Im-Politic: A New, Promising but Still Flawed Form of Conservatism

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abortion, America First, China, Christianity, conservatism, crime, culture wars, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, education, family policy, foreign policy, identity politics, Im-Politic, Immigration, industrial policy, inflation, national conservatism, politics, religion, Roe vs. Wade, sovereignty, Supreme Court, Trade, wokeness

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I’m not grateful to have been invited to last week’s third National Conservatism Conference. The interest displayed by this crowd in economic policy ideas that depart dramatically from the right-of-center’s longstanding free market dogmatism was especially gratifying, and there was no shortage of thought-provoking and compelling speakers.

It’s just that my four days at the session left me unconvinced that National Conservatism as it presently seems to be constituted can create or contribute to a winning American political coalition. The main problem: Most of those spearheading the drive to establish National Conservatism as a major national force haven’t recognized which culture wars they should be fighting, and which they shouldn’t — and how this failure to discriminate is endangering other objectives that the movement (and others) rightly deem crucial.  In fact, unhappiness expressed to me by more than a few conference attendees with the stances on social and cultural issues taken by those putative leaders make me skeptical that it’s a movement yet to begin with – or can be if their vision prevails.

The economic dimension of national conservatism, at least judging by the presentations and hallway conversations, is not only politically astute; it’s substantively sound. All the speakers who addressed these issues – including such nationally prominent figures like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and the state’s Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott (the event was held in Miami) supported smarter, more restrictive trade and other economic policies (especially toward China), reduced immigration inflows and genuine border security, and federal policies to promote strategically important industries and to ease economic pressures on the middle and working classes.

The same goes for National Conservatism’s critique of the overly, and often recklessly, adventurist foreign policies pursued by the mainstreams of both major political parties for decades.

But the conference organizers and another set of speakers seem wed to other goals and measures that are already backfiring among the American electorate and that, intriguingly, clash with other elements of their agenda. The most important by far were near-total opposition to abortion and a determination to tout the United States as a “Christian nation.”

The political folly of these priorities couldn’t be more obvious. As I’ve written, there’s long been a strong national consensus favoring the right to an abortion early-ish during a pregnancy and then favoring broad restrictions later on with significant exceptions (rape, incest, life of the mother, health of the mother). Indeed, that’s why comparable majorities have supported maintaining the abortion policy framework established by the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe vs. Wade ruling – which was entirely consistent with that common sensical compromise. P.S. Contrary to the claims of the extreme pro-lifers on an off the Court, Roe gave states plenty of latitude to enact all manner of abortion curbs. (The other major misconception or falsehood surrounding Roe comes from the pro-choice movement: It never established an unfettered right to an abortion.)

If you’re skeptical, consider that the day that a draft of the Supreme Court’s eventual decision striking down Roe was leaked to the press (May 3), Republicans held a 4.1 percentage point lead in the RealClearPolitics.com average of polls gauging the public’s preference for control of Congress in November’s midterm elections. The latest figures show Democrats with a 1.1 percentage point lead in the so-called Generic Ballot.

It’s true that abortion isn’t the only reason, that the actual votes determining control of Congress aren’t cast nationally but state-by-state, and that Republicans hold enough built-in advantages in the Congressional map to keep their hopes of prevailing very much alive. But the polls also show that the Court’s Dobbs decision, the enactment of and efforts to enact near-abortion bans in Republican-run states that the ruling has permitted, and GOP talk of more such moves (including on the national level) is increasing Democrats’ interest in voting and boosting the party’s prospects. (See, e.g., here.) And not so coincidentally, Republican candidates and leaders all over the country are backing away from hard-line anti-abortion positions.

Adamant opposition to abortion in practically all circumstances also seems to clash violently with other stated National Conservative positions. For example, many speakers at the conference emphasized their support for individual liberty. But what about the right of women uninterested in becoming mothers to lead the lives they wish? Even if the unborn must indeed be deemed human life very early in pregnancies, should the wishes of those women count for absolutely nothing the minute they conceive – and simply because they failed to take adequate precautions, or because precautions taken failed? According to many, and possibly most, at the conference, the answer is “Yes.”

The repeated references to America as a Christian nation are just as problematic. For reasons like those suggested above, if that’s a rationale for insisting that U.S. policies conform with scriptural teachings (and Section 4 of this “Statement of Principles” by the movement’s leading lights certainly suggests this “Where a Christian majority exists” – i.e. in most of the country), that simply won’t wash with big majorities of voters. But the historical arguments advanced for this view don’t impress, either.

Sure, the Founding Fathers were Christians, and for the most part, observant Christians at that. But so what? The England they came from was overwhelmingly Christian. What else realistically could they be? For similar reasons, the Founders were ovewhelmingly white, too. Does that mean that America should be seen as a Caucasian nation?

And does Christian dogma really deserve much credit for the ideals that make up the American creed of freedom of expression and conscience and other major liberties for the individual; representative, accountable government; equal justice under the law; and the like? Clearly, in most of Christendom at the time (e.g., Russia, Spain, Germany) these notions were unknown or actively rejected. Instead, the great American experiment in self-government is rooted in specifically English thought and practice. And ironically, the major contribution made by Christianity that hasn’t been present outside Europe has been the faith’s willingness to leave big swathes of human life to secular institutions and authorities (as in Jesus’ admonition to “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”)

Even worse, precisely because they’re so unpopular as well as intellectually feeble, National Conservatism’s focus on these particular culture wars is weakening the ability of the entire conservative movement (except the libertarians) to fight effectively the culture wars that must be fought – specifically, over woke school public curricula; the metastasis of left-wing authoritarianism in so many major, powerful American institutions; and the related spread of divisive identity politics.

I have nothing but respect for those National Conservatives I met – and other Americans – to declare that they’re less concerned with winning politically than with remaining true to their consciences. But their version of the perfect is shaping up as a powerful enemy of the good and formula for defeat – especially if they wish to contend, as they clearly do, in an arena that rightly values the art of the possible.

That’s why I was so encouraged to find out that many of those I met at the National Conservatism Conference agreed that hard-line anti-abortion stances and pro-Christian nation preaching need to be dropped if any of National Conservatism’s other worthy causes are to be advanced.

For me, nothing could be clearer than the following as a recipe for political victory and national well-being: focusing tightly in an America First-type way on  confining U.S. foreign policy to advancing and protecting U.S. sovereignty and core security (especially against foes like China), on taming inflation and building sustainable prosperity; on securing the border; on fighting crime; on removing propaganda from public schools; on preserving a strong voice for parents in their children’s education; and on resisting the intolerant woke and rigid identity politics ideologies being pushed by our most powerful institutions.

National Conservatism as it exists now is close to being on board. If it can go the extra mile, show better judgment politically, and accept a more inclusive, more historically accurate view of “Americanism,” I’ll be happy to join its ranks.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Ukraine War Demands Realistic U.S. Thinking About Sovereignty

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Antony J. Blinken, Biden, MIG 29s, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear war, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Poland, sovereignty, Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia war

It’s been especially great to read the news reports this morning about progress in peace talks between Ukraine and Russia (except for the poisoning thing).

After all, an end to the human suffering in Ukraine may be approaching. Moreover, as I’ve written, the longer the fighting continues, the higher the odds that it spills over Ukraine’s borders, drags in the United States, and escalates to the nuclear level.

