(What’s Left of) Our Economy: What the Mini-Deal Says About Trump’s China Policy

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agriculture, business investment, censorship, China, decoupling, democracy, Democrats, election 2020, Elizabeth Warren, Hong Kong, Hong Kong protests, human rights, impeachment, Populism, Republicans, tariffs, Trade, trade talks, trade war, Trump, Uighurs, Ukraine, Ukraine Scandal, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The “Phase One” min-deal reached by the United States and China tamping down bilateral trade tensions for the moment, speaks volumes about the three major forces that are now driving President Trump’s China policy, and that will keep shaping it through the next U.S. election – though not always in consistent ways. They are:

>the President’s evident belief that his reelection hopes are being threatened mainly by revived impeachment threats but also by an economic slowdown that has unmistakably been influenced by the so-called trade war with China;

>his consequently increased need for political support from the establishment Republicans so numerous in Congress who have never boarded the Trump Tariff Train and who are worried about their own reelection chances next year; and

>Mr. Trump’s consistent (though generally unstated) belief that no matter how the formal trade talks proceed, America’s national security as well as economic interests require the U.S. economy to continue steadily decoupling from China’s.

The strength of the impeachment drive faced by the president is now indisputable. Some polls are even showing growing Republican support for not only impeachment by the House but removal by the Senate. Moreover, this political challenge comes at a time when the President’s strongest suit by far (at least according to polls) – his economic policy record – is looking somewhat weaker.

Few signs point to a recession breaking out by Election Day, much less during the preceding weeks or months. But growth has been slowing to levels that Mr. Trump himself has deemed unacceptable – in no small measure because they were the rates that prevailed for most of the Obama administration.

The tariff-heavy Trump trade policies hardly deserve all the blame. (See, e.g., this recent post.) But the failure of business investment to stay elevated following passage of major tax cuts for business is especially telling. It buttresses claims that both the President’s various sets of tariffs and the inconsistency with which they’ve been both threatened and applied have inhibited companies from approving big new expenditures on new factories and other facilities.

As a result, nothing that can reasonably be expected from Washington (in other words, ruling out a big infrastructure spending bill) is likelier to boost the economy more than a nerve-calming trade truce with China mainly featuring some Chinese market opening or re-opening (especially for agricultural products) in return for some U.S. tariff cuts, promises to refrain from new levies, or some some combination of such moves. At the least, such an agreement would in theory help growth maintain the momentum it has remaining.

A mini-deal along these lines would also please the Senate Republicans who might ultimately judge the President’s fate, and who generally have lagged far behind the GOP base in turning against pre-Trump China and broader trade policies. Moreover, as I’ve written, impeachment politics have greatly magnified their sway over Mr. Trump before. Despite his sky-high popularity with Republican voters, the President was heavily dependent on their political backing until this spring in order to neutralize any impeachment chances while his Russia ties were being investigated. That’s surely why his early policy initiatives were dominated by traditional Republican priorities, like tax cuts and repeal of former President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul, rather than by populist priorities like an infrastructure bill and the prompt imposition to tariffs.

Once the Special Counsel and other investigations flopped for various reasons, Mr. Trump had a much freer hand. But because of the emergence of “UkraineGate,” for now, those days are over. Probes growing out of those events are certain to last for months. Therefore, continued, much less higher, tariffs on China that could further drag on the economy and further frustrate the rural constituencies so crucial to the President and many other Republicans seem out of the question.

The President is so hamstrung that he’s been unable to marshal greater public support for staying the tariff course even though China is antagonizing American public opinion with its harsh suppression of the Hong Kong protests and the Muslim Uighur minority, and with its heavy handed efforts to extend its censorship practices to the National Basketball Association and other U.S. businesses. And don’t forget: These developments have placed China in a much weaker position, too.  

One reason that the President hasn’t been able to capitalize could well be his reluctance to declare publicly the functional equivalent of economic war, or his intent to decouple – presumably because any such statements would prompt the Chinese to crack down even further on American companies even doing business in the PRC that have nothing to do with job and production offshoring aimed at serving the U.S. market from super-cheap and highly subsidized Chinese facilities, as opposed to serving Chinese customers. And that reasoning has been entirely understandable.

Much less understandable – the President’s insistence that a trade war with China would be easy to win and inflict no economic harm on Americans, rather than choosing to challenge his compatriots to endure some sacrifices in order to beat back a mortal threat to their national security as well as prosperity. No wonder public support for so-called hard-line policies remotely strong enough to offset the opposition and reservations of the Congressional Republicans and most Democratic politicians is nowhere to be seen.

And don’t doubt that the Chinese fully understand. Whatever problems they initially experienced in figuring Mr. Trump out, they surely have concluded that they’re best advised to play the waiting game on the broader and deeper so-called structural issues dividing the two countries (e.g., intellectual property theft, technology extortion, massive subsidies) until the President is replaced by a Democrat who’s much easier to deal with.

