Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why a Real America First European Security Policy is More Urgent than Ever

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alliances, America First, Article Five, Cato Institute, China, Cold War, coupling, EU, Europe, European Council on Foreign Relations, European Union, extended deterrence, globalism, NATO. North Atlantic Treaty Organization, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Pew Research Center, Russia, Ted Galen Carpenter, tripwires, Trump

Even if the Cato Institute’s Ted Galen Carpenter wasn’t one of my closest friends, I’d still be writing this post highlighting his op-ed piece earlier this week for the Washington Post. Because it absolutely decimates the claim that all that ails the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), America’s oldest national security alliance, is recklessly mindless norms-buster Donald Trump.

Instead, Carpenter reports on overwhelming evidence that the arrangement, which since 1949 has committed the United States to the defense of first Western Europe and now most of Europe (and at considerable risk of nuclear attack on the U.S. homeland), is critically ill mainly because, in the decades since the end of the Cold War, U.S. and European interests have been steadily – and inevitably – diverging. And these findings add powerfully to the case that America’s globalist military commitment to Europe has become dangerously outdated.

The evidence consists of polling data showing unmistakably that European publics no longer believe that their governments should side with the United States in its disputes and conflicts with Russia (whose perceived threat Western Europe’s independence during its post-World War II decades as the Soviet Union sparked NATO’s creation in the first place), or that they should even rally to each other’s defense.

The Russia-focused results come from a September survey conducted by the European Council on Foreign Relations, and are based on the views of no less than 60,000 individuals from fourteen countries belonging to the European Union (EU) – an economic organization not officially related to NATO but many of whose member countries are U.S. NATO allies as well.

The bottom line – which Carpenter rightly describes as “startling”? “When asked ‘Whose side should your country take in a conflict between the United States and Russia?’ the majority of respondents in all 14 E.U. countries said ‘neither’.”

Some of the country-specific results?

“In France, only 18 percent would back the United States, while 63 percent opt for neutrality; in Italy, it’s 17 percent vs. 65 percent, and in Germany, 12 percent to 70 percent.

“The results were similar even in NATO’s newer East European members, despite their greater exposure to Russian pressure and potential aggression. Hungarian respondents selected neutrality over supporting the United States 71 percent to 13 percent, while Romanians did so 65 percent to 17 percent. Even in Poland, a country whose history with Moscow during both the Czarist and Soviet periods was especially frosty, neutralist sentiment had the edge, 45 percent to 33 percent.”

What’s especially disturbing, and indeed outrageous, from an American standpoint is that since NATO’s founding, European governments have insisted that U.S. troops be stationed on the continent to serve (as in South Korea) in a trip-wire role – which RealityChek regulars knows means units deployed close enough to invasion routes and vulnerable enough to the superior conventional militaries of aggressors practically to force American Presidents to use nuclear weapons to save them if conflict breaks out.

This policy of “extended deterrence,” or “coupling,” has been intended to prevent such conflicts from breaking out in the first place. What’s dangerous for the United States of course – and needlessly so – is that if deterrence fails, nuclear weapons use could expose American territory to a retaliatory nuclear strike, even though the United States itself may not be at risk.

Even worse: Throughout the Cold War, NATO non-nuclear forces were inferior to their Soviet and Soviet satellite counterparts because the European allies preferred to free-ride on the U.S. military guarantee instead of spending funds they all could have afforded for armed forces capable of self-defense.

For good measure, moreover, this European Council on Foreign Relations poll showed that Europeans are just about as ambivalent in joining with the United States if a conflict with China broke out.

Of course, even though the lopsided nature of the results indicates that these European views have been long in the making, it’s not entirely crazy to believe that Mr. Trump’s election has been so alarming to these populations that the shift did actually begin with his 2016 victory. But as Carpenter points out, a survey from the Pew Research Center conducted in 2015 demonstrates that NATO’s core principles were in deep trouble in Europe well before the President even declared his candidacy for the Oval Office.

Pew sampled opinion in eight NATO members and found that 49 percent of respondents opposed their country coming to the defense of other allies. And majorities in key alliance members France, Italy, and Germany alike rejected “fulfilling their country’s obligation to fulfill the Article 5 treaty pledge to consider an attack on any NATO member as an attack on all.” Crucially, Article 5 of the NATO treaty embodies the notion of collective security. In other words, it literally makes NATO NATO.

Carpenter rightly concludes that “the concept of transatlantic solidarity, even on collective defense, is now largely confined to out-of-touch political elites on both sides of the Atlantic.” Just as important, he notes that “it will be hard to sustain policies that increasingly run counter to the wishes of popular majorities.”

Ironically, however, despite his harsh criticisms of NATO allies’ free-riding and periodic swipes at the alliance as possibly obsolete, President Trump is increasingly acting like one of those out-of-touch globalist mainstays who urgently needs to see these poll results. For despite the warnings sounded by these polls that the United States won’t be able to rely on the European governments and their militaries even if shooting breaks out in Europe, he’s actually strengthened American forces on the continent – including in Poland, right on the Russian border.

