Our So-Called Foreign Policy: So JFK on Cuba Should be Trump’s North Korea Model?

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Bay of Pigs, Cold War, Cuba, Cuban Missile Crisis, Fidel Castro, John F. Kennedy, Kim Jong Un, Michael Dobbs, Nikita Khrushchev, North Korea, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Robert E. Kelly, Soviet Union, The National Interest, Trump, Turkey, Vienna summit

The race for this year’s foreign policy chutzpah award couldn’t be tighter. Just when I thought political scientist Robert E. Kelly had grabbed an insurmountable lead with his new National Interest article downplaying the horror of a possible North Korean nuclear strike on the United States, along came Michael Dobbs with a jaw-dropping venture into fake history-land masquerading as an op-ed in yesterday’s Washington Post.

Dobbs’ achievement? An article comparing President Trump’s performance in the North Korea crisis so far with former President John F. Kennedy’s in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis that failed to mention either the April, 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion: the June, 1961 U.S.-Soviet summit in Vienna: or the way in which the October, 1962 U.S.-Soviet showdown in the Caribbean actually ended.

According to Dobbs, a former Post correspondent turned historian (chiefly of the Cuban crisis), Kennedy was a model of reasonableness and restraint whose unique, “overarching sense of history” led him “to consider the interests of future generations of Americans, and ultimately all of humanity” and thus deserves much credit for preventing the showdown from turning into an apocalyptic nuclear war.

As Dobbs put it (employing terminology used in a contemporary letter from Kennedy’s wife, Jackie), the former president acted like a “big man” who knows “the needs for self-control and restraint.” Mr. Trump, however, has “indulgently” decided to “play chicken” and respond in kind to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s “explosive rhetoric” – a dangerous effort to “out-crazy” Pyongyang that reflects a “little man” outlook “moved more by fear and pride.”

But the Bay of Pigs invasion is kind of important because Kennedy’s support for this disastrously failed attempt by CIA-supported Cuban exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro persuaded Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to reach a secret deal with Havana to deploy medium-range missiles in Cuba in the first place – in part to deter another attack either by Cubans or by the United States. So the former President’s actions (which, to be sure, continued a policy of his predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower) were largely responsible for creating the Soviet gambit in the first place.

Just as bad, as Kennedy admitted, his failure to order nearby American forces to come to the overwhelmed exile army’s rescue “no doubt” convinced “his superpower rival…that ‘I’m inexperienced. Probably thinks I’m stupid. Maybe most important, he thinks that I had no guts.'” The source for this passage? Dobbs’ own missile crisis history.

Has President Trump approved any similarly reckless blunders that sent such dangerous messages? No.

The Vienna conference is kind of important because this first meeting between the American and Soviet leaders reinforced Khrushchev’s impression of his Cold War counterpart as a weakling. According to one account of the summit and its aftermath:

“‘Roughest thing in my life,’ Kennedy had told James Reston of The New York Times, after it was all over. ‘He just beat the hell out of me.’ Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was contemptuous of his boss’s performance. ‘Khrushchev scared the poor little fellow dead,’ he told his cronies. British prime minister Harold Macmillan, who met with Kennedy shortly after he left Vienna, was only slightly more sympathetic. He thought that the president had been ‘completely overwhelmed by the ruthlessness and barbarity of the Russian Chairman.'”

The source for this passage? That same Dobbs missile crisis history.

Have any of President Trump’s exercise in personal diplomacy failed so utterly? No.

Finally, the Cuban crisis’ resolution is kind of important because Kennedy had a relatively easy out: an offer to remove U.S. missiles stationed in neighboring Turkey that Moscow (understandably) viewed as too close for comfort. This central element of crisis-ending deal struck by Kennedy and Khrushchev was kept secret (at Washington’s insistence), but it’s importance is now recognized by the historical community – including Dobbs.

Does President Trump have a comparable option? Evidently not – unless you count my proposal to pull American troops out of South Korea, which would remove any remotely plausible reason for North Korea to threaten U.S. territory, and turn the problem of handling North Korea’s nuclear forces over to its powerful and wealthy neighbors. Yet no American political leaders on any point on the political spectrum have expressed any support.

Dobbs of course has every right to idolize Kennedy and slight Trump. What he has no right to do after this piece of propaganda is to present himself as anything but a hack.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Russia – and Broader – Reset That’s Urgently Needed

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China, Cold War, Europe, interest-based thinking, national interests, NATO, NATO expansion, nuclear war, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Putin, Russia, Soviet Union, spheres of influence, third world, threat-based thinking, Vietnam

Even though American policy could take a significantly different turn after Donald Trump becomes president, it’s all too likely that U.S.-Russia relations will continue heating up to worrisome temperatures for the foreseeable future. And although much American rhetoric on the subject has veered into hysteria, there’s no shortage of real-world obstacles to any new White House hopes for a cool-off – mainly Moscow’s undeniable determination to expand its influence along in Europe, where it now directly borders the U.S.-led NATO alliance. There’s also abundant (though not yet conclusive) evidence that Russia’s government tried to interfere with the 2016 American presidential election.

Russian president Vladimir Putin is by no means solely to blame for rising bilateral tensions. As I’ve written previously, much and possibly most of the problem stems from the American decision – supported by presidents and Congresses of both parties – to expand NATO right up to Russia’s doorstep after the end of the Cold War. And facing up to this wholly unnecessary, gratuitous effort to capitalize on Russia’s post-1990 weakness looks to me like the key to a genuinely successful reset of bilateral ties.

But ultimately, just as important for the United States as dealing with this urgent short-term problem is learning a lesson about how to think about its national interests that sadly was missed after the decades-long superpower struggle ended. The lesson: The key to foreign policy success is basing actions on identifying overseas interests of intrinsic, material importance, rather than on assumptions about actual or potential adversaries.

