Our So-Called Foreign Policy: What to do about North Korea

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China, embargo, Japan, Kim Jong Un, missile defense, missiles, Nikki Haley, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, sanctions, Shinzo Abe, South Korea, Trade, Trump, United Nations

Tuesday’s post explained my reasons for concluding that, contrary to the emerging conventional wisdom in the U.S. foreign policy establishment that North Korea’s use of its growing and increasingly powerful arsenal of nuclear weapons can be deterred with the same kind of policies that the United States used to keep the nuclear peace during the Cold War.

As I’ve argued, the resulting dangers mean that the best way to serve America’s paramount interest (by a long shot) of preventing a nuclear attack on its own territory is to pull U.S. forces out of the immediate area, and letting Northeast Asia’s powerful, wealthy countries deal with dictator Kim Jong Un as they see fit. This move would both ensure that the governments with the greatest stake in keeping North Korea’s missiles in their silos, and even eliminated, bear the costs and risks of handling the problem, and that the only plausible pretext for Pyongyang attacking the United States itself is eliminated.

Of course, Washington has chosen not to take this route. But America’s response so far to the escalating North Korea threat is turning into a major failure based even on its own criteria for success. After all, the latest North Korean missile overflew Japanese territory. Although the overflight was brief, the combined U.S. and Japanese response could not help but send a message of weakness and egg on Kim further.

According to Japan’s defense minister, Tokyo decided not to shoot down the missile because the government determined it wasn’t intended to land on Japanese territory. I don’t know how to say “Baloney!” in Japanese, but complete contempt is the only justifiable reaction. For despite this stated confidence, as the missile approached, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government sent out regular early morning alerts to the public – including in far off Tokyo – warning it to “seek cover” and describing the situation as “very dangerous.”

Another nonsensical rationale for the inaction from both Japanese and U.S. forces, this from a staunch defender of America’s Asia policy status quo: “If we shoot and miss, it would hand Kim Jong-Un an incalculable propaganda victory.” That’s of course true – because as this former official has noted, anti-missile technology is anything but proven. But of course, keeping the defensive missiles in their launchers also winds up telling North Korea that the United States and its allies have little faith in their systems.

Moreover, the Pentagon and its foreign counterparts can conduct all the tests they want, but adequate confidence in missile defenses won’t be legitimately justified until they’ve shown they can work in real-world situations. And better to try shoot-downs sooner rather than later – both because North Korea’s offensive capabilities will only improve as time passes, and because its better to find out about the real-world shortcomings of allied systems ASAP.

So if I’m Kim Jong Un, I’m looking at the U.S. and Japanese failure even to try a shoot-down and asking myself, “Let’s see what else I can get away with?” And when he develops reasonably reliable intercontinental missiles capable of hitting American territory and destroying American cities, he could easily conclude that the “what else” includes major threats against South Korea that would be entirely credible, and that could move him closer to effective mastery over the entire peninsula.

How, then, can Washington and its regional allies send some credible messages themselves? The following list is meant to start a (long overdue) serious discussion:

>First, the allies can actually try to shoot down North Korean missiles judged on a flight path anywhere near some of their territories. Again, even if they miss, they’ll at least get some truly reliable data on their systems’ capabilities.

>Second, they could urge the United Nations to authorize a total ban on trade and commerce with North Korea. The United States, Japan, and South Korea could also announce that they will enforce the ban with punitive measures against violators. The North’s business partners would then face a clear – and no-brainer – choice: They can continue trading with economically miniscule North Korea or they can continue trading with three of the world’s largest economies, but they can’t do both.

It’s true that North Korea’s biggest trade partner is China, that all three allies have extensive economic ties with the PRC, and that even the United States – a clear loser in China trade – has been reluctant to disrupt these relations significantly. But now the subject is war and peace and the core security of Japan and South Korea. If this reluctance continues even after North Korea has sent missiles over Japanese territory, Kim will inevitably conclude that his main adversaries lack the stomach to resist further provocations.

>The United States, Japan, and South Korea could blockade air and sea trade with North Korea. China’s overland trade would continue – but ever-stronger economic sanctions on China finally could persuade Beijing to halt this commerce once and for all.