Also important, though, but less well appreciated, a non-disastrous (at least for the United States) conclusion to the conflict would give America’s current globalist leaders a chance to rethink two truly bizarre ideas about the way the world either does or should work that (1) have needlessly magnified those nuclear-war-with-Russia dangers, and (2) therefore expose the country to less risk if trouble in this region breaks out again, or similar crises erupt elsewhere. And both stem from thoroughgoing misunderstandings about the nature of sovereignty.

The first arose because of Poland’s idea work with Washington to supply MIG-29 fighter jets from its own air force to Ukraine. Though President Biden ultimately nixed the idea (after Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken seemed to approve it), his administation muddied the waters considerably, and left himself wider open to charges of weakness, by insisting that “This is Poland’s sovereign decision to make.”

The second has emerged because of the peace talks, and holds that the United States won’t be pressuring Ukraine to accept peace terms Kyiv doesn’t itself support because Ukraine, too, is a sovereign country with an untrammeled right to pursue or defend its interests however it sees fit. Somewhat embarrassingly, I can’t find any supporting links, but I’ve been following the Ukraine War policy debate closely, and the notion definitely is in the air – especially in the ranks of the hawks.   

From a purely operational standpoint, both propositions should be rejected outright by Americans. Poland, after all, doesn’t exist geopolitically in isolation. It’s a member of an alliance that includes the United States. No reasonable person would object to any steps it took to defend its own territory if attacked. But when it comes to situations in which it’s not victimized by aggression, and in which its actions could affect the security of its fellow members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Americans and others in NATO should by all means object to any freelancing. And the more so since Poland wanted to join NATO specifically because it (rightly) doubted its ability to fend off Russia by itself.

Neither the United States nor any other NATO member should ever accept the argument that one of their ranks should enjoy complete freedom of action regardless of its larger consequences, but has the right to demand their help if it comes under attack (including because of its unilateral acts). In other words, receiving alliance benefits means accepting alliance responsibilities.

Similar considerations should govern U.S. policy toward Ukraine-Russia negotiations. Ukraine isn’t a treaty ally of the United States, but it’s sure receiving lots of military aid and humanitarian from America (and other NATO members) – and wants much more. If its bargaining tactics prolong the fighting, the United States’ own security could suffer. So Washington should never hesitate to take whatever steps are needed to ensure that – in America’s judgement – Kyiv’s aims (however understandable from Ukraine’s vantage point) don’t needlessly threaten U.S. interests.

For any thinking adult, the views here shouldn’t be the slightest bit controversial. So why are they so difficult to accept even for so many American leaders with lots of knowledge of and experience in foreign policymaking – and whose very success makes clear that they’re hardly babes in the woods in dealing with their careers and other areas of their lives? As indicated above, it’s because they hold views about sovereignty stemming from assumptions about world affairs that can only be accurately described as fanciful.

That is, sovereignty is evidently seen as a status that either actually commands universal respect, or should command such respect, at least from individuals and governments with any regard for (equally universal) standards of acceptable behavior. As with most long and deeply embedded assumptions, the bases for this status and its legitimacy are rarely spelled out anymore. When they have been specified, the argument seems to resemble that made for human rights – that it springs either from a Creator, or from some feature of existence that is so innate, and even defining, as to be inalienable (as the American political tradition terms it).

Without wading too deep into discussions philosophers have had since philosophizing began, and whose resolution seems nowhere in sight, I’ll just put forward the proposition that it’s one thing to articulate and propagate common standards of acceptable behavior for individuals. Without them, it’s difficult to imagine creating any community or society worth living in.

But sovereignty as an idea with autonomous power over the relations among different communities and societies – which in the case of world affairs means relations among states? Much less an idea that actually does command such respect? Where, specifically, are the commonly accepted standards of behavior that must underlie this construct? Yes, enshrined in heaven only knows how many international treaties and agreements. But when inconvenient, honored in the breach at best is the only answer that passes the all-important eyeball test.

The reason, moreover, could not be more obvious, at least to an empiricst: Since there are no commonly accepted standards of behavior in a de facto sense, states haven’t been able to agree on a system to enforce those standards. And yet this situation seems anything but obvious to America’s globalists, at least judging by how the idea of sovereignty shapes their policies and stated opinions.

One explanation for these illusions that my own work has pointed to is that globalists don’t see, or don’t want to acknowledge, any intrinsic and inevitable distinction between the communities (specifically, those they rightly admire) into which the world has long been divided, and a global community that they either suppose exists in meaningful ways right now, or is steadily forming. As a result, they also seem to believe that because of America’s immense weight, if their government acts as if that community exists now, its foreign policies will be able to bring it to completion that much faster.

To which I can only reply with the standard but still insightful warning about not permitting hope to triumph over (millennia of) experience.

Not that there’s no such thing as sovereignty in world politics today, and not that such sovereignty is anything new. But although it’s recognized in any number of international legal documents, it’s not a creation of these documents or any body of law. It’s a creation of capability. If states are able through their own devices (and these can include skillful diplomacy, not only the exercise of power) to preserve themselves in the forms they desire, they’re sovereign, and are treated as such by others as long as these capabilities last. If they can’t so defend themselves, ultimately they receive no such treatment.

Nor is the United States well advised to trample over others’ sovereignty at the drop of a hat – but mainly because there’s so seldom an urgent need for such an existentially secure and prosperous country as America. The Ukraine War, however,  has created the kinds of potential threats to the nation’s safety that haven’t been on the horizon since possibly the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. There are any number of strong arguments for various types of responses. But major concern about the so far chimerical idea of sovereignty, even of friends and allies, isn’t one of them.      

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: U.S. Ukraine Policy’s Choices are Anything but Obvious Morally

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debt, deficits, economic aid, guerilla war, military aid, Modern Monetary Theory, morality, national interests, nuclear war, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, public opinion, Russia, sanctions, sovereignty, Ukraine, Ukraine invasion, Ukraine-Russia war, vital interests

I’ve been so concerned about the Russian invasion of Ukraine (and the preceding expansion of the west’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization deep into Eastern Europe) boosting the risks of nuclear war that I haven’t had time to write about some important details that should be considered as Americans weigh a response, and that have influenced my own thinking. In one of my very first RealityChek posts, I actually presented many of these ideas, which concern the role of morality in U.S. foreign policy. But they’re worth reviewing to show how they relate to the momentous – and morally horrific – events of the last week.

Most important:  As a sovereign country, the United States has an inalienable right to respond to this or any other foreign challenge or opportunity however its political system wishes. It doesn’t need to answer to its NATO treaty allies. It doesn’t need to answer to the European Union, the United Nations, or any foreign government or group of governments. It certainly doesn’t need to answer to gauzier supposed realities like “the intenational community” or “global public opinion.” And it certainly does mean that the American political system has an equally inalienable and absolute right to define moral behavior.   

In other words, sovereignty means that the government in question gets the last word (assuming it can enforce its will), and the high degree of security and economic well-being enjoyed by the United States – by virtue of geography, rich resource endowments, economic strength, technological prowess and a host of other advantages – means that the U.S. government has tremendous latitude in choosing what that last word is.

As I’ve argued (e.g., here) joining the fighting would be a choice that’s not only foolish (because Ukraine’s fate has never been seen as vital by American leaders o the public even during the Cold War decades when it was under the Soviet thumb) but possibly suicidal (because it could result in a direct conflict with an enemy possessing a big nuclear arsenal, including weapons that can reach the entire U.S. homeland).