During the Cold War, American foreign policymakers across the board used both sets of criteria as lodestars – and created big, unnecessary trouble for the nation as a result. Washington reasonably treated the security of, for example, Western Europe and Japan as vital interests of the United States – because these regions were reasonably judged to be centers of critical economic and therefore military capability and potential. Losing them to Soviet influence could indeed have tilted the balance of global power against the United States in genuinely damaging ways. Moreover, an equally reasonable determination was made that Western Europe and Japan could be defended at acceptable cost and risk to America.

Tragically, however, this form of “interest-based” thinking was not applied to much of the developing world. In these regions of Latin America, Asia, and Africa, major defense commitments were taken on even though the countries in question were typically of little or no intrinsic interest to the United States – in terms of their actual or (realistically potential) wealth or military power, their raw materials, or even their location.

Instead, Washington based policy on the type of threat it concluded was posed by these countries, by ascendant forces within them, or by Soviet or Chinese designs on them or activity within their borders. Therefore, as I’ve written, Americans consumed themselves with debates over subjects like:

>whether rival superpowers’ activity in these areas was fundamentally offensive in nature or defensive;

>whether the relationships between these rival superpowers and local forces were simply alliances of convenience that meant little in the long run and could be easily broken up with appropriate U.S. overtures, or whether they were strongly ideological ties with real staying power; and similarly

>whether the local forces themselves should be seen simply as Soviet of Chinese pawns (and therefore needed to be fought on some level), or whether they were fundamentally nationalistic and on “the right side of history” (and therefore needed to be accepted and cooperated with).

These are all fascinating questions, and the resulting debate made fascinating reading – at least from an academicky or purely rhetorical standpoint. But they were dangerously off-base as fundamental determinants of American policy. The main reason: They all presented supposed answers to questions that are virtually unknowable – unless we imagine that certain foreign policy-makers and analysts are mind-readers or have highly reliable crystal balls. Disaster in Vietnam – a war never consistently, or even often, justified for intrinsically important reasons – reveals the price America can pay for indulging in these fantasies.

Defining specific, concrete U.S. interests is no science, either. But answers here are relatively knowable. Sure, subjectivity can’t be avoided. But Americans depend on our government to make judgments like this all the time. If the nation has decided otherwise, then it’s hard to make the case for any government at all.

How should this argument affect how Americans think about the new Russia challenges in Europe? Principally, they should stop focusing on whether Putin is a new version of the Soviet leaders who many thought aimed at worldwide dominion, or simply a nationalist feeling besieged by the West and seeking greater security along Russia’s frontiers. And they should start focusing on the intrinsic importance of the countries that Putin seems to be threatening.

In other words, how has Washington viewed Ukraine or Georgia or Moldova? What about new NATO members such as Poland or Hungary or the Baltic countries? Have they ever been placed in the category of vital interests, either from a national security or economic standpoint? Have U.S. leaders ever been willing to risk war on their behalf, even when the United States enjoyed a nuclear monopoly or overwhelming superiority? If the answers here are “No” (Spoiler alert: It is.), then has anything about these countries and their concrete and even perceived value changed since the end of the Cold War? In fact, has anything about them economically or strategically changed other than new NATO membership in some cases?

In my view, history makes obvious that the answer to those latter questions is “No” as well. Further, nothing has happened either in these parts of Europe, or in the American or Russian militaries, that has made them more easily defended by the West with conventional weapons alone than during the Cold War.

So it’s easy to see how more threat-based thinking can too easily lead Washington into a corner in which its only choice to defend all of its new treaty allies from some new form of Russian hegemony is to threaten nuclear war more loudly; and how interest-based thinking can lead to the alternative of offering to recognize how geography inevitably (however sadly) relegates these countries to a Russian sphere of influence, and seeking the best possible arrangement for them. And it’s even easier to see which alternative, however imperfect, is vastly superior.

Im-Politic: The Near and Longer-Term Outlook for Trump-ism

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2016 election, Bill Clinton, campaign finance, Cold War, Donald Trump, establishment, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Mikhail Gorbachev, Populism, Republicans, Ross Perot, Soviet Union

As of this afternoon, it’s hard to tell which current storm has been bigger – Hurricane Matthew, or the tempest whipped up by the release of a video showing Donald Trump making genuinely disgusting comments about women, and specifically about hitting on them as a big shot.

It’s possible that this disclosure will finally doom the Republican presidential nominee’s already dimming chance of victory in November. But it’s not inevitable, Trump, after all, has been written off before, including following similar revelations, and as of yesterday’s pre-video tape polls, remained highly competitive (though behind) both nationally and in swing states. And even this late in the fall campaign, any number of outside shocks could tip the balance in his favor – including a foreign setback for the United States, a major act of terrorism abroad or even at home, and new information about Hillary Clinton’s own heavy personal and policy baggage.

At the same time, each new Trump outrage makes his chances of defeating his Democratic rival more and more reliant on events he can’t control. That’s a position no one, office-seeker or not, should ever want to be in.

It’s impossible to imagine influencing the main substantive debate that’s broken out over the Trump video – whether what has been learned (anew?) about him is worse morally than what is known about womanizing by former President Bill Clinton and some of his predecessors, along with Hillary Clinton’s own treatment of her husband’s victims. But I can’t resist one relevant observation: Nothing could be more revealing about the deeply divided state of American politics than noting how many Clinton backers who are up in arms about the Trump news dismissed Bill Clinton’s late-1990s critics as (among other descriptions) hopelessly backward prudes, and how many Trump backers were then all over the former president as a reprehensible pervert unfit to hold office.

Largely because they’re still so uncertain, to me the purely political ramifications and questions – especially longer term – are much more interesting and important.

First of course comes tomorrow night’s presidential debate, and how both candidates will handle the Trump revelations. Even before the new video was made public, the first such contest and the vice presidential debate made clear that the Democrats were still counting heavily on spotlighting Trump’s closely related character and qualifications issues. The newest Trump outrages would seem to make this strategy more appealing than ever.

