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.

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Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Toward a Common Sense Middle East Refugee Policy

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assimilation, East Asia, Europe, illegal immigration, Iran, Iraq, ISIS, Islam, Lebanon, LIbya, Middle East, migrant crisis, migrants, Muammar el-Qaddafi, multiculturalism, national security, North Africa, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Palestine, punditocracy, refugee crisis, refugees, Saddam Hussein, Syria, terrorism

Massive human tragedies defy efforts to explain and most of all to prescribe, and the Middle East/North Africa refugee crisis is no exception. The global commentariat of course is weighing in energetically and – predictably enough – for the most part predictably. So far, the most common memes have been efforts to exploit the situation politically, either to contend that the incoherent and ambivalent response of Europe’s generally wealthy countries rivals for heartlessness American resistance to amnesty-friendly immigration policies, or to insist that more welcoming approaches towards both populations is economically unaffordable and dangerous for national security.

Also especially popular have been efforts to blame American Middle East policy decisions for most of this mounting catastrophe. The main reputed villains are of course former President George W. Bush, for invading Iraq and overthrowing its brutal dictator Saddam Hussein, and President Obama, for pulling out of Iraq prematurely, or helping to overthrow Saddam’s Libyan counterpart Muammar el-Qaddafi, or remaining aloof from the Syrian civil war for too long – and usually for all three.

I’m as stumped as as any of you readers out there regarding what precisely the United States should do – at least concerning lasting solutions – as well as where sound guidance might be found. But although the performance sketched out above makes clear that the usual chattering classes are once again largely failing to provide serious answers or even analyses, their typically tendentious bloviating is at least so far illuminating some thinking that’s best ignored or rejected. Four examples stand out so far, starting with the two I’ve already mentioned.

> First, just as supporting admission into the United States of even many more Middle East and North Africans displaced by the region’s conflicts can’t be blanketly dismissed on national security concerns, greater caution doesn’t automatically signal xenophobia or callousness. It’s true that the world’s most dangerous terrorism comes from the Middle East, but it’s also true, as shown by the lone wolf phenomenon in North America and Western Europe, that ISIS etc has been able to recruit outside the region as well. So as long as the United States continues to accept refugees as a matter of policy, barring them from the Middle East and North Africa is indefensible – especially since these regions are at the center of this problem, too.  

At the same time, the Middle East/North Africa refugees present the United States with a fundamentally different set of challenges and opportunities than the nation’s huge population of illegal immigrants.  The numbers of people involved are orders of magnitude different (inflows to the United States from the Middle East will be much smaller under any imaginable admissions policy), so the economic impact at a time of sluggish American recovery would differ qualitatively, too.  In addition, the refugees are overwhelmingly fleeing war and savage persecution by jihadists, not seeking jobs, higher incomes, or government benefits.  Moreover, whereas some form of amnesty for America’s illegals is almost certain to create a powerful magnet that attracts millions more newcomers – especially from the Western Hemisphere – a welcoming migrants policy threatens no such consequences.      

> Second, despite all the evidence that U.S. policies have destabilized the Middle East and North Africa, the idea that either excessive intervention or simple inaction by Washington are largely responsible for the region’s woes could not be less serious. The region, imprisoned both by secular dictatorships and by a religion still proudly mired in medievalism, has been a powder keg for decades. Also fueling the Middle East’s dysfunction is a pervasive culture of resentment and grievance versus the historically more successful West, and a reaction to its failings that’s been dominated by scapegoating and violence. That’s a sharp contrast to East Asia, which has been every bit as victimized, but which has responded with determination to beat its former colonial masters, along with the United States, at their own wealth-creation and economic development game.

A Middle East that never experienced either of America’s Iraq wars or the 1950s coup Washington engineered in Iran or staunch U.S. backing for reactionary theocrats in the oil-rich Persian Gulf (not to mention Cold War-era Soviet support for equally brutal “Arab socialist” dictators) would have still eventually blown up. Only the timing might have been different.

By the same token, the Middle East’s deep-rooted, homegrown failings reveal the senselessness of insisting that the rest of the world finally act decisively to address the root causes of the crisis. Centuries of pathological social and cultural practices and institutions can only be changed meaningfully from within, and such transformations are rarely quick, easy – or peaceful. There still remains a case for outside actors avoiding measures that make the region’s dysfunction worse. But given the importance of the Middle East’s oil and terrorists, simple hands-off postures will create unacceptable risks for the foreseeable future.

> Third, because geography still matters decisively in global affairs, for all the “small world” babble among politicians and academics, the impact of Middle East migrant and refugee flows as such is bound to be felt overwhelmingly in Europe. So be wary of American leaders and pundits declaring that vital or even important national interests will be at stake depending on how the United States reacts. But that doesn’t mean that the only legitimate American response should be standing aloof. It’s entirely valid for the public to demand that its wants be reflected in policy as well as its needs. So let the nation by all means debate migrant and refugee policy, but let both sides also portray the stakes honestly.

> Let both sides also – especially supporters of more generous responses – acknowledge the inevitable costs and propose responsible ways to finance them. Normally, I’d favor some combination of tax increases or public sector spending cuts. These measures would ensure that Americans today pay the costs in the here and now – and put their money where their mouths are – rather than create more debt and shift costs onto future generations who will have had no say in these decisions. Yet interest rates today are so low that it’s easier from a financial – and moral standpoint – to justify what would be a pittance in extra deficit spending to ease the suffering.