In other words, an avowedly America First President is binding his country’s fate to that of Europe at the very moment when disengagement is more important than ever.

Making News: New Marketwatch Column on the Trump Solar Tariffs — & More!

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alliances, Apple, Brendan Kirby, burden sharing, Joe Guzzardi, Lifezette.com, Making News, Marketwatch.com, Progressives for Immigration Reform, solar panels, tariffs, Ted Galen Carpenter, The American Conservative, Trade, Trump, wages

I’m pleased to announce the publication of my latest op-ed piece – a column for Marketwatch.com explaining why President Trump was right in slapping tariffs on imported solar energy panels.  Here’s the link.

In addition, Joe Guzzardi of Progressives for Immigration Reform, recently wrote a column based on some of my findings on wage stagnation in the United States.  Through the Cagle Syndicate, it ran in several smaller newspapers around the country – e.g., here and here.

In the January-February issue of The American Conservative, Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute quoted my views on defense burden-sharing in America’s security alliances in a piece he did on the threats created by these arrangements.  The article, alas, is behind a pay wall.

Finally, in a January 19 post, Brendan Kirby of Lifezette.com featured my views on Apple’s announcement of new investments in U.S. domestic manufacturing.  Here’s the link.

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

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Can America Finally Stop Playing Uncle Sucker on North Korea?

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alliances, allies, America First, China, core deterrence, deterrence, extended deterrence, Kim Jong Un, Moon Jae-in, North Korea, Northeast Asia, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, sanctions, South Korea, Ted Galen Carpenter, The National Interest, tripwire, Trump

What comes after “patently absurd” – and maybe masochistically so? Whatever the phrase, it’s what would perfectly describe the point reached by U.S. policy toward North Korea and its nuclear forces over the last week. And the developments responsible are making it clearer than ever that, without further delay, President Trump needs to shift his Korean peninsula policy focus to getting the tens of thousands of American troops and their families stationed there far out of harm’s way.

First, South Korea’s newish President Moon Jae-in has once again just reminded anyone willing to listen that his top priority isn’t the declared U.S. imperative of eliminating North Korea’s nuclear forces – and in a verifiable way. It’s avoiding any kind of conflict in Korea, and counting on the combination of America’s own nuclear and conventional military forces to accomplish that goal.

Given the likely horrific costs of even a conventional conflict on the peninsula, that’s completely understandable on his part. In fact, if I were Moon, that’s what I’d be doing. And this need explains his enthusiastic response to a pretty modest (even by North Korean standards) diplomatic initiative from dictator Kim Jong-un. It also explains the South’s long-time failure to build armed forces able to handle the North’s armies on their own. Far better to rely on the more powerful threat posed to the North by U.S. nuclear forces to deter the North from even contemplating an attack. And far cheaper, too!

The problem is that whereas Moon’s strategy would have been acceptable in the period before North Korea developed nuclear weapons able to hit the American homeland, those days are either gone, or nearly gone. As a result, his strategy now poses completely unacceptable risks for the United States.

Not that Moon may not be entirely right in believing that a little more patience and a little more flexibility from Seoul and especially Washington can resolve the nuclear crisis peacefully. But what if he’s wrong, and North Korea simply uses any delay (and especially any resulting relief from economic sanctions) to make further nuclear weapons progress – including building more, improving their performance, and hiding them more effectively?

In that case, the odds rise that something goes wrong in this powder keg region and fighting breaks out after all. And since a conflict could easily result in North Korea destroying a major American city or two with its nuclear weapons, those odds are way too high for any sensible U.S. leader to accept. Even worse, as I’ve written previously, the American troops are stationed in South Korea, right near the border with the North, precisely to force a president to unsheathe U.S. nukes and risk retaliation in kind from the North. Can we all agree that American decisions to use nuclear weapons and run these risks should always be a matter of choice and not necessity? (For an excellent discussion of the dangers of such “tripwire” forces, see this first of three articles on the subject by the excellent foreign policy analyst – and my good friend – Ted Galen Carpenter.)

That’s precisely the truly vital U.S. goal that pulling the American troops out will accomplish – along with eliminating any rational need for Kim Jong-un even to consider using nuclear weapons against the vastly superior United States. Special bonus: A pledge from Washington to use nuclear weapons to prevent attack on its own soil (which political scientists call “core deterrence”) is infinitely more credible than a pledge to use these arms to protect another country (which is termed “extended deterrence”).

Once this unnecessary and unacceptable American vulnerability is removed, Washington should wish the South Koreans well with whatever diplomacy, or combination of diplomacy and a hedging military buildup, they wish to pursue.

Ditto for the policies of Northeast Asia’s other powerful countries, which brings us to the second reason for an American military withdrawal from Korea. Two of the peninsula’s neighbors – China and Russia – have taken indirectly free-riding off the U.S. nuclear pledge to South Korea to new heights. In recent weeks, both have been credibly accused of secretly shipping oil to the Kim Jong-un dictatorship in violation of UN sanctions that they both supported. (See, e.g., here and here.)