At the same time, if the American people – the ultimate decision-makers in the national political system – want to go to war over Ukraine, despite the risks, and if they make their decision clear through mass protests or any other means, their sovereignty would make that choice entirely legitimate – though IMO borderline insane given the completely marginal self-interest involved.

Thankfully, the public appears to recognize this whoppingly lopsided risk-reward ratio.  And we know this not just becaue  polls have consistently shown opposition to “boots on the ground.” (See, e.g., here and here, although the level of support reported in both were alarmingly high.) We also know it because U.S. leaders seem to understand this public opinion – as President Biden has emphatically ruled out this course, his administration has nixed a similar proposal of enforcing no-fly zones against Russian aircraft over Ukraine, and nearly all Members of Congress have shied away from these options, too.

But a host of lesser responses have also either begun or are being actively discussed as well.  They include providing more economic and military assistance to the Ukrainians both as they’re still putting up a fight, or after a Russian victory – when Moscow could well face a large-scale guerilla war – tightening the economic screws further on Vladimir Putin, his cronies, his entire regime, and his economy; and deploying more U.S. forces to the Eastern European members of NATO to reduce the odds that Putin will move against them.

I’m personally fine with any or all of them in principle – although I do wonder from a logistics standpoint how military supplies will be able to reach the Ukrainians once the Russians are guarding all the borders, and about what dangers could develop from convoys with such supplies approaching territory Moscow controls now or probably will in the coming days and weeks. I’ve also expressed reservations about greatly expanding the U.S. military presence on the territory of the easternmost American allies. 

For the purposes of this post, however, my own views on these matters aren’t what matter. What I’m especially concerned with are three emerging, related, and disturbingly neglected ways in which policy and morality intersect in the Uktaine crisis.

The first I mentioned briefly yesterday – the disconnect between, on the one hand, the ringing calls heard throughout the country (including from President) to “stand with Ukraine” because it’s demanded by simple decency and morality, and on the other hand, and the strong determination of U.S. leaders to shield the domestic economy from the consequences of economic sanctions, above all in the energy sector – much less to avoid actual combat. To me, the morality of such positions is dubious at best. They sound like the classically hypocritical exhortation, “Let’s you and him fight.” And they strongly suggest that expressions of support like this are more about feeling good about oneself than about decisively helping the Ukrainians.

The second involves resource allocation decisions. Some of the Ukraine support steps that will be taken by Washington, like increased military and economic assistance, will require more spending, and more of American leaders’ time and energy.

But the spending proposals so far haven’t been accompanied by any proposals to raise taxes to finance them in the here and now. As a result, these expenditures will add to an already mammoth national debt. If you believe that school of thinking holding that such debts and the deficits that balloon them are No Big Deal economically, there’s no moral problem. If you don’t buy this Modern Monetary Theory, then more deficit spending adds to a national debt that already shapes up as a major burden on future generations (who of course can’t vote). To me that seems as morally problemmatic as the “Let’s you and him fight”-type policies.

The third moral difficulty – which is still more potential than emerging – is also a product of devoting more energy and resources to Ukraine without raising taxes or taking on more debt: This policy could mean less energy and fewer resources devoted to pressing domestic needs with their own big moral dimension. What’s the moral rationale for those taking a back seat, to whatever degree, especially when you consider that solving domestic problems – and doing meaningful, lasting good – is almost always easier than solving overseas problems? That’s because, however challenging those domestic problems, Americans have much more control over them.

All these moral quandaries are further and vastly complicated by another consideration widely ignored in morality-based calls to Do Something or Do More on the Ukraine crisis: No one is more of an expert on morality than anyone else – whether they’re rich or poor, highly educated or barely literate, profoundly eloquent or utterly inarticulate, famous or obscure, or whether they pound tables more vigorously than others or choke up more in official debates or on the air, or whether they’re clerics or laypeople.

If I thought Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatened genuinely vital American interests – that is, that it endangers national physical survival or political independence, or major, long-term impoverishment – I’d urge sweeping aside these moral questions for reasons that should be obvious except to committed pacifists. I suspect most other Americans would, too.

But to an important extent, in the name of morality, backing is being voiced for U.S. Ukraine policy measures that could gravely and even fatally jeopardize American security or well-being in meaningful ways even though that embattled country isn’t vital.  So for both practical and moral reasons, it’s urgent to examine these moral dilemmas much more searchingly than has been the case, and for the public not to be intimidated or stampeded by the loudest or the most passionate or the most seemingly authoritative or the most widely promoted or covered voices they hear.        

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Ukraine Crisis Grows Curiouser and Curiouser

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Annaleena Baerbock, Biden adminisration, China, democracy, deterrence, Eastern Europe, energy, European Union, Germany, human rights, Italy, Mario Draghi, NATO, natural gas, Nordstream 2, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Olaf Scholz, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Phase One, Poland, Russia, sanctions, sovereignty, Taiwan, tariffs, The Wall Street Journal, Trade, trade war, Ukraine

The longer the Ukraine crisis lasts, the weirder it gets. Here are just the latest examples, keeping in mind that new developments keep appearing so quickly that this post might be overtaken by events before I finish!

>What’s with the Chinese? Toward the end of last year, (see, e.g., here) I’ve been worried that President Biden’s Ukraine policy would push Russia and China to work more closely to undermine U.S. interests around the world – a possibility that’s both especially worrisome given evident limits on American power (Google, e.g., “Afghanistan”), and completely unnecessary, since no remotely vital U.S. interests are at stake in Ukraine or anywhere in Eastern Europe.

In the last week, moreover, numerous other analysts have voiced similar concerns, too. (See, e.g., here and here.)

But just yesterday, The Wall Street Journal published this piece reporting on Chinese words and deeds indicating that Beijing opposed any Russian invasion of Ukraine. You’d think that China would welcome the prospect of significant numbers of American military forces tied down trying to deter an attack by Moscow on Ukraine, or on nearby members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), or getting caught up in any fighting that does break out. The result of any of these situations would be an America less able to resist Chinese designs on Taiwan forcibly.

It’s unimaginable that Chinese leaders have forgotten about these benefits of war or a continuing state of high tensions in Ukraine’s neighborhood. But according to the Journal, Beijing has decided for the time being that it’s more important to avoid further antagonizing the United States on the trade and broader economic fronts – specifically by helping Russia cushion the blows of any western sanctions. China is also supposedly uncomfortable with the idea of countries successfully intervening in the internal affairs of other countries – because of its own vulnerability on the human rights front, and because it regards foreign (including U.S.) support for Taiwan as unacceptable interference in its internal affairs, too (since it views Taiwan as a renegade province).

Not that China isn’t already acting to prop up Russia’s economy – specifically agreeing earlier this month to buy huge amounts of Russian oil and gas. But if Beijing has indeed decided to go no further, or not much further, the potential effectiveness of western sanctions on Moscow would be that much greater. It would also signal that the Biden adminisration has much greater leverage than it apparently realizes to use tariffs to punish China for various economic transgressions – e.g., failing to keep its promises under former President Trump’s Phase One trade deal to meet targets for ramping up its imports from the United States.

>Speaking of sanctions, the Biden administration view of these measures keeps getting stranger, too. The President and his aides have repeatedly insisted that the best time for imposing them is after a Russian invasion of Ukraine, because acting beforehand would “lose the deterrent effect.”

But this reasoning makes no sense because it – logically, anyway – assumes that the sanctions that would be slapped on would achieve little or nothing in the way of inflicting economic pain powerful enough either to induce a Russian pullback or convince the Kremlin that further aggression along these lines wouldn’t be worth the costs.