>The United States could further pressure China by deciding to sell all of its neighbors – including Taiwan – any conventional weapons they wanted, and to provide whatever training they needed to operate them effectively. (President Trump is thinking along these lines regarding South Korea, but the new policy should go much further.) This step of course would also help deal with China’s aggressiveness in the South China and East China Seas, and boost America’s own production and export of these advanced manufactures. So Beijing would need to decide whether coddling North Korea was worth seeing Asia’s other countries – including many bearing major historic and/or current grudges against China – become much stronger militarily

>Finally – for now – the United States could announce a full-scale review of its nuclear non-proliferation policies in Asia, with a special focus on whether it would continue opposing the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Japan and South Korea. As with the previous proposal, China would need to decide whether coddling North Korea was worth seeing one of its major national security nightmares – nuclear arms possessed by the same Japan that launched devastating attacks against it in 1894 and 1937 – come to life.

Shortly after the latest North Korea launch, American envoy to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, declared, “No country should have missiles flying over them like those 130 million people in Japan. It is unacceptable. They (North Korea) have violated every single UN Security Council Resolution that we’ve had. So I think something serious has to happen.”

She’s absolutely right in implying that neither the United States nor the so-called world community has done anything “serious” yet regarding the threat posed by North Korea. Options like the above would qualify. If Washington genuinely wants to maintain its current North Korea and broader East Asia strategies, they need to be actively, and urgently, considered.

Making News: On Thom Hartmann’s RT Show Tonight Talking White House Shocks

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Japan, Making News, Michael Flynn, RT America, Shinzo Abe, The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann, Thom Hartmann, Trade

I’m pleased to announce that I’m scheduled to be going back onto Thom Hartmann’s show on RT America to talk about the turmoil in the Trump White House and how it’s been affecting critical policy issues – notably, the just-concluded summit with Japan’s prime minister. In fact, the segment will draw on my post this morning on the same subject.

The interview will start at 7:15 PM EST. If you don’t receive RT on your TV system, you can watch on line live here. As always, I’ll post a link to the streaming video as soon as one is available.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for ongoing news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

 

Im-Politic: Flynn & Abe Reveal the Price of a Thinly Staffed Trump Administration

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Defense Department, Gary Cohn, Im-Politic, James Mattis, Japan, Michael Flynn, National Economic Council, National Security Council, Shinzo Abe, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Trade, Trump

During the last presidential campaign, the Mainstream Media ran so many stories about the Trump campaign being in various stages of “disarray” at various times that some skepticism was in order when such articles resumed popping up following Mr. Trump’s presidential victory and inauguration. In addition, I kept asking myself why any official with any loyalty to Mr. Trump would even speak with mainstream reporters like The New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman, who was so hostile to their boss for so long that she was considered a “surrogate” by top aides to candidate Trump’s main general election rival, Hillary Clinton.

At the same time, as so often remarked, running for office is hardly the same as serving in office, especially when the presidency is involved. And the resignation of an official so high level as national security adviser Michael Flynn after only about three weeks into an administration is a glaring sign that the president is well behind the curve in getting his organizational act together. Unless he raises his game dramatically very soon, his thick teflon coating could start wearing very thin, and even at this early stage, “failed presidency” claims will look disturbingly on target.

But even if the transition to a post-Flynn presidency goes relatively smoothly, and no other fiascoes break out, this latest episode vividly reminds of a big challenge President Trump will keep facing throughout his time in office, and one that I’m not totally confident he’ll solve in a satisfactory way.

Why not? Because he’s never had a large cadre of high-quality advisers capable of staffing even the very top levels of a new administration. Nor is one is likely to appear any time soon. For nationalist critics of recent American trade, broader globalization, and foreign policies have never attracted anywhere near the kind of funding that’s needed to create the kind of counter-establishment that can nurture a big enough core of knowledgeable specialists representing that perspective.

In fact, the nationalists’ performance stands in stark and sad contrast to that of other interests in years past. The leading example is mainstream conservatism – which recognized the need for such institutions to overthrow or at least modify what they saw as a dangerously liberal policy consensus reigning in Washington and in national politics during the post-New Deal decades.

