’s military actions abroad be restricted to crises where the nation’s security was directly threatened.

But as indicated above, the American intelligence community has stated that Putin – although concerned about a “backfire” effect from direct Putin praise of candidate Trump – did in fact order precisely this kind of anti-Clinton, pro-Trump “influence campaign”. Given all the claims from every quarter of American politics that the Russian leader is a diabolically dangerous mastermind, this decision simply adds to my list of “Russia-gate” developments that I find completely mystifying.

Not that my own befuddlement means that there’s no fire behind any of this smoke, or that Russian interference in U.S. elections should be accepted simply because it might have been ineptly conceived or carried out. (What if Moscow or others one day get the hang of this?) Until and unless much more serious disclosures emerge, however, it could well mean that Trump-haters and the Mainstream Media need to hold their hysteria about the Trump-Russia connection. And the president and his team stop needlessly shooting themselves in their feet.