After all, pre-invasion sanctions would be taking their toll while the Russians were fighting in Ukraine, and until they pulled out or made some other meaningful concession. The Biden position, however, seems to be that in fact, during this post-invasion period, they’d be taking scarcely any toll at all – or at least not one significant enough to achieve any of their declared aims. If that’s the case, though, why place any stock in them at all at any time?

>One reason for these evidently low Biden sanctions expectations is surely that, at least for now, the administration isn’t willing to promise that the potentially most effective punishments will be used. Nor are key U.S. allies.

Principally, last Friday, Deputy National Security Adviser Daleep Singh told reporters that banning Russia from the global banking system would “probably not” be part of an initial sanctions package. And Germany keeps hemming and hawing about ending the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline project even if Russia does invade.

The Germans – and the rest of Europe – are now acting like they’re taking seriously the need to reduce their reliance on Russian natural gas (which currently supplies some forty percent of their supplies of this fossil fuel. But Berlin has still not committed to cancelling its plans to buy even more gas from Russia via the recently completed Nordstream channel. (The pipeline isn’t yet in use because the Germans are in fact dragging their feet on final regulatory approval.) Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has declared that Nordstream is “on the table” for her if the Russians move militarily. But nothing even like this non-promise has been made by Prime Minister Olaf Scholz. And last Friday, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said he opposes including energy in anti-Russia sanctions.

>The final puzzle: Although Poland is a linchpin of NATO’s strategy for preventing any Putin aggression beyond Ukraine, the European Union has just moved a major step closer to cutting the country off from the massive economic aid it receives from the grouping, and indeed has already frozen $41 billion in CCP Virus recovery funds it had previously allotted to Warsaw.

The decisions stem from Poland’s alleged backsliding on commitments it made to protect human rights in order to join the EU, but blocking these resources isn’t exactly likely to strengthen Poland’s ability to aid in the effort to contain Russia, and Ukraine itself is hardly a model democracy (see, e.g., here and here) – all of which can’t help but scramble the politics of the crisis in Eastern Europe yet further. And all of which should be added to the already impressive list of paradoxes, ironies, mysteries, and curiosities that everyone should keep in mind whenever they hear about the future of Europe, the global liberal order, world peace, and human freedom itself being at stake in Ukraine.    

Im-Politic: An Open Borders Mainstay Shoots His Cause in the Foot

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Biden administration, Border Crisis, Central America, Donald Trump, drug cartels, Emma Lazarus, human trafficking, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, Jorge Ramos, Latin America, Mexico, migrants, Open Borders, sovereignty, Statue of Liberty, The New York Times, Univision

The current crisis on the U.S.’ southern border is President Biden’s fault. His predecessors’ immigration policies were working. The new administration’s reliance on stemming the migrants’ tide by Building Back Better in Central America won’t work for the foreseeable future, if at all. When folks like Mr. Biden talk about “fixing a broken system,” they really mean reorienting that system to maximize immigration. And – most damning of all – bolstering America’s well-being and security shouldn’t be the main aims of U.S. immigration policy.

Don’t take my word for it. Take that of Jorge Ramos. Because these dangerously radical and indeed – in one instance, un-American – points were exactly what the Univision anchor and long-time supporter of Open Borders by Any Other Name just admitted openly in a column in last Friday’s New York Times.

On responsibility for the current border crisis? According to Ramos:

“‘The border is not open,’ the U.S. secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, told me in an interview. ‘What we have discontinued,’ Mr. Mayorkas promised, ‘is the cruelty of the previous administration.’”

“Well, apparently, in Central America, people only heard the bit about ‘cruelty’ being over, which is why so many migrants are heading north toward the border. Tens of thousands of asylum seekers, mostly from Central America, have waited for over a year in Mexican border towns and they will not waste this opportunity.”

Don’t think for a minute, incidentally, that the small Central American countries will be the only sending countries – even in the Western Hemisphere. The polling organization Gallup has recently determined that no fewer than 42 million Latin Americans want to move to the United States permanently. And as Ramos makes clear, no one should be startled in the least:

“It should come as no surprise that this [migration flow] is happening along a border that divides one of the richest and most powerful countries in the world from one of its most economically unequal regions. Latin America’s poor and vulnerable — struggling amid a pandemic, the devastation of climate change and the violence of their homelands — are moving north to a safer, more prosperous place. It’s that simple. And this will keep happening for a long time.”

On the effectiveness of President Trump’s policies, Ramos writes that they “reduced annual net immigration to its lowest levels since the 1980s.” It’s true that he denounces them as “racist,” “anti-immigrant,” “inhuman,” and “repressive.”

But as long as he’s being so candid, he and others of his ilk need to ask “compared to what?” As Ramos himself reports,

“According to the head of the U.S. Northern Command, 30 percent to 35 percent of [Mexico] is under the control of ‘transnational criminal organizations.’ This means that any migrants traveling north through Mexico are in immediate danger.”

Indeed, the present U.S. immigration system is now “a dangerous system that encourages human trafficking controlled by drug cartels and other organized crime networks.”

What should U.S. immigration policy aim for? What could be clearer than Ramos’ answer that it “must involve accepting many more authorized immigrants”?

Or than Washington must “create a system that can legally, efficiently and safely absorb more of these immigrants and refugees. They will keep coming; there is no other solution”?

Or than “[T]he United States should start accepting between one and a half and two million authorized immigrants every year. Entry into the United States must be legalized and optimized….”? (At the same time, given the powerful forces Ramos describes as fueling continuing hemispheric migration to the United States, what makes him think that such a U.S. quota would prevent much greater migrant flows from continuing to come to America’s doorstep?)

Nor does Ramos evidently think much of the near-term potential of turning Central America into the kind of place people wouldn’t seek to flee in the first place:

“The $4 billion investment in Central America that President Biden has promised is a good starting point for tackling the origins of migration in the region: poverty and a lack of opportunity. That project, however, will take years to yield results.”

But the key to understanding Ramos’ position, and possibly those of many other supporters of more lenient U.S. immigration policies, is recognizing that U.S. interests – safeguarding the nation’s security and prosperity – isn’t his top priority.

Thus the author’s argument that “It’s clear that America’s immigration system is broken and outdated” because “it doesn’t reflect the new needs of the United States or its southern neighbors.” And why else would he emphasize that “all along the U.S.-Mexico border, the aspirations of new immigrants are colliding with a country reluctant to revamp its way of welcoming and absorbing newcomers.”

Ramos doesn’t neglect the case that ramping up immigration is in America’s interests, too, focusing in particular on familiar arguments that many more newcomers are needed “to support the nation’s beleaguered economy, replace its growing population of retired workers and make up for the country’s low birthrate.”

Although I and others have repeatedly debunked these claims (see, e.g., here and here), they’re entirely legitimate to debate. So is the insistence that America has a moral duty to accept more of the world’s tired, poor, and huddled masses yearning to breathe free – to paraphrase the (justly) famous Emma Lazarus poem at the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.

But the judgment about the economic impact of greater immigration flows, and about the country’s moral obligations, must be made by Americans alone. Otherwise, kiss goodbye the country’s sovereignty and independence. Ramos’ suggestion to the contrary should go far toward intellectually (though not legally!) disqualifying him from the American immigration policy debate.