Indeed, the evidence for this conclusion is abundant. China issues have played a small role in the Democratic primary campaign so far – even when it comes to long-time critics of pre-Trump trade policies like Democratic Socialist Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. One likely explanation: In recent years, Democratic voters and leaners have markedly flipped on those pre-Trump approaches, from deep dislike to general approval. This shift in public opinion (matched in part by a trade flip in the other direction among Republicans and leaners) may also warrant some Chinese confidence that even a President Warren might prove a more acceptable interlocutor than Mr. Trump.

Nonetheless, the formal talks are not the only track on which the Trump administration’s China trade policies are running. And the other track – featuring unilateral U.S. moves to restrict Chinese involvement in the American economy, and thereby foster decoupling – is much less controversial than the trade talks and especially the tariffs and tariff threats clearly required to spur any meaningful progress.

Highly revealing on this score (in terms of the importance attached in Washington to decoupling): Even as a high level Chinese delegation was jetting to Washington, the President approved actions against Chinese tech companies and Chinese officials that were justified by human rights concerns, but that in the first case clearly advanced decoupling. Just as revealing (in terms of possible Chinese acceptance of a more skeptical new bipartisan U.S. consensus on China policy): Despite the provocative timing, the Chinese didn’t turn around and head back home once they heard the announcement.

Reinforcing the new American consensus on decoupling has unmistakably been the growing realization by the U.S. corporate sector that its heavy bets on China have dangerously increased its vulnerability not only to the whims of American politics, but to a Chinese regime that’s turned out to be much less hospitable than expected. As a result, “Phase One” is not only a suspiciously convenient-looking term being used by the President to describe his new deal. It also looks suitable for describing where his administration’s overall China policy stands right now.     

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Im-Politic: Why Trump’s Ukraine China Ask Was So (Needlessly) Stupid

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China, collusion, conflict of interest, Democrats, election 2020, Hunter Biden, Im-Politic, impeachment, Ivanka Trump, Joe Biden, Obama, Pelosi, Swamp, Trump, Trump-Russia, Ukraine

It’s lucky for President Trump that being stupid per se isn’t (yet?) grounds for impeachment, because if it was, his recent call for Beijing’s aid to investigate the Biden family’s possibly corrupt activities in China would surely qualify. In fact, it’s hard to think of a presidential action in recent memory that fails on so many substantive and political grounds. And no, I don’t agree with Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio that the President was simply trying to troll the press.

Even so, it’s still possible that this episode could have a silver lining for Trump-World.

First, let me repeat my previous position that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with Mr. Trump probing Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China, Ukraine, or anywhere else, and whether they’ve improperly or illegally influenced U.S. policy toward those countries while his father was Barack Obama’s Vice President. In fact, since the current challenges and opportunities facing Americans nowadays from both countries have been strongly affected by policy decisions made during the Obama years, every American caring about the nation’s interests should want to know more about the Bidens’ goings on.

Nor should Joe Biden’s presidential bid this year shield him from scrutiny. In fact, as the President has pointed out in remarks on the Bidens and China, the former Vice President’s White House bid makes full disclosure absolutely essential. After all, as Mr. Trump has asked, “How would you like to have, as an example, Joe Biden negotiating the China deal if he took it over from me after the election? He would give them everything. He would give them everything. How would you like to have that?”

Can Americans be certain that a President Biden would sell his country down the river in China trade talks or on other fronts? Of course not. Can they be certain that Biden let China off the hook on various important interests, or urged doing so, since Hunter (successfully) began soliciting Chinese business in 2010? No on that score, too. But the uncertainties created and the undoubted, ongoing possibility of various payoffs are precisely why conflict of interest laws are on the books to begin with.

Moreover, conflicts of interest are especially important to investigate when it comes to countries like China and Ukraine. For there, governments and/or the oligarchs to which they’re closely connected call all the major economic and business shots.

Of course, claims abound that Mr. Trump is vulnerable to comparable (or even worse) charges. But regarding the Russia allegations, they’ve been big news since his 2016 Republican primary campaign began gathering real steam. In addition, after his inauguration, they were thoroughly examined by a Special Counsel probe that lasted nearly two years. And so far he’s still innocent until proven guilty in a legal sense. In addition, and revealingly, the current impeachment probe isn’t attempting to revive any of these charges.

Policy-wise, the Trump Russia record has been mixed, including support for measures (like strengthening the U.S. military presence in Eastern Europe right up against Russia’s borders, and strongly backing the American fossil fuels production revolution), that plainly aren’t pleasing Moscow.