But after a while (which could range from 15 minutes into the debate to the entire period preceding election day) will this look like piling on to significant numbers of voters? Or will repetition make many eyes simply glaze over?

And crucially, how will Trump respond? The smart approach would be to apologize again, at somewhat greater length, and then call for focusing the rest of the evening – and the campaign – on issues. If Clinton persisted, Trump could sadly accuse her of wallowing and resume discussing jobs and the economy, national security, or immigration etc. Trump might also consider shifting the discussion to the potentially damaging release of transcripts of Clinton’s Wall Street speeches and what they signal about her views of America’s top financiers, the desirability of open borders, and the like. Yet too quick a pivot could too easily be read as simple tactical desperation on his part, not as a valid effort to introduce a genuinely worthy subject.

The next time Trump displays such political intelligence, however, will be the first. Indeed, he had exactly this opportunity at the end of the first debate, and hit back with a reference to Bill Clinton’s misbehavior and then a sustained attack on a former Miss Universe.

Second, it looks to me like the mainstream, establishment Republicans who Trump routed in the primaries are looking at his latest crisis as gift from the gods that will boost their chances of recapturing the party in time to prepare for the 2020 elections. Their thinking could not be more obvious. A Trump presidency could consign the establishment to irrelevance for several electoral cycles – which would hurt not only politically, but financially, since as a class their incomes depend on their ability to peddle influence. And this observation applies both to establishmentarians who currently make a living lobbying or consulting for political candidates or media outlets, and to office-holders eagerly eyeing such jobs at some point.

Even a narrow Trump loss could threaten their positions and livelihoods. But a landslide defeat for Trump would enable them convincingly to tell a critical mass of conservatives and Republican-leaning independents, “I told you so,” and push populist impulses and figures to the political margins – at least until the next economic downturn or national security-related disaster.

So every time you read a report about such an establishment Republican denouncing Trump’s transgressions, or calling for his withdrawal from the ticket, keep thinking about all the reasons why their denunciations aren’t necessarily high minded.

The final (for now) political question also concerns the future. And one way to think about it in this respect to remember Mikhail Gorbachev. No need to Google him (right now, anyway). He was the 1980s era Soviet leader whose efforts at domestic and foreign policy reforms were followed by the USSR’s collapse and the end of the Cold War.

It’s still an open question as to whether Gorbachev had a theoretically viable plan but simply ran out of time because the Soviet Union was so brittle economically and socially as well as politically that any serious talk of change at the top was bound to shake its foundations. There’s a powerful argument that Gorbachev actually was not nearly bold enough domestically, and foolishly tried to graft some free market practices onto an economy that he intended to remain fundamentally state-directed. Still others insist that the moment Gorbachev decided to allow Soviet bloc members to open their borders to the West, communism’s dominion over Russia and the rest of the USSR proper was finished. (Here’s a handy summary of many of the major pro and con arguments.)  

But what’s important here for the future of American politics was the question that dominated American foreign policy circles from the moment Gorbachev’s apparent ambitions became…apparent: Was Gorbachev “sincere”? Or more accurately, it was a question that flowed from this query: Could someone like Gorbachev, who rose up through the Soviet system, truly stand for ideas that could in theory of transform that system?

Trump’s obvious personal shortcomings raise the same kind of questions for me. Principally, is it reasonable to hope for politicians to come up through the current political system, and therefore learn how to avoid needlessly alienating or scaring much of the electorate, but who will champion thoroughgoing populist-type reforms a la Trump? Or does succeeding within the system require such heavy reliance on establishment funding (on both sides of the aisle) as to frustrate any truly populist inclinations – and leave that space open to outsider alpha types who have learned to place supreme, overweening trust in their own judgment and capabilities, with all the resulting eccentricities, or worse?

That is to say, can Trump-ism without Trump become a viable movement? Can it attract the necessary resources and talent from outside the establishment? Evidence for a “No” answer is the fact that neither Trump nor his immediate ideological forebear, Ross Perot, have so far been able to pass crucial confidence and reassurance tests with the U.S. electorate. It’s of course rarely a good idea to say “Never.” But this admittedly small historical sample suggests that for a new, improved version of populism to emerge, the aftermath of these 2016 elections will need to be as rule-breaking as the campaign itself.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: A Nuclear Policy Know-Nothing in the White House Right Now?

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2016 election, alliances, allies, Asia, China, Donald Trump, Europe, Japan, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear weapons, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, South Korea, Soviet Union

Remember when, this spring, President Obama portrayed Donald Trump as a foreign policy know-nothing? More specifically, Mr. Obama warned that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee was especially, and dangerously, ignorant regarding the essential role U.S. nuclear weapons have long played in preserving American security alliances, and in curbing the spread of these arms. It’s now coming to light that Mr. Obama’s ignorance of these subjects could be much deeper and scarier.

Bizarre as that sounds, it’s the only valid conclusion to draw if it’s true, as per reports (e.g., here and here), that the president is actively thinking of declaring that the United States will never be the first country to use nuclear weapons in a conflict. Here’s why.

Reserving the right to initiate nuclear weapons use has been central to American national security strategy since the end of World War II. However inhumane it may sound, the rationale was…eminently rational, if not indisputable. The main adversaries faced by the United States and its allies, the Soviet Union and secondarily China, possessed or could potentially field, enormous non-nuclear militaries all too capable of overrunning the conventional forces that America and its European and Asian allies were willing to muster in response.

America’s nuclear weapons were an understandable choice as equalizer when the United States enjoyed a nuclear monopoly. And even after the Soviets drew even and the Chinese developed serious nuclear capabilities, both Democratic and Republican presidents and Congresses justified a first-use policy with the assumption that simply the possibility of a war going nuclear – and threatening their homelands with the same annihilation America would suffer – would keep Moscow and Beijing at bay.