Except he’s did such a great job in this Times column of unwittingly confirming some of the strongest indictments of lax immigration policies and the worst fears of border realists about the agendas of their backers. In fact, to paraphrase a classical Greek general’s reported lament after a costly victory, another such column (or a couple), and the Open Borders cause may be undone.

Im-Politic: A World Trade Organization Pull-Out Proposal that Falls Sadly Short

Tags

America First, CCP Virus, China, conservartives, coronavirus, COVID 19, export bans, GATT, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, health security, Im-Politic, Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio, national treatment, nationalism, non-discrimination, Populism, protectionism, reciprocity, Republicans, rules-based trade, sovereignty, Trade, unilateralism, World Trade Organization, WTO, Wuhan virus

I can barely describe how much I wanted to like Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley’s May 6 op-ed piece in The New York Times calling for a U.S. withdrawal from the World Trade Organization (WTO). That’s why I can also barely describe the growing disappointment I felt as I read through it.  At best, it deserves only an “A for effort” grade.

First, let’s give Hawley (considerable) credit where it’s due. As I’ve been arguing since it went into business at the start of 1995, and in fact was predicting during the national debate preceding Congress’ approval of the idea the fall before, the WTO has gravely harmed crucial American economic interests. (This recent post briefy summarizes my views.)

Let’s also give The Times op-ed page credit for running an article that’s even more strongly opposed to the pre-Trump U.S. trade policy status quo than President Trump has been – because although he’s approved policies that have thrown the WTO’s future into doubt, he’s never explicitly called for a pull-out, and in fact his administration has portrayed these measures as vital steps toward WTO reform.

Hawley, moreover, articulates many powerful indictments of the WTO’s failure to defend or advance U.S. interests satisfactorily – notably, the cover it’s given to China and other protectionist economies. 

Unfortunately, Hawley’s anti-WTO case and recommendations for going forward are fundamentally basedsed on two big misunderstandings. The first is that the pre-WTO global trading order set up by the United States was based on reciprocity, and therefore adequately safeguarded the interests of American workers. Absolutely not. In fact, the concept of reciprocity – holding that a country has no obligation to reduce its trade barriers any more than those of its partners – was explicitly rejected by the pre-WTO rules, which were known collectively as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).

Instead, this global trade regime was based on two principles that actually entitled protectionist countries to maintain higher trade and related economic barriers than those of freer trading countries. The first was called non-discrimination. It simply urged all member countries to treat all other countries the same trade-wise. So if, say, Japan largely closed its markets to one country, all it needed to do to satisfy GATT rules was to treat other countries just as badly.

The second core GATT principle was called national treatment. Under its terms, member countries agreed to treat foreign-owned companies the same as their own companies. So if, say, a country like (again) Japan, which was is still known for fostering cartel-like arrangements that favored some of its own companies over others wanted to discriminate against whatever foreign companies it wished, that was OK according to the WTO.

Some limited exceptions were permitted to both principles. But they explain in a nutshell why Japan’s trade predation (among others’) inflicted so much damage on U.S.-based manufacturing during the WTO period, and why its own economy (among others’) remained so hermetically sealed throughout.

The GATT’s only saving grace – as I just tried to hint by using terms like “urged” and “agreed”  – was that its rules were essentially unenforceable. All told, though, it’s a lousy model for post-WTO U.S. trade policy.

The WTO has featured a strong enforcement mechanism, which is why Hawley (and other critics, like me) have rightly argued that the organization has eroded U.S. national sovereignty. But at the same time, Hawley wants to replace it with “new arrangements and new rules, in concert with other free nations, to restore America’s economic sovereignty and allow this country to practice again the capitalism that made it strong.”

If the rules are for all intents and purposes voluntary, as with the GATT, then fine – although the question then arises of why the rules are needed in the first place. And the question becomes particularly pointed when it comes to the United States, whose longstanding role as the world’s importer of last resort has long given it more than enough unilateral leverage to create all by itself whatever terms of trade it wishes with any trade partner.

At the same time, this business about creating new arrangements with “other free nations” reveals a second major flaw in Hawley’s argument: a belief that there are lots of other countries out there that agree with the United States on defining what is and isn’t acceptable in international trade and commerce. That kind of consensus is a sine qua non of any rules-based system. In fact, it needs to predate the formal creation of that system. The existence of the system itself can’t summon it into existence – unless one or a group of members can force holdouts to accept the consensus, which brings us back to the question of why countries with those capabilities need a system in the first place.

But if anyone really believed in the required preexisting consensus before the CCP Virus struck, their conviction should lay in smoking ruins now. Because as of March 21, no fewer than 54 countries worldwide had been imposing export curbs of some kind on medical supplies, and the same think tank that compiled this data reported that, as of early April, that number had risen to 70. And their ranks included many U.S. allies. So it should be obvious that, when major chips are down, global trade becomes more of a free-for-all than ever.

Hawley has been among those leading U.S. conservatives and Republicans who are trying to develop a nationalist and populist approach to both domestic and international U.S. policy-making that can survive President Trump’s departure from the White House. (Another has been Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio.) And I’ve been very impressed by much of their work so far.

But if they’re genuinely concerned about transforming U.S. trade policy, they’ll recognize the need not only to pull the United States out of the WTO, but to replace that organization with a unilateral strategy incorporating the street smarts and the flexibility to free up America to handle its trade policy needs on its own. If others want to sign on and accept U.S. rules and unilateral enforcement, so much the better. But that kind of “America First” arrangement is the only kind of international regime that can adequately serve the national interest.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: (Unintentional) Gifts from the Globalists

Tags

America First, globalism, international institutions, internationalism, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Joseph S. Nye, multilaterism, nation-building, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Project-Syndicate.org, sovereignty, Trump

One of life’s great pleasures is seeing views you’ve held for decades validated by your intellectual or ideological or political opponents. And there’s a special gratification in seeing them validated unwittingly (though nothing beats outright admissions of error).

So imagine how I’m feeling today having just learned that two of America’s leading globalists have just made clear (except to themselves) that the foreign policy approaches they’ve championed for decades are, in one case, only loosely at best related to the nation’s security and prosperity and, in the other, almost suicidally moronic.

The globalist who now apparently believes that globalism is unnecessary – along with, by implication, all the costs and risks it imposes on the United States – is Harvard University political scientist and former top U.S. national security official (under Democratic presidents) Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

In an essay published yesterday on the Project Syndicate website, Nye focused on explaining why American foreign policy can never escape and should never seek to avoid efforts to advance moral objectives. I disagree – but that’s another debate. What was most intriguing to me was a central argument used to advance his case: “Some foreign policy issues relate to a nation-state’s survival, but most do not. Since World War II, the United States, for example, has been involved in several wars, but none were necessary for its survival.”

This claim may seem to be nothing more than the essence of common sense (it is). But it also happens to clash violently with the core assumption of globalism (which in the pre-Trump years was called “internationalism”). As I originally wrote here, this assumption holds that America’s security, independence, and prosperity are so completely inseparable from the security, independence, and prosperity of literally every corner of the globe that the country literally has no choice but to anchor its foreign policy to the goal of creating a world so free of security, economic, and social challenges that threats to the United States will never arise in the first place.

Subsequently, I’ve contended that, however true this argument may or may not be for other countries, it is uniquely inapplicable to the United States, due to its towering degree of geopolitical security and its equally formidable potential for economic self-sufficiency.