My own preference is for the United States admitting many more refugees from the region – financed by a new tax on upper-income Americans. In my opinion, it’s the right thing to do from an ethical standpoint, and it’s completely affordable for a country as wealthy as the United States. Moreover, unlike most of Europe, the United States has a long record of successfully assimilating newcomers. It system tends to bring out the best even in refugees and other immigrants from especially diseased regions, like Lebanon and the Arab areas of historic Palestine.

There’s no doubt that widespread “multiculturalist” beliefs among policy elites have created new barriers to successful assimilation. But there’s also no doubt that most new arrivals in the country who are not coming from Latin America have no desire to ghettoize themselves language- and culture-wise. (When’s the last time you heard about Vietnamese Americans pushing for bilingual classes for their kids?) And national security threats could be eased by giving priority to admitting families, especially with young children.

But this approach just reflects my own preference. If you’ve got your own, the time to express them to elected politicians is now.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Initial Thoughts on the “Torture Report”

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"Torture Report", 9-11, Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Barack Obama, CIA, Dianne Feinstein, George W. Bush, Iraq, ISIS, Leon Panetta, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Saddam Hussein, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Syria, Taliban, terrorism, torture

I admit it: My views on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Democratic staff’s new “torture report” are biased by my views on the Iraq War and the use of so-called harsh interrogation techniques themselves (whether they fall under some legal definition of torture or not). I was and still am in favor of the former and support the latter. I’m hoping that others who analyze and comment on it will be just as honest.

I can’t yet comment on any of the details or substance of the report, since I have not read either the Majority publication or the Republican staff response. (Hats off to you if you have already.) But I do feel able to write usefully about Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein’s decision to release itself, although admittedly the procedures and the content are not entirely separate issues. And I consider it to be a huge mistake.

The two preceding paragraphs may surprise many who know me either personally or through my writings. Re the former, yes, indeed, I was strongly opposed to the Vietnam War, and strongly supported the media’s publication of the Pentagon Papers and Congress’ exposure of CIA wrongdoing during the Cold War. Re the latter, I remain strongly opposed to most of America’s post-Cold War interventions abroad, including attacking Syria to punish its use of chemical weapons.

But I oppose publication of the new Senate report, and have supported the Iraq War and the torturing (from this point I’ll use this term for convenience’s sake, not as a moral or legal judgment) of prisoners in the war on terrorism for a reason that’s straightforward analytically: I never viewed preserving the western orientation of Vietnam or most of the other developing countries that became Cold War battlegrounds to have been vital interests of the United States, or even close. Because it never mattered who controlled Cuba or Vietnam or Guatemala or other poor and weak countries lacking important resources or any other assets, CIA assassination attempts and other misdeeds that supported broader such Cold War policies were in my view completely unnecessary.

By contrast, I consider the ouster of Saddam Hussein and the destruction of Al Qaeda to have been decidedly vital interests. You can read my Iraq views here. Regarding the anti-terror campaign, it involves preventing another 9-11 – a threat that’s also raised by the prospect of ISIS consolidating control over large chunks of Iraq and Syria, and turning this territory into the kind of terrorist haven that the Taliban offered Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. If keeping the American homeland safe from attack isn’t a vital interest, I don’t know what is.

So it shouldn’t be too surprising that I support extreme means of achieving this goal, including those used by the CIA to extract information from “detainees.” Would I back even harsher techniques? I still need to think this through – just as their opponents need to think through whether they would forego water-boarding etc to save American lives (or, more pointedly, to save the life of one of their own loved ones).

The empirical evidence would certainly and properly bear on my final judgment. A least according to President Obama’s former CIA director, Leon Panetta, no one’s idea of a Republican or neocon whacko, it’s far more supportive of torture than the Majority report apparently contends.

I’d also be influenced by the unavoidable reality that war inevitably entails agonizing moral dilemmas, tragic misjudgments, and the deaths of innocents. And don’t forget the frequent need to make life-and-death decisions in real time, without remotely perfect knowledge. (Can you imagine the pressure decision-makers felt in those early hours, days, and weeks following 9-11?) The outrage so strongly expressed by torture opponents indicates an equally strong determination to define these complications out of existence.

Lastly, on the matter of substance, I would need to know whether torture had been authorized by both the President and Congress. No representative system of government is worthy of the name unless elected authorities determine overarching policy and guidelines in an area like national security. In immediate post-crisis circumstances, as with 9-11, the executive branch needs to take the lead. But the legislature must be brought in before too long. Of course, in this case whether the CIA ignored or breached guidelines laid down by U.S. leaders is still being hotly debated.

Which brings us to the procedural question presented by the release, and here I don’t see much room for reasonable debate. Whether you agree with it or not, the United States is indisputably engaged in a global campaign against terrorism that’s been prosecuted vigorously now by two American presidents (including Mr. Obama). As a result, it’s been ratified by repeated presidential elections. This conflict is highly unconventional conflict, it’s waged against genuinely shadowy opponents, and American forces are serving in any manner of dangerous positions on many kinds of front lines.

As a result, the prospect that the report’s release at this time could expose them to further risk – as acknowledged by the Obama administration – makes Senator Feinstein’s green light completely unacceptable. When those dangers are past, America can air linen that was dirtied years ago, not smack in the middle of what is very much a shooting war.