The history is complicated, and there’s no doubt that improving Soviet nuclear capabilities in particular and ambiguous U.S. responses periodically prompted allies’ doubts about the credibility of American commitments. But there’s also no doubt that during the Cold War, both conventional and nuclear conflicts great power conflicts were avoided, and it seems reasonable to credit the strategy of extended deterrence for at least some of this success.

As I’ve argued in recent posts, because Chinese and North Korean nuclear forces have been significantly upgraded in recent years, and because East Asia is much less strategically important to the United States than in Cold War days, extended deterrence creates far too much risk for far too little gain for Americans, and that the U.S. nuclear commitments to Japan and South Korea should be phased out. Although I haven’t written on the recent situation in Europe, I’d favor the same approach to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

So as a result, I don’t favor any use of nuclear weapons on these countries’ behalf, let alone first use. Trump has endorsed rethinking these security arrangements, too, including their nuclear components, although it’s not clear exactly what changes he’s seeking.

President Obama and so many other foreign policy establishment-arians have warned that these measures could very well lead American allies to seek extra protection by developing their own nuclear forces – which supposedly would make global affairs far more dangerous. I take this point – and it sounds like Trump does as well. But we both respond that precisely because the loss of America’s nuclear edge and growing dangers to the continental United States are plain for the allies to see, and because it’s inherently problematic for any country to risk its very survival on behalf of another, the allies are likely to go nuclear no matter what Washington promises or how powerful its own forces become.

And that brings us to precisely what’s so loopy about Mr. Obama’s reported position. On the one hand, he says he’s determined to preserve the alliances and their nuclear dimension – and specified that Trump’s critique showed that he “doesn’t know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean Peninsula or the world generally.” On the other hand, there’s no better way to tear these alliances asunder, and all but guarantee that not only Japan and South Korea but Germany and other American formal and informal allies build or buy their own bombs, than to forswear use of America’s own nuclear weapons in their defense unless attackers with arguably superior non-nuclear forces (unnecessarily and irrationally) escalated to the nuclear level.

It’s possible that the president will decide to keep the first-use option – or that the reports of impending change are inaccurate. And of course, any decision he makes could be reversed by a successor. But it’s at least equally possible that even the news that American leaders are contemplating such epochal doctrinal shifts will set off the kinds of nuclear weapons acquisition spiral that Mr. Obama says he seeks to avoid. Unless anyone believes that countries living in exceedingly dangerous neighborhoods would settle for assuming that America is just as reliable as ever?

Trump doesn’t have a Ph.D. in international affairs. (The same goes for the president, by the way – and for me.) But he at least appears to recognize that it’s possible to preserve the alliance status quo, and that it’s possible to take an important step toward eliminating any chance of nuclear weapons use anywhere, but that it is completely impossible actively to seek both goals at the same time. More important, his remarks indicate he recognizes that the United States should anticipate strategic change, prepare for it, and even try to shape the process constructively.

The apparent Obama/establishment approach?  Resist the seemingly inevitable – and (somehow) scramble once it arrives.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: America’s Nuclear Strategy Ignorance Starts at the Top

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Aaron David Miller, alliances, Carol Lee, Chris Matthews MSNBC, Cold War, Department of Energy, deterrence, Donald Trump, Ernest Moniz, Europe, extended deterrence, foreign policy, Gwen Ifill, John Kasich, John Spellar, Judy Woodruff, national security, NATO, NewsHour, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear weapons, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, PBS, Soviet Union, Tina Nguyen, Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal, Washington Week

Wow! Imagine if America ever got a president totally ignorant of the nation’s nuclear weapons strategy? He (or she) could blow us all up!

These fears have been all over the news in the wake of Donald Trump’s statement last week that he wouldn’t rule out using nuclear weapons to deal with a crisis in Europe. But here’s what the nation’s politicians and media classes overwhelmingly haven’t reported: It looks like America has a president like that right now, and has had one since 2009, in the form of Barack Obama. For resorting to nuclear weapons in response to threats to Europe’s security isn’t some reckless position being spouted by an unconventional presidential candidate. It’s been a central element of U.S. national security strategy – including toward the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that continues to bind Europe’s fate to America’s – since the Cold War began, and remains so today.

Opposing or questioning this foreign policy approach (as I do) is completely legitimate. But it’s completely ignorant to dispute that, soon after the end of World War II, Washington quickly decided against trying to match Soviet conventional forces on the Continent man-for-man and tank-for-tank, and that American leaders ever since have viewed nuclear weapons and the threat to use them as their great military equalizer. Moreover, the nuclear arms have always included – and still include – tactical weapons intended to be used on European battlefields.

Of course, the United States has ardently hoped that these devices would never have to be used. The idea behind the policy was that the prospect alone would keep the Red Army on the east side of the Iron Curtain. That is, they principally have been a deterrent. But their deterrent effect depended entirely on the threat’s credibility.

Yesterday, however, President Obama strongly indicated that this decades-old policy is news to him – and that he rejects it. Asked by a reporter to describe the message sent by Trump’s Europe and other alliance-related nuclear strategy statements, the president responded, “They tell us that the person who made the statements doesn’t know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean peninsula or the world generally. It came up on the sidelines.”

It’s possible that Mr. Obama didn’t intend this description to apply to Trump’s Europe position specifically. But there’s no doubt that his Energy Secretary, Ernest Moniz, did. Moniz, whose agency is “responsible for ensuring the integrity and safety of the nation’s nuclear weapons,” called the Republican front-runner’s remarks “extremely troubling, obviously,” and the kind of election talk that is “just bluntly irresponsible and is detrimental to our internal allies security posture.”