Leave aside for the moment the issue of whether I’m right or wrong. Nye’s acknowledgment that none – i.e., not a single one – of the (often frightfully costly) wars fought by the United States in the last seven decades was a war of necessity signals loudly and clearly that Nye (at least now) agrees with me. And if these conflicts were in fact wars of choice, then logically the various globalist policies they were intended to advance or reinforce in the name of creating that threat-free world need to be seen as optional as well – ranging from prioritizing the maintenance of international alliances and institutions to the extension of foreign aid and involvement in nation-building.

Not that their optionality means that they should always or even often be opposed. But it does mean that Americans – and especially the globalist elites that have controlled and dominated the way Americans discuss foreign policy (at least in systematic ways) – need to pay more attention to alternative approaches for achieving and maintaining adequate levels of security, independence, and prosperity. As a result, the types of America First impulses displayed by President Trump and articulated more completely by some of his like-minded compatriots (including yours truly) need to be examined carefully, not ruled out of hand with pejoratives like “isolationism” or “bullying.”

The second globalist to have made my day today is former U.S. Senator John Kerry, who of course also won the Democratic nomination for President in 2004 and then went on to serve as Secretary of State in Barack Obama’s administration.

Kerry has been campaigning for his Obama era colleague Joe Biden’s bid to win the White House this year, and this morning was shown on CNBC making the following statement while touting the former Vice President’s qualifications for the Oval Office: “He [Biden] is completely committed to the notion that before you send American troops into harm’s way, before you ask families to risk the lives of their loved ones, you owe it to everybody in the world to exhaust the capacity for diplomacy. This President has not done that.”

It’s one thing of course to support caution in using America’s military overseas. No sensible person of good will could object. But such decisions should be made with “everybody in the world” in mind? Seriously? Even national populations with absolutely no stake in the outcome? Even the population of the country being targeted? Even its leaders? Even the allies of those leaders, like Vladimir Putin? Come to think of it, what did Franklin Roosevelt owe Adolf Hitler before he declared war on Germany in 1941, beating the Nazis to that punch. Talk about a formula for endless inaction and outright paralysis – however urgent the circumstances or imminent the threat. I really try avoiding use of the word “stupid,” but if the shoe fits….

Moreover, Kerry wasn’t simply having a bad day here. He expressed almost identical views during his 2004 presidential run when he insisted that American decisions to go to war must be submitted to a “global test” of legitimacy. It’s like he either doesn’t know that the United States is a fully sovereign country, which means that according to any framework you care to use (utilitarian, legal, ethical) it is completely and unreservedly entitled to decide for itself whether its own actual or even perceived interests justify this step – or he doesn’t believe it.

I’m going with the latter answer, especially given globalism’s bottom line about the supremacy of multilateralism, – i.e., about creating, reserving, and continually strengthening international institutions as the only conceivable way to achieve that benign global environment they seek.

But my swelling head aside, let’s not forget the most important silver lining to this post. For decades, Nye and Kerry have done more than their share to push the United States into endless globalist wars, to assume needless nuclear attack risk (through the tripwire forces deployed to defend wealthy, free-riding U.S. allies), to waste massive resources on nation-building fool’s quests, and to undercut its precious sovereignty for the sake of utopian global governance dreams.

In the last 24 hours, though, they’ve strengthened the case – however unintentionally – for avoiding these blunders going forward. And I’m certainly more than happy to say “Thanks!” instead of “I told you so.”

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The Establishment’s Case for Free Trade Keeps Weakening

Tags

Center for Global Development, currency manipulation, Dani Rodrik, free trade, Joseph E. Gagnon, Lawrence Summers, non-tariff barriers, Paul Krugman, Peterson Institute for International Economics, protectionism, sovereignty, Trade, trade agreements, trade barriers, transparency, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Although they’ve long enjoyed benefits ranging from lavish financial support to nearly uncritical mainstream media adulation, I felt a twinge of pity this morning for establishment backers of current trade and globalization policies.

As made clear from a new report from one of their leading think tanks and a recent speech from one of their leading individual lights, they’re doubling down on the claims that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the trade liberalization priorities long held by the U.S. government, and that the trade barriers supported by populists and other critics will only backfire on the American and global economies. And as also made clear by the report and speech, they keep fighting a losing intellectual battle.

The report comes from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and addresses the question “Do Governments Drive Global Trade Imbalances?” As emphasized by author Joseph E. Gagnon, the stakes of finding the right answer are towering:

“At current levels, these imbalances will push the net debt of deficit countries gradually toward unprecedented and unsustainable levels….Moreover, the domestic political consequences of persistent trade deficits are already evident in both the United States and the United Kingdom, having contributed importantly to the election of Donald Trump and the outcome of the Brexit referendum….”

In other words, if global trade flows continue getting more lopsided, they could set the stage for a repeat of the kind of global financial crisis they helped foster during the previous decade. And failing to calm populist political waters in the west could tempt key trading powers even more strongly to dabble in economically disastrous protectionism.

So Gagnon makes the case for a feel-good story: These major trade powers, especially the United States,

“have the necessary tools to achieve their stated goal of narrowing current account imbalances. President Trump and some members of his administration have proposed using trade barriers to narrow the US current account (trade) deficit. The data show that trade barriers have very little effect on a country’s trade balance. Fiscal policy and net official flows are the policies that matter for trade balances.”

One problem right at the outset: There’s nothing in the study whatever that explicitly measures the impact of (conventional) trade barriers. But even accepting this unusual methodology, it’s surely significant that he does conclude that “foreign exchange intervention” – i.e., currency manipulation – has an “important” affect on trade balances. That sounds like a trade barrier to me, at least in many instances.

And although fiscal (and related spending) policies aren’t normally considered examples of trade policies, they’ve clearly been used by numerous countries, especially Germany and throughout East Asia, to keep savings rates high, and therefore consumption (and imports) low. Why does Gagnon leave these out?

It’s absolutely true that fiscal and budget policies reflect the choices made by national societies, and therefore economies, and that as such, the presumption should be that they’re entirely legitimate. But at the same time, the nature of such choices can reveal whether these priorities can produce reasonably balanced trade with an economy like America’s – whose priorities on these fronts are substantially different but presumably just as legitimate.

As a result, trade policies that emphasize expanding commerce with countries regardless of their domestic priorities ipso facto can’t help but boost the trade deficit of the freer spending and/or more economically open country. And that description fits decades worth of American trade policies to a tee.

Lawrence Summers, President Obama’s former top White House economic adviser (among many other major government jobs), last month advanced an argument that’s somewhat more sophisticated than Gagnon’s, but no more convincing or useful to policymakers. In a speech to the Center for Global Development, Summers made the standard nod to the “compelling and persuasive case for free trade” and to the follow on view that “erecting tariff or quota barriers to trade between countries is usually a bad idea.”

But then, Summers’ line of argument actually became interesting. He sought to draw a distinction between the (unassailable) idea of free trade on the one hand, and the focus of many recent trade agreements – which he claimed “may be good or they may be bad, but they are not self-evidently and clearly good in the way that free trade is clearly good.” These concerns centered around goals like “securing intellectual property protection for global companies in a wider range of countries” and “achieving access for service companies to a wider range of countries” and “harmonizing rules in areas like safety standards or financial reporting standards.”

Supporters of such measures, he contended, have too often been arrogating

“the prestige of free trade…in support of a rather different agenda of better, more harmonized commercial rules” and expressed support for the view that “the participants in the debate about what constitute better, more harmonized commercial rules are mostly the kinds of people who appear in Davos rather than the kinds of people who work in the companies that are run by the people who appear in Davos.”