As a result, if Mr. Trump is to halt an powerful downward spiral in his presidency, he may well need to rely even more heavily than at present on cabinet and key sub-cabinet and other aides who hold much more conventional views than his – and those of his base – on key issues like trade and immigration that largely vaulted him into the Oval Office. Just look at the president’s recent summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for evidence of how this dilemma has already affected U.S. policy in ways that Trump backers can’t possibly support.

Precisely because Japan has been a leading predatory trading power for so long, its economy-wide trade barriers and other mercantile practices had drawn Mr. Trump’s ire during the campaign. In addition, Japan was (rightly) portrayed as a classic defense free-rider – a country that was able to skimp on its own military spending because of its guarantee of American protection. And candidate Trump went even further than most critics in questioning the bilateral security relationship, suggesting that because of the mounting nuclear threats from both China and North Korea, Washington’s decades-old promise to defend Japan against any and all attacks posed increasingly alarming nuclear risks to the United States.

Japan clearly was so worried about President Trump’s views that Abe rushed to the United States right after the November vote and became the first foreign leader to meet President-elect Trump in person. Abe’s trip last week, moreover, made him the second foreign leader to see President Trump in person once his term began. (Britain’s Theresa May was the first.)

Judging not only from the official record of the visit, but from the judgment of a group of Japan policy specialists that convened in Washington yesterday, Abe achieved both of his major objectives – and then some. President Trump pledged to continue the policy of defending Japan through thick and thin (“100 percent”), and Abe successfully deflected significant U.S. trade pressure – at least for the time being.

As made clear by Abe’s detailed and decisive statements during his visit, one main reason for his triumph was preparation – always an urgent necessity for Tokyo since, despite all the traditional American establishment boilerplate about interdependence, the United States has always been much more important to Japan than vice versa. But three other main reasons bring us back to the “Flynn problem.”

First, Abe plainly was able to fill a policy vacuum created both by the Trump administration’s growing pains and its thin staffing. Second, the American preparations made for the Abe meetings, including putting together briefing materials, were dominated by holdover bureaucrats who overwhelmingly support the longtime status quo in U.S.-Japan relations. And third, many of the top aides Trump has selected strongly support the status quo, too. These include Secretary of Defense James Mattis and National Economic Council Chair Gary Cohn. The former is general recently retired from an American military with a big vested psychological and bureaucratic stake in maintaining massive U.S. forward deployed forces in East Asia. The latter is a former senior executive at Wall Street mainstay Goldman Sachs.

Not that this kind of gloom and doom scenario (from a Trump-ian standpoint) is inevitable. Although high quality nationalist policy specialists are hardly abundant, they can be found. Moreover, it’s possible that President Trump could make clear to his more establishment-oriented advisers that he expects them to reflect his own iconoclastic leanings. In addition, aides that plainly represent his campaign positions (and of course contributed substantially to formulating them) could be given the whip hand bureaucratically, in order to drive this message home.

But of course this approach’s success will depend largely on the establishment figures following this lead – and not walking away from jobs that most of them plainly don’t need financially or or professionally. At the same time, even if Mr. Trump’s more conventionally minded advisers stay on in this atmosphere, would there be enough loyalists, and enough competent loyalists, to discipline them effectively? I don’t know if the aides most strongly supportive of the president’s vision, chiefly White House policy chief Stephen Miller, and chief strategist Steve Bannon, are grappling with these issues. I do know that they’ll need to if the Trump presidency is to achieve its promise.

Making News: CNBC NAFTA Interview – & More!

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Akron, Canada, China, CNBC, dollar, Japan, Jobs, Kelly Evans, Lifezette.com, Making News, Marketwatch.com, Mexico, Mike Santoli, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, Ohio, Shinzo Abe, The Ray Horner Morning Show, Trade, Trump, Voice of America, WAKR-AM

I’m pleased to report that the video of my interview earlier today on CNBC on President Trump’s intentions toward the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is on line.  Click here for an informative segment involving me, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Thomas Bollyky, and CNBC anchors Kelly Evans and Mike Santoli.

In addition, on February 10, Lifezette.com ran this post previewing the just-concluded summit between Mr. Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. It included my views on U.S.-Japan trade relations.

On February 8, Marketwatch.com featured my comments on the crucial economic question – posed recently by President Trump – of whether the U.S. economy is better off with a strong or weak dollar.  Click here to read them.