Comparable ignorance was expressed by one of Trump’s Republican presidential rivals, John Kasich. The Ohio Governor calls himself “the candidate in this race with the deepest and most far-reaching foreign policy and national security experience.” Yet he condemned Trump for “actually [talking] about the use of nuclear weapons, both in the Middle East and in Europe.” Aaron David Miller, a Middle East negotiator for Democratic and Republican administrations, acquitted himself so better, labeling Trump’s words “reckless.”

Nor have many Europeans covered themselves with glory. According to John Spellar, a former British defense minister during the Tony Blair years, Trump’s views on nuclear weapons use in Europe are “ignorant and irresponsible” and show that “Clearly he has no understanding of defence and security.”

Journalists – especially political journalists – generally aren’t expected to know as much about policy as policymakers (or even as policy reporters). But given their role in transmitting policy-related news to the public, including in election years, their own apparent cluelessness is eminently worth noting. Deserving this label are all the media mainstays who clearly found Trump’s Europe views even the slightest bit newsworthy in the first place, let alone surprising and/or outrageous – like MSNBC’s Chris Matthews (who used to work for a Speaker of the House and elicited the original Trump remarks in an interview), and The Wall Street Journal‘s Carol Lee (who sought President Obama’s reaction).

At least none of the scribes turned in a performance as pathetic as Vanity Fair‘s Tina Nguyen – who told her readers that Trump’s remarks were not only “horrifying” but should “automatically disqualify him for the presidency.” But then again…Vanity Fair.

In fairness, some reporters did make the link between Trump’s statements and longstanding American policy. Judy Woodruff of The NewsHour observed that “In fact, U.S. presidents by tradition do not rule out the use of nuclear weapons.” But not even this incontrovertible fact was enough to prevent one of her PBS colleagues – Washington Week anchor Gwen Ifill – from casting aspersions on Trump. As Ifill acknowledged (in a partially inaccurate way), “most presidents would not take things off the table.” But she felt compelled to add, “but this seemed a little extreme.”

It’s true that this American presidents have never openly and explicitly proclaimed that their Europe and other alliance policies deliberately put New York and Washington and Los Angeles at risk to protect London and Paris and Tokyo. But it’s also true that this strategy is as widely known in foreign policy circles – including in undergraduate classrooms – as the separation of powers is known in political science circles. The flap over Trump’s nuclear remarks shows that America’s politics, policy, and media are indeed full of too much know-nothing-ism. But it also makes painfully clear that lots of it’s coming from the very establishment that keeps bewailing it – including from the Oval Office.

Following Up: Inept Defenses of the NATO Defense Commitment

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2016 elections, Baltics, Cold War, Department of Defense, Donald Trump, Europe, NATO, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Peter Cook, Russia, Soviet Union, The New York Times, Ukraine

Thanks to Donald Trump, signs are appearing of a national debate breaking out over America’s membership in its major security alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Actually, it hasn’t been much a debate so far in the sense of a two-way exchange. The Republican front-runner has called the alliance “obsolete” and has accused its European members of free-riding while the United States foots most of the common defense bill. (He’s made similar points about similar defense arrangements with Japan and South Korea.) The nation’s policy, political, and media establishments – including most of Trump’s presidential rivals – have almost uniformly assailed these claims as ignorant, outrageous, and even dangerous.

Last week, I explained that the free-riding point is perfectly valid – and has been for decades. Trump is also, contrary to his critics, right to worry about the major expenses incurred by the United States to defend countries amply rich enough to defend themselves much more effectively. What’s notable this week about how the evolution of this all-too-one-sided debate is:

>the revealingly lukewarm endorsement given to NATO by the U.S. Defense Department; and

>the equally revealing, though completely incoherent, endorsement provided by the New York Times editorial board

The lukewarm endorsement came from chief Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook. Asked at his daily press briefing yesterday whether NATO had become “obsolete,” Cook responded that the alliance “is far from obsolete.” This is a rave review? To be sure, Cook added that “We think NATO is as relevant as ever right now in the current environment,” which could mean that it’s viewed being every bit as important to U.S. security as during the height of the Cold War. But he also used the formulation “NATO’s as relevant today as it’s been in sometime,” which clearly narrows the time-frame, possibly to include many years during which NATO and European security weren’t exactly keeping American leaders up night and day.

The incoherent endorsement came the day before, in a Times editorial condemning Trump’s “dangerous babble on foreign policy.” The indictment extended across-the-board but featured this passage:  

“Mr. Trump also challenged decades of American policy by calling NATO“obsolete. Since the Cold War, the alliance has undergone reforms and remains the primary organization that can deal with military threats. It is central to the stability of Europe, which is vulnerable to terrorist attacks, weak economies and the flood of refugees from the Syrian war. With Russia’s aggressive movements in Ukraine and threats to the Baltics, this is no time to suggest that Washington is rethinking its strongest commitments to its allies. Although Mr. Trump said he doesn’t want to pull America out of NATO, he said it has to be changed so the United States bears less of the cost.”

The closing thought is in many ways the most disingenuous. The Times acknowledged that Trump is calling for an end to U.S. Involvement in NATO, but wants the Europeans to spend more to defend themselves. Leave aside the question of whether this is a reasonable position as such or not. Times writers should have told their readers that this is basically current American policy – as Pentagon spokesman Cook made clear in his briefing. Why does Trump’s agreement represent a kiss of death?

But the substance of the Times argument is also difficult to follow – at best. On the one hand, “the alliance” is called “central to the stability of Europe. Although the Times didn’t make this claim, presumably it considers Europe’s stability central to the security of the United States. But the editorialists then go on to describe the Continent as economically weak, flooded with refugees, and vulnerable to terrorism. Why do they believe that NATO can help on those fronts? And if this is their view, why hasn’t it? Just as important, how does an American commitment to protect militarily a region floundering on so many non-military fronts contribute to U.S. security?