It’s true that Trump daughter Ivanka operated a business that made shoes and apparel in China and imported these wares into the United States. I’d joined the ranks of those who believed those ties should have been severed at least once Mr. Trump became the Republican nominee. But Ivanka Trump has now shut down her China business. And can anyone seriously believe that in return for whatever copyrights she received from Beijing while her father was in office, that the President has taken it easy with China? After tariffs on literally hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese products that have deeply wounded China’s economy? And a Taiwan policy that has poked Beijing in the eye on an issue of deep importance to China’s leaders and many of its people?

By contrast, it’s entirely legitimate – and important – to point out that the Obama-Biden record on both China trade and security issues was an eight-year exercise in coddling Beijing.

And both leaders’ records get to much of the reason why the President’s ask to Beijing was so boneheaded. Whether the Bidens are playing dirty or not, how can it help but legitimately expose Mr. Trump to the same kinds of conflict-of-interest charges he’s leveling against Biden? Indeed, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is now making them. Moreover, it’s not as if China has anything like an impartial, rule-of-law-dominated criminal justice system. And let’s not forget the so-called political optics of his gambit at precisely the time when Beijing is violently repressing democratic protests in Hong Kong. “Appalling” isn’t too strong an adjective.

Just as bad, the President’s ask undercuts one of his most effective campaign themes – that for decades, his predecessors and their cronies had conspired with foreign governments like China’s to shaft everyday Americans on trade issues in particular. Just think back to his Inaugural Address. So now the same Chinese regime that’s conspired with Swamp-ers from both parties is supposed to help a President damage someone he’s labeled (with good reason) as a prime member of that corrupt complex?

The only justification I can think of for the China ask – at least politically – is the following (and don’t think I’ve got a lot of faith in this speculation): Now that Beijing has brushed off the President, he could turn around and contend that the Chinese are helping the Bidens cover up. Substantively – and whether this objective is being sought intentionally or not – the China ask could result in Mr. Trump taking a harder line on the trade talks.

More credibly, and encouraging in my eyes given my doubt that any verifiable China trade deal is possible: Even had Beijing complied, the President could come under enough Pelosi-like pressure to make impossible the kind of cosmetic deal that in principle could have solved some big potential China-related political problems heading into the election (i.e., with farmers angered at losing a big export market, or consumers outraged at tariff-induced higher prices).

The problem is that constructing these kinds of tortuous scenarios should be completely unnecessary, because, as I’ve stated,

>the Bidens’ conduct has been so questionable;

>the China-related case against them looks so compelling:

>Mr. Trump surely can get enough damning foreign government information about their doings from less substantively and politically controversial sources like Australia and, yes, Ukraine (to which the Democrats seem strongly devoted); and

>consumer and farmer complaints aside, the Democrats will have a devil of a time this coming election year making political hay by accusing the President of being too tough on China.

So the China ask looks an awful lot like another damaging and completely unforced Trump error. Nonetheless, the next time such a blunder seals his political fate will be the first. And even though my above scenario is pretty far-fetched, who can still confidently say that the President’s string of good luck has finally run out?

Im-Politic: Why Former Ukraine Envoy Kurt Volker Really Matters

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America First, foreign policy establishment, globalism, Hunter Biden, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, John McCain, Kurt Volker, Russia, Trump, Ukraine, Ukraine Scandal, Vladimir Putin

Kurt Volker, who just resigned as special U.S. envoy to Ukraine, is testifying in closed session to Congress today, presumably to shed light on charges that President Trump improperly (and maybe impeach-ably) asked that country’s leader to investigate possible corruption by Democratic Presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

As much as I’d like to know what Volker says on this score, I worry that neither the lawmakers questioning him nor America’s supposedly watchdog Mainstream Media will examine an issue that’s at least as important: Why on earth did the Trump administration hire Volker in the first place? Because the likeliest answer will provide more evidence about an immense flaw in Mr. Trump’s foreign policy, and a consequent, neglected danger to American democracy, that shows no sign of ending any time soon.

President Trump, after all, campaigned promising to disrupt and transform American foreign policy. Out would be what he condemned as a globalist strategy that inevitably led to Forever Wars in places like the Middle East, and benefited only the country’s elites. In would be an “America First” approach he claimed would serve the entire nation’s interests.

As I’ve explained, the President’s foreign policy record in office has been mixed, but America First elements have definitely been introduced. And one of the biggest examples is policy toward Russia – whether you believe Mr. Trump has been motivated by a conspiracy with Russia strongman Vladimir Putin to fix the 2016 election, or by a sincere determination to deal realistically with a major (and nuclear-armed) military power.

And one of the biggest pre-Trump U.S.-Russia sticking points had been Ukraine – whose independence (including the freedom to tilt toward the West if it wishes) globalist U.S. Presidents have tried to maintain, against Moscow’s designs, but which Russia believes belongs squarely within its sphere of influence.

I’ve previously argued against antagonizing Russia over Ukraine because the latter