Breaking international commitments is hardly praiseworthy, but the obvious implication is that China and Russia are both OK with the status quo on the Korean peninsula. They may even be enjoying it – in the sense of the crisis fraying American nerves and tying down American forces. Or Beijing and Moscow may be struggling to prevent damaging fall-out from a North Korean economic collapse.

Either of these also would be perfectly reasonable judgments, and the Russians and Chinese should feel completely free to handle the North however they wish – maybe in tandem with South Korea, or some UN initiative. But only if the American troops are gone.

In this vein, especially interesting was this piece in The National Interest, which portrays Northeast Asia as a region marked by growing economic cooperation among major powers that historically have often been at each other’s throats. If so, why is the United States, located thousands of miles away, bearing such outsized risks for preserving peace – and the chances that the region could flourish?

The author, a professor at the U.S.’ Naval War College, seems to be saying, “Let Northeast Asia be Northeast Asia”. That sounds great to me – and like an idea that’s entirely compatible with “America First.”

Making News: On National Radio Early This Afternoon – & More!

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Cato Institute, Center for Immigration Studies, China, ChinaUSFocus.com, DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, Hong Kong, Immigration, John B. Judis, Making News, North Korea, Ted Galen Carpenter, The New Republic, think tanks, Thom Hartmann, ZeroHedge.com

I’m pleased to announce that I’m scheduled to appear today on Thom Hartmann’s nationally syndicated radio show today at 1:20 PM EST.  The subject:  the state of the U.S. and world economies — and specifically, is either one as healthy as the conventional wisdom seems to believe?  All the info you need to listen live is at this link.  As usual, I’ll post a podcast of the interview as soon as one’s available.

In addition, on September 26, the Hong Kong-based ChinaUSFocus.com posted a column by the Cato Institute’s Ted Galen Carpenter quoting my views on President Trump’s North Korea policies.  Truth in advertising:  Ted is a long-time and very close friend.  He’s also one of the sharpest foreign policy analysts I know.  In addition, this website’s sponsor calls itself a non-profit organization, but given that Hong Kong is under China’s thumb in most important ways, this claim should be viewed extremely skeptically.  Moreover, this “non-profit” admits that it gets “support” from a prominent Shanghai-based think tank that (like other Chinese think tanks) is an arm of the Chinese government.

In this vein, however, it’s intriguing that the point made by me and by Ted (who agrees) is manifestly not one that toes the Beijing line on the crisis.

On September 10, a blog post from the Center for Immigration Studies spotlighted my findings on the economics of repeal of the former Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

And on September 9, my post on the subject was reprinted on the popular ZeroHedge.com economics and finance website.

Finally, as previously discussed, in a September 15 New Republic article, prominent journalist and author John B. Judis quoted my views on the worsening corruption of many already corrupt, corporate-funded American think tanks.  Unfortunately, as I also specified, I don’t believe that John’s treatment of this point met basic standards of fairness.

Keep checking in at RealityChek for news of media appearances and other developments!

Making News: New Lifezette China Trade Column, a New Podcast – & More!

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America-Trends.com, automotive, Cato Institute, China, Connecticut, Germany burden-sharing, Immigration, Larry Rifkin, Lifezette.com, Making News, Mexico, NATO, Norman Matloff, North Attantic Treaty Organization, Ted Galen Carpenter, The National Interest, Trade, Trump, Upon Closer Inspection, Waterbury, WATR-AM

I’m pleased to announce the appearance of my newest article published outside RealityChek – a piece for Lifezette.com on the U.S.-China trade conflict that could break out over the automotive sector. Click on the link to find out why autos are an unusual focus for an early Trump administration China trade offensive, but also why it could signal that the current, offshoring-dominated phase of U.S. trade policy could be coming to an end.

In addition, a podcast is now up of my recent interview with Larry Rifkin about what the Trump victory in November portends for U.S. trade policy. Larry is the former host of a long-running talk show on Waterbury, Connecticut’s WATR-AM and one of my favorite broadcast journalists. I was thrilled to find out that he’s come out of a short-lived retirement to start a new venture – America-Trends.com – that will give him much more freedom to explore his passions (like globalization!) in greater depth. I hope you’ll visit Larry’s site to investigate other samples of his work.

Yesterday, Lifezette quoted my views in this news report about a possible China-Mexico team-up on auto trade and manufacturing issues that looks focused on leaving America out in the cold.

On March 26, the Cato Institute’s Ted Galen Carpenter cited some research of mine in a National Interest post on the recent dust-up over whether Germany is contributing its rightful share to the defense of the West and specifically to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

And on March 25, one of America’s leading authorities on immigration, Norman Matloff, gave me and RealityChek a wonderful shout-out on his Upon Closer Inspection blog. Alert RealityChek readers will note that Norm’s blog is on my recommended list, and he really is a must-read on all immigration issues.

Also, keep checking back with RealityChek for news of recent and upcoming media appearances and other events.