The paper is on stronger grounds when noting Russian threats to Baltic countries that are now members of NATO. Failure to defend treaty allies would surely undermine America’s global credibility, and surely damage its security to some extent. But why is Ukraine the slightest bit relevant to this discussion? It stands outside NATO. Its security has never been viewed as crucial to America’s by U.S. leaders – even during the Cold War. Has it suddenly become crucial now? If so, why?

Nor is the Baltics point beyond criticism. These countries were brought into NATO after the Cold War ended. Like Ukraine, they were actually part of the Soviet Union before it fell apart – with no apparent adverse impact on the United States. Yes, their official relationships with Washington have now changed. But did their admission to NATO reflect any significant change in their value to the United States? Or was it a completely unnecessary gesture that has now committed America to defend countries that remain as un-defendable (at least with non-nuclear forces), due to their location right on Russia’s borders, as they were when Stalin annexed them in the early years of World War II. I lean markedly toward the latter view – meaning that one of the Times’ main justifications nowadays is actually a problem of Washington’s own making.

Someone – I think it was the late novelist and essayist Norman Mailer – once wrote something to the effect that “There is nothing so dangerous as to introduce a new idea in America.” (Crowd sourcing hint!) Nowhere is that more true that in the world of American foreign policy, dominated as it’s been in recent decades by hide-bound careerists who are little more than lavishly credentialed yes men. Donald Trump and his supporters are learning that hard truth now. Here’s hoping they’ll batter the NATO and alliance relations conventional wisdom as powerfully as they have other establishment sacred cows.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: On U.S. Alliances, Trump’s the Voice of Responsibility

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2016 election, alliances, China, Cold War, Donald Trump, East Asia, escalation dominance, extended deterrence, foreign policy establishment, Germany, Japan, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, smothering strategy, South Korea, Soviet Union, Western Europe

Foreign policy devotees like yours truly have rarely seen salad days like the last few weeks. On the heels of a long and remarkably candid interview of President Obama summarized in an Atlantic magazine piece have now come two comparably detailed and revealing sessions on the subject between Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump and reporters from first the Washington Post and then The New York Times.

I wrote last week on Trump’s Post remarks on America’s approach to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) embodied far more realism and indeed wisdom on the subject of U.S. alliances than the bipartisan American foreign policy establishment has demonstrated in decades. His latest statements to The Times confirm this superior judgment – and on elements of U.S. alliance doctrine that are as fundamental, longstanding, and arguably reckless as they have been thoroughly soft-pedaled in public. Specifically, Trump is challenging the decades-long policy that, a quarter century after fall of communism, is still exposing the United States to the risk of nuclear war to protect Japan, Western Europe, and South Korea.

One reason for threatening to unleash armageddon to maintain the freedom of major treaty allies was always made reasonably clear to the American voter during the Cold War: Western Europe and Japan were actual and potential concentrations of economic, industrial, and therefore military might. Therefore, they needed to be kept out of Soviet (and Communist Chinese) hands at literally all costs or else the global balance of power would tip fatally against the free world. And central features of American foreign policy quite naturally became deterring communist aggression both by deploying hundreds of thousands of American soldiers and heavy conventional weapons overseas, and by placing literally thousands of nuclear weapons on allied soil.

What was never made remotely clear to the U.S. public was a second, equally crucial reason for this alliance strategy – and the reason it has survived the complete transformation of the global strategic environment since the Soviet Union collapsed and China started integrating with the world capitalist economy instead of seeking its overthrow. Extending the American defense umbrella over the allies was also deemed essential to prevent these countries – and especially the former Axis powers Germany and Japan – from ever becoming global security threats themselves again.

The ultimate military guarantees provided by Washington were central to a strategy of what I’ve called “smothering” the allies. The United States literally would eliminate the need for them to carry out independent foreign policies ever again by meeting all the major needs that spur countries to conduct foreign policies in the first place. Washington would shield them from military attack and provide huge markets for the surplus production they needed to foster ever-rising levels of prosperity.

The economic dimension of this strategy have been problematic enough – but let’s save that discussion for another post. But the military dimension has become downright irrational in recent years. Put simply, yoking America’s very survival to that of foreign countries is easily defensible at a time when mortal threats to U.S. alliances are difficult to find – as in the early post-Cold War years, when Russia was weak, China seemed tamed, and North Korea’s development of nuclear forces that could strike the American homeland seemed a remote prospect even to worrywarts.

What Trump has been telling his media interlocutors is that those relatively halcyon days are gone. As events are making clear, the weaknesses of the military smothering strategy have become most apparent in East Asia. As I’ve written, the U.S. approach is logically defensible for America only if the United States maintains escalation dominance – nuclear superiority so overwhelming that even a questionably rational regime like North Korea’s would understand that it would come in a distant (and completely destroyed) second if these terrible weapons were ever used.

But as I’ve also written, this American escalation dominance is weakening, as the North has made progress in developing both nuclear weapons able to strike U.S. targets, and weapons mobile enough to survive limited American preemptive strikes aimed at taking them out. Here’s an update on Pyongyang’s nuclear programs. In other words, it’s one thing for an American president to promise to risk Los Angeles for Seoul (the South Korean capital), when there’s no real risk to Los Angeles. It’s quite another to make this vow when southern California is a real target. Recent Chinese nuclear weapons progress presents a similar dilemma, especially with China more aggressively asserting territorial claims in the South and East China Seas – including islands also claimed by Japan.

The point here is not that America’s current approach to alliances should be changed immediately. It’s entirely possible that such “extended nuclear deterrence” is the nation’s best overall bet for continued security and prosperity even in a post-Cold War world in which potential adversaries possess increasingly formidable nuclear capabilities. But contrary to the sneering, harrumphing – much less indignant – responses of foreign policy establishmentarians, the smothering strategy is anything but a slam dunk any more, either.

So it’s anything but crazy or irresponsible for Trump to be raising the prospect of Japan and South Korea acquiring their own nuclear deterrents. Indeed, as Trump told New York Times reporters David E. Sanger and Maggie Haberman, it’s essential for Washington to start thinking about these possibilities precisely because better Chinese and North Korean capabilities are – understandably – raising doubts among Japanese and South Korean leaders themselves about the credibility of U.S. nuclear guarantees. That is, they’re no longer solidly convinced that Washington would risk Los Angeles for Seoul or Tokyo. And if you think about these matters seriously, how could they be?

Indeed, Trump’s remarks about U.S. alliance policy have performed a major public service. For decades, a series of at-least-questionable decisions bearing on American national life and death have been common knowledge among U.S. leaders and foreign policy professionals, allied leaders, and adversary leaders. But they’ve been practically unknown to most Americans. Now what has clearly been a secret kept through countless acts of omission is starting to come out. The establishment is clearly being discomfited, but given its longtime record of often disastrous incompetence, why should anyone outside its coddle ranks care? For all other Americans, and especially those truly supportive of accountable, representative government, Trump’s challenge to the nation’s alliance strategy can only ultimately be an unalloyed good.

Im-Politic: Cruz on Foreign Policy Could be Both a Lot Worse & Lot Better

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China, Cold War, conservatives, Cuba, democracy, Donald Trump, foreign direct investment, Im-Politic, interventionism, isolationism, John Quincy Adams, morality and foreign policy, nation-building, neoconservatives, Republicans, Ronald Reagan, Soviet Union, Ted Cruz

Difficult as it is to remember sometimes, there are still candidates vying for the Republican presidential nomination other than Donald Trump. For example, there’s Senator Ted Cruz, who in fact has established himself as the runner up in most national polls so far and the leader in Iowa, whose caucuses kick off Campaign 2016’s actual voting.

I’m no Cruz-an, but I’m grateful to economic and security commentator Nevin Gussack for calling my attention to an April interview given to The Daily Caller by the freshman legislator. It shows that Cruz has some sensible instincts when it comes to an overall American approach to world affairs, but that he has a lot to learn about China.

In other contexts, Cruz’ claim that he’s neither a  “full neocon” nor a “libertarian isolationist.” in his strategic leanings could legitimately be dismissed as cynical, Clintonian triangulation. Unfortunately, both American foreign policy and the commentary it’s generated have so typically tended to view the nation’s world role in terms of starkly and foolishly dichotomous choices (like “interventionism” versus “isolationism”) that Cruz’ apparent attempt to stake out a middle ground decidedly encouraging.

In fact, though he cited former President Ronald Reagan as a role model, Cruz actually sounded more like John Quincy Adams, who served not only as president himself but as Secretary of State. In 1821, he famously articulated this definition of the U.S. purpose in world affairs:

“Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will [America’s] heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication….” [The rest is very much worth reading, too, but this section suffices for this post’s theme.]

It sounds an awful lot like the Caller‘s account of a “Cruz Doctrine”:

“‘I believe America should be a clarion voice for freedom. The bully pulpit of the American president has enormous potency,’ he [said], before praising former President Ronald Reagan for changing the ‘arc of history’ by demanding Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev tear down the Berlin Wall and lambasting President Barack Obama for not sufficiently standing on the side of freedom during Iran’s 2009 Green Revolution.

“But, Cruz noted, speaking out for freedom ‘is qualitatively different from saying U.S. military forces should intervene to force democracy on foreign lands.’”

I’m not sure I’m with Cruz on Reagan rhetoric bringing down that “Evil Empire.” But for all my hesitancy about the place of moral considerations in American diplomacy, I have no problem with a president speaking out on such questions, provided he or she doesn’t create unjustified foreign expectations about American actions, or provoke dangerous responses. It’s also, after all, entirely conceivable that such statements can do some good.

Even better, like Adams, Cruz is skeptical about involving the United States in protracted democracy-promotion campaigns: “It is not the job of the U.S. military to engage in nation building to turn foreign countries into democratic utopias.”

So far so good. But Cruz betrays some deep ignorance on the subject of China, and on the magnitude of the security threat it poses to America versus that of, say, Cuba. Asked why he favors normal relations with human rights abusers like China and Saudi Arabia, but not with Cuba, Cruz (whose father was born on and fled the island) replied:

“The situation with Cuba and China are qualitatively different. For one thing, in China, direct investment is allowed, where American investment can go into the country invest directly and work with the Chinese people, which is bringing economic development and is transforming China in significant ways. In Cuba, all outside investment has to go through the government. Lifting sanctions will inevitably result in billions of dollars flowing into the Castro government into its repressive machinery.

“Secondly, China or Qatar or the different countries you mentioned, none of them are 90 miles from our border.” Cuba is uniquely situated 90 miles away from the state of Florida. Cuba is a leading exporter of terrorism throughout Latin America. Cuba was recently caught smuggling arms to North Korea in the Panama Canal.”

If he wasn’t running for president, or serving as a U.S. Senator, Cruz might deserve some slack for his clearly emotional feelings about Cuba and his family. But whatever his family background, these views are ridiculous. The economic picture painted of China is flat wrong. First, the Chinese government still sets very strict conditions on incoming investment, and second, although China’s economic growth and modernization unquestionably have benefited, so has China’s military strength and technological sophistication. Even many of the world’s most historically craven panda-huggers have decided that reform in the PRC has now shifted into reverse despite all the economic and even political liberalization that they once predicted inevitably would be produced by engagement with democratic, capitalist world.

Moreover, China’s burgeoning military power wouldn’t be such a concern if its leaders had decided to keep conducting a relatively quiet, passive foreign policy. But those days clearly are long gone, as Beijing has demonstrated a strong determination to expand its territory and influence in the East Asia/Pacific region at America’s expense. Moreover, the Chinese government’s burgeoning cyber-hacking activities are only the latest signs of the dangers of allowing current economically “normal” relations – including massive technology transfer – to proceed apace. And we haven’t even gotten to the damage to the U.S. economy and therefore to its defense industrial base and potential done by China’s predatory trade policies.

No matter how close to American shores lilliputian Cuba might be, it would need to turn into a something like a huge ISIS base even to start threatening major U.S. security interests to this extent – and of course such hostile assets would be easy for American forces to flatten, or simply to embargo into helplessness.

A final worrisome note on the (obviously still embryonic) formulation of Cruz’s foreign policy ideas: Although he claims to reject “full neocon-ism,” the advisers he told The Caller he consults with are all firmly in that camp. Since the end of the Cold War, American conservatism has bred an impressive variety of schools of foreign policy thinking (unlike American liberalism). The more such resources he taps, the likelier Cruz will be to develop an international strategy that both wins votes and furthers American interests.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: What to Do About Russia in Syria

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Afghanistan, Donald Trump, energy, Iran, ISIS, Middle East, national interests, Obama, oil, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Persian Gulf, Putin, Russia, Shah of Iran, Soviet Union, Syria, terrorism, Vietnam

During the Cold War, American leaders got into two bad habits that often wound up costing the country dearly. First, the Soviet Union, or some of its surrogates (like Cuban military advisors), or some local forces calling themselves Communists would show up or emerge in a place that rigorous thinking made clear had no important strategic or economic value to the United States. And all of a sudden, Washington would act like the fate of this place would make or break that of Western civilization. Second, a major setback would be incurred in a region of genuine importance, and since no viable countermeasures were available, the United States would simply assume that things would turn out OK eventually.

Worrisomely, variations of both bad habits are evident in the foreign policy world’s reactions to Russia’s recent burst of military intervention in the Syrian civil war. They demonstrate that if Washington’s response – either under President Obama or whoever succeeds him – winds up enhancing American security and prosperity, U.S. leaders will have to focus like the proverbial laser beam on American interests.

Vietnam of course was the prime example of the first pattern. As most surely remember, it showed the disasters that can result from massive conflicts not remotely justified by the tangible stakes. Iran and Afghanistan were great, though more obscure, examples of the second. After the pro-Western Shah was thrown off his throne in Tehran in 1979, and after Soviet forces plunged into Afghanistan later that year to try keeping their stooges in power, all manner of rationalizations for U.S. inaction popped up – even though America and the world desperately needed the Persian Gulf’s oil. Even though the worst case never unfolded and the flow of crude has continued pretty much uninterrupted, America’s ongoing exposure to the region’s turmoil indicates that hope isn’t an acceptable foundation for policy.

Russia’s entry is certainly a new factor not only in the Syrian conflict but into the entire Middle East/Persian Gulf equation. And it’s one I didn’t expect. But even though it greatly increases the chance of some kind of dangerous mishap involving U.S. and Russian forces operating in an uncoordinated manner in a relatively confined theater of action, Moscow’s move doesn’t change the fundamental situation, which consists of three main components.

First, the Middle East, because of its energy resources and its potential as a platform for terrorist strikes against the United States, remains a vital concern for Americans. Second, as a result, and equally important, Washington can’t afford to depend on optimistic predictions about the so-called foreseeable future. And third, Putin’s venture has no bearing on the inability of the United States – whether acting alone or multilaterally – to turn Syria or the Middle East into a substantially more stable, less dangerous region from America’s standpoint.

In other words, President Obama is wrong to be confident that whatever energy or terrorism threats will eventually fade because Vladimir Putin will get bogged down militarily, or because Russia’s economy can’t sustain prolonged military ventures, or because Moscow will ultimately turn the Sunni Muslim world against him. Other dovish voices are wrong to oppose a stronger U.S. response simply because past interventions have flopped and arguably worsened the region’s instability, and to suggest that standing aloof per se will somehow produce better results.

Donald Trump is wrong as well to assume that simply because Russian leaders also oppose Islamic terrorism that Washington should simply count on their military conveniently doing the dirty and dangerous work of defeating ISIS – and bogging themselves down in the Middle East. And both Democratic and Republican hawks are wrong to believe that the Russian gambit strengthens their case for deeper U.S. armed involvement in Syria and the region as a whole, whether to create no-fly zones to protect civilian populations or to start sending American troops into the fray whether in “advisory” or more active roles.

Therefore, the best American approach to the Middle East post-Putin remains exactly the same as it was pre-Putin – transitioning from a strategy of countering threats emanating from the region by trying to transform it into something better, to one of dealing with these threats through domestic policy measures like accelerating efforts to marginalize the Gulf in the national and global energy pictures, and preventing terrorist attacks by securing America’s borders.

As I’ve written, because the second goal in particular remains far from achievement, the United States can’t simply pick up militarily from the Middle East and go home. But its operations need to be linked tightly to the transition strategy, which means air and some ground activity (e.g., special forces) to keep ISIS and similar groups off balance enough to prevent them from consolidating control over areas large enough to become training centers for overseas attacks. These operations, however, need not and should not continue for one additional minute once the U.S. government has reliable systems in place for keeping terrorists away from its frontiers.

Defeating ISIS may actually entail actively cooperating with the Russian military until the mission is accomplished, and in fact the greater the burden on Russian forces, the better for Americans. But realizing longer term benefits from such efforts – either for relations between Washington and Moscow, or for the Middle East – is as unrealistic as expecting American shows of force to drive the Russians out.

And it’s as unnecessary. The root problem posed for the United States by the Middle East stems not from the specific activity or designs of hostile or potentially hostile local or outside forces, but from the fact that this terminally dysfunctional, and thus easily exploitable region matters to America at all. Washington’s top priority still should be ending this importance, and becoming indifferent to the Middle East’s future no matter how it evolves or who’s (supposedly) in control.