It’s hardly new for trade advocates to note critically that recent trade deals have dealt largely with non-trade issues, and more disturbingly, issues that the theory’s originators couldn’t imagine. Many left-of-center opponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement nixed (at least for the United States) by President Trump made this very point, and Summers peers such as Dani Rodrik of Harvard University and Nobelist Paul Krugman have echoed these views as well.

But Summers’ indictment of this shift in the trade agenda seems unusually strong, so it’s a great opportunity to pose three major questions that these critiques keep avoiding. First, with standard trade barriers like tariffs whittled down to near-insignificance in most cases, and such non-tariff barriers (NTBs) becoming more popular, how can genuinely free trade be sustained without somehow grappling with the latter?

Second, since the United States maintains relatively few NTBs, since these barriers are easy to identify because they’re typically line items in a completely transparent federal budget, or regulations in other, equally transparent federal documents, and since the world’s NTB champs are known for opaque governing systems that generally hide their barriers effectively, how can the United States adequately safeguard its legitimate interests without threatening to put up or actually erecting its own barriers?

So without the possibility or reality of unilaterally closing off its own market in response, how can the United States avoid being disadvantaged by legalistic systems of harmonization that (understandably but unrealistically) depend on producing evidence for winning redress?

Third, and similarly, there’s no global consensus on what kinds of health and safety regulations are genuine and valid measures to protect the commonweal, and what kinds are designed primarily as trade barriers. Therefore, how – unless again through using the threat or reality of unilateral tariffs – can countries that play it straight (like the United States) adequately safeguard their interests versus the clandestine protectionists?

The only plausible answers to these questions are, “It can’t.” And the sooner globalization’s cheerleaders acknowledge these hard truths and the commonsense measures that logically flow from them, the sooner they’ll start winning back the trust of a public that’s rightly ignoring them.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Real Message Sent by the Trump Security Strategy Blueprint

Tags

alliances, allies, America First, Asia-Pacific, borders, burden sharing, China, Cold War, deterrence, Eastern Europe, Europe, free-riding, Germany, globalism, international institutions, internationalism, Japan, Middle East, nation-building, National Security Strategy, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, South Korea, sovereignty, Soviet Union, terrorism

The Blob – a wonderful nickname for the Washington, D.C.-centered complex of establishmentarian foreign policy bureaucrats, former officials, think tanks, lobbyists, and journalists – has actually come up with a useful insight in noting some important contradictions between the Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy (NSS) document, and the president’s speech announcing the document’s release.

It’s hardly new to observe that big differences on crucial issues seem to divide President Trump from his top advisers, though it’s always valuable to note, since this gap can’t possibly make American diplomacy more effective, and could cause real problems. My chief NSS-related concern, however, could be even more important: Mr. Trump’s speech once again demonstrates that he himself remains pretty confused about his foreign policy priorities – and not entirely convinced that priority-setting is particularly important at all.

Not that presidents are often perfectly consistent about America’s approach to international challenges and opportunities. And given the diversity of these challenges and opportunities, consistency itself can be a vastly overrated virtue – at best. But these days, much more clarity is urgently needed – especially since President Trump has touted himself as such a disrupter; especially since the America First-style disruption he touts is badly needed on many fronts, in my opinion; and especially since disruption is badly needed because some genuinely dangerous situations are nearing crisis territory, and some existing crises keep worsening.

With that backdrop in my mind, two of these clashing ideas – maybe described more accurately as sets of impulses? – stand out. The first has to do with America’s major security alliances. Mr. Trump has consistently, and in my view, understandably, complained about defense free-riding by countries in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region in particular that for decades have enjoyed protection by U.S. conventional and nuclear forces. And his December 18 NSS speech continued in this vein, scolding his White House predecessors for failing “to insist that our often very wealthy allies pay their fair share for defense, putting a massive and unfair burden on the U.S. taxpayer and our great U.S. military.”

He’s absolutely right that major economies like like Germany, Japan, and South Korea should pay far more, and not only because they can afford to do so – and free up American resources for major domestic needs in the process. They need to pay more because they face far greater threats from potential aggressors like Russia and China and North Korea than does the United States.

If President Trump would start highlighting the discrepancy – firmly based in geography – between the security challenges faced by the United States and those faced by its allies, he might actually achieve greater defense burden-sharing. But he makes a fatal mistake when boasts that his administration’s “new” strategy “emphasizes strengthening alliances to cope with these threats.  It recognizes that our strength is magnified by allies who share principles — and our principles — and shoulder their fair share of responsibility for our common security.”

For whenever the allies have heard phrases like “common security,” they have concluded that the United States can’t afford to put any meaningful pressure on them to boost defense budgets – because its own vital interests will always persuade it to fill any gaps. History could not teach more clearly the lesson that America’s failure to stress that its alliances are helpful assets, not vital necessities, and that its support for these arrangements is not unconditional, has been the kiss of death for any efforts to eliminate or reduce free-riding. And the Trump administration’s burden-sharing campaign will surely founder on exactly these shoals.

If we were living in another (past) decade, this shortcoming might be No Big Deal. After all, as I’ve previously written, America’s major alliance commitments, including their nuclear dimension, involved either pledges to protect arguably vital or potentially vital regions, or to deter adversaries, like North Korea, that couldn’t retaliate in kind against the American homeland. So it’s anything but entirely surprising that, for decades during the Cold War and after, these alliances achieved their overseas goals and kept the United States itself safe.

But the likeliest alliance-related potential flashpoints nowadays are totally different. Russia, which still has plenty of nuclear weapons, is seriously threatening only Baltic and other East European countries that were recklessly invited to join the North Atlantic Treat Organization (NATO) even though their fates have never been considered vital interests by American leaders. Even during the Cold War, America’s European allies were never entirely convinced that Washington would risk DC, or New York, to save Paris or London. It’s that much less credible to suppose that U.S. leader would risk a major American city to save Riga.

Frighteningly, however, that’s precisely a catastrophe that the United States today could suffer because it remains American strategy to deny a president any real choice but to act. And the means to this perilous end? A growing U.S. military presence in Eastern Europe not remotely strong enough to repel a Russian attack, but large enough to put irresistible political pressure on Washington to go nuclear to save it from annihilation, or to retaliate for its loss.

Such American tripwire forces remain on the Korean peninsula, too, and their tripwire mission also remains exactly the same – even though North Korea can now, or will shortly be able to, respond to American nuclear weapons use by destroying U.S. cities.

In other words, greater alliance burden-sharing – and probably much greater changes – now need to be squarely on President Trump’s table not simply to achieve greater economic equity and to finance domestic policies more responsibly. They’re needed to reduce as dramatically as possible the chances that nuclear weapons will land on American soil. But as Mr. Trump’s speech indicates, there’s no reason to suppose that he’s even considering this type of disruption.

The second set of clashing ideas or impulses has to do with the overall purpose of American foreign policy. I’ve been writing for decades that the main flaw in the internationalist approach dominating the country’s diplomacy for decades has been its insistence that the United States can be no more secure, prosperous, or free than the world at large. Therefore, internationalism (which Mr. Trump and many of his supporters tend to call “globalism”), whether in its conservative or liberal forms, has pursued a worldwide reformist and policing agenda even in areas where the United States had no tangible stakes whatever, or where the benefits never remotely approached the costs and risks.