The previous day, a Marketwatch analysis of the recently released 2016 U.S. trade figures highlighted my perspective on President Trump’s chances of significantly changing America’s approach to the global economy.  Here’s the link.

On February 6, I was interviewed on “The Ray Horner Morning Show” on Akron, Ohio’s WAKR-AM on Mr. Trump’s trade and manufacturing policies. Unfortunately, a podcast is not yet available.

This February 3 post on Lifezette drew upon my same-day report on the January U.S. jobs figures – which closed the book on former President Obama’s employment-creation record.

And on January 30, the U.S. government-run Voice of America interviewed me on the future of U.S.-China trade and broader economic relations. You can read some excerpts at this post – which was translated somewhat imperfectly from the original Mandarin

Keep checking back with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other events.

Im-Politic: A New Japanese Owner for the Financial Times May Not be Good News

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Bloomberg, conflicts of interest, Felix Salmon, Financial Times, Im-Politic, Japan, journalism, Laurie Anne Freeman, Leonid Bershidksy, media, New York Times, Nikkei Inc., Pearson PLC, self censorship, Shinzo Abe

I’m such a fan of the Financial Times that I’ve even given in to its paywall strategy and subscribe to it. That’s why I’m so worried about yesterday’s news of its sale by Britain’s Pearson PLC to Japanese media giant Nikkei Inc. The FT‘s coverage of the economics and business worlds, in particular, is peerless, and even though that’s too often a low bar, the paper (including its web offerings) has consistently served up information virtually unavailable anywhere else, and its news approach is much more often than not non-ideological.

Ownership by a Japanese company could easily change all that, and this danger has been badly neglected by the discussion and commentary spurred by the transaction. In short, for all the faults of U.S. and the rest of western journalism, it’s been a paragon of independence and a genuine watchdog over government compared to its Japanese counterpart – Nikkei included.

Fans of the deal themselves (all too briefly) acknowledge the problem. Thus leading financial journalist Felix Salmon writes that “The Financial Times could not hope for a better parent,” even though he writes that the Japanese company “has historically been more deferential toward big business.” Bloomberg columnist Leonid Bershidsky provides much needed elaboration. Nikkei, he observes, is “said to be too soft on the Japanese corporate establishment. You can get a flavor of its kind of business journalism from its English-language Asian Review. Many of the stories read like press releases, and the FT probably wouldn’t have run them.”

And Britain’s Guardian notes that:

“The last really big corporate scandal in Japan, when Olympus was found to be concealing losses of $1.3bn, resulted in the unceremonious sacking of the (English) chief executive who revealed it. The Financial Times broke the story; Nikkei did not cover it until it became wholly unavoidable. Nor would readers of Nikkei be acutely aware that Japanese-made airbags have been blowing up in the US since 2004, a story that has long preoccupied the New York Times.”

As this revelation indicates, the problem hardly stops with Nikkei, and is anything but new. Even more alarming have been the findings of many Western journalists and academics with long experience working in Japan. Despite the emergence of democratic forms of government in Japan after World War II, political scientists such as Laurie Anne Freeman of the University of California, Santa Barbara have explained that for decades:

“the press system in Japan [has served] as neither a watchdog nor a lapdog. Nor does the state directly control the press in ways Westerners might think of as censorship. The level of interconnectedness, through both official and unofficial channels, helps set the agenda and terms of political debate in Japan’s mass media to an extent that is unimaginable to many in the United States and other advanced industrial democracies.”

Worse, reports have abounded recently that the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been trying to capitalize on the Japanese media’s long record of subservience by increasing pressure to produce favorable coverage.

The Financial Times‘ deserved reputation for integrity may survive in the Nikkei regime. But precisely because self censorship is so intrinsically difficult to track, and because despite their avowed dedication to openness, media companies’ internal editorial operations tend to be highly opaque, evidence of any FT slippage will be hard to identify. And if it does occur, its forms will be subtle. Further, observers will be forced to play the not-entirely-fair game of wondering whether even seemingly aggressive coverage of Japan in particular by FT could and should have been more hard-hitting.

Yet because the appearance of conflict of interest is just as important as actual conflicts, such questions will become unavoidable. I hope they’ll serve as a warning to other western news organizations that become targets for takeover from political systems that prize far too few western values.