In his NSS speech, Trump (again) rightly lambasted the archetypical post-Cold War version of this internationalism: “nation-building.” He emphasized that “We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone” and repeated an important (potentially and constructively) disruptive in marker laid down in previous addresses:

“We will pursue the vision we have carried around the world over this past year — a vision of strong, sovereign, and independent nations that respect their citizens and respect their neighbors; nations that thrive in commerce and cooperation, rooted in their histories and branching out toward their destinies.”

The point about a world of “strong, sovereign, and independent nations” represents long overdue pushback against the globalist objective of a world increasingly governed by ever more powerful international rules and institutions that can only undermine national self-rule – and are likeliest to focus on restraining U.S. freedom of action.

But the business about respecting citizens and neighbors (along with his concern about “vigorous military, economic, and political contests…now playing out all around the world”), and thriving in commerce and cooperation, too strongly resembles the standard internationalist boilerplate that has launched the nation on so many, often disastrously, misguided Americanizing missions.

And although an explicit Trump-ian return to nation-building etc seems wildly improbable, first consider the president’s description of his anti-terrorism goals in the Middle East, and then try to figure out how they can be reached without transforming this dysfunctional region into something light years from where it is now, and that it has never been: “confronting, discrediting, and defeating radical Islamic terrorism and ideology” and preventing “terrorists such as ISIS to gain control of vast parts of territory all across the Middle East.”

Far better for him to focus like the proverbial laser beam on “not letting them into the United States” – a goal that, however difficult, is far more practicable than curing what ails a remote, often hostile part of the world with which the United States has almost nothing in common.

The conventional wisdom about documents like the National Security Strategy is that they’re overwhelmingly for show, have virtually nothing to do with an administration’s day in and day out decisions, and lack any meaningful predictive power. Ditto for sweeping presidential speeches on grandiose subjects. And again, the conventional wisdom isn’t entirely wrong.

But as even cynics tend to concede, just as NSS-like reports result from the work of numerous government agencies and therefore hundreds of junior and senior officials (including political appointees), prepared presidential remarks (even in this administration) usually represent the combined efforts of many White House officials and also incorporate input from a wide range of government agencies. As a result, it’s far-fetched to suppose that they’re completely devoid of meaning. For me, they can reveal two important insights about a chief executive’s foreign policy outlook and potential.

First, as suggested above, they can yoke presidents to ill-considered and even dangerous commitments. Consequently, they can create equally ill-considered and even dangerous public expectations, too. Of course, circumstances force politicians to execute U-turns all the time, but the more obvious they are (because they reverse positions prominently staked out), the more (needlessly) damaging they can be.

Second, and more important, they speak can volumes about how well presidents can handle the challenge of making hard foreign policy choices, their related willingness to acknowledge in the first place that not all good things are possible simultaneously, or even close, and their consequent ability to establish sustainable priorities. In these respects, the president’s remarks about his administration’s first NSS display too many of the shortcomings that produced globalism’s major failures.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Trump’s Muddled Asia Trade Speech

Tags

Asia, globalization, Obama, rule of law, sovereignty, Trade, Trump, Vietnam, World Trade Organization, WTO, {What's Left of) Our Economy

There were so many important points in President Trump’s speech today in Vietnam on trade and globalization that urgently needed to be made. What a shame, then, that they could well be undercut by massive contradictions in the president’s message. Two in particular stand out. The first concerns Mr. Trump’s critique of the current rules-based global trade system. The second concerns a key aspect of that critique and its relationship to his views on national sovereignty.

Mr. Trump was absolutely accurate in his description of the problems that have plagued the world trade system as it’s evolved to date, and especially its ostensible focus on organizing global economic activity according to universally accepted and followed rules and norms. Who, after all, can reasonably argue with his proposition that “Organizations like the WTO [the World Trade Organization] can only function properly when all members follow the rules and respect the sovereign rights of every member. We cannot achieve open markets if we do not ensure fair market access. In the end, unfair trade undermines us all.” In fact, it’s so uncontroversial that every one of Mr. Trump’s recent White House predecessors has made the same seminal point (including President Obama’s administration).

The Trump trade approach toward the WTO so far has differed from those of Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama mainly in that it’s criticized the organization’s workings much more intently, and actually taken some actions to gum up its works.

But the President will be repeating their fundamental mistakes if he believes that the solution to today’s flawed rules-based system is constructing a better rules-based system. That goal faces so many insuperable obstacles. For example, few of the countries involved in the system accept Anglo-American rule of law principles in their own political and legal systems, or the economic practices that flow inexorably from them.

Mr. Trump praised governments represented in his audience in Vietnam today for pursuing “visions of justice and accountability, [promoting] private property and the rule of law, and [embracing] systems that value hard work and individual enterprise,” along with seeking partnerships “directed toward mutual gain.”

Yet anyone who knows anything about most East Asian economies know that this description is at best seriously misleading. Instead, the region’s recipe for impressive economic success was based largely on practices that the president highlighted just a few paragraphs later in his address. Not that they’ve been alone, but it’s been the Asian economies that have masterminded “product dumping, subsidized goods, currency manipulation, and predatory industrial policies.” It’s they who have so systematically “ignored the rules to gain advantage over those who followed the rules, causing enormous distortions in commerce and threatening the foundations of international trade itself.”

And just legally speaking, why would these same countries do an about-face and start treating foreign businesses more equitably than they treat their own people?

Even more bizarre, the President specified (correctly) that “Such practices, along with our collective failure to respond to them, hurt many people in our country and also in other countries. Jobs, factories, and industries were stripped out of the United States and out of many countries in addition. And many opportunities for mutually beneficial investments were lost because people could not trust the system.”

In principle, the United States can use its economic power – stemming from the overwhelming importance of its market to an Asian region and indeed entire world heavily dependent on growing by amassing trade surpluses – to convert other economies to its values and policies. But at least for the foreseeable future, this strategy would require the United States – not an international organization created to reflect a global consensus on appropriate economic behavior that clearly is nowhere to be seen – to enforce these rules energetically and continuously until genuine conversion takes place.

Further, that conversion seems a remote prospect. For as the President himself has repeatedly stated, just as he feels obliged “to put America First,” he expects other national leaders “to put your countries first” – a remark evidently applauded by his audience.

Moreover, leaving aside the enormous administrative challenge of this enforcement mission, the process would clash violently with the President’s promise to Asian countries to “respect your independence and your sovereignty. We want you to be strong, prosperous, and self-reliant, rooted in your history….”

Far more promising for President Trump to dispense entirely with the idea of rules-based trade systems, whether regional or global, and use the nation’s (still) unmatched economic leverage to lay down the rules of access to its market, enforce them unilaterally, and leave other economies free to accept them or seek prosperity without the privilege of doing business with the United States.

This approach would generate a major strategic benefit as well – the conceptual freedom to use trade and broader economic diplomacy to offer better deals (which would still benefit the domestic economy) with countries or regions of special importance, whether economic or geopolitical or both. One possible example – creating a genuine North American trade bloc capable of strengthening Mexico’s economy, society, and political system, and/or broader arrangements to enrich other close hemispheric neighbors whose problems often become America’s.

In fact, Mr. Trump’s trade speech sounds like it’s two dramatically different speeches stapled together – something like a famous address on U.S.-Soviet detente delivered by former President Jimmy Carter decades ago. Carter’s apparent refusal to make up his mind reinforced his image as a worrisomely confused leader. Unless President Trump understands that “to govern is to choose,” he could well suffer Carter’s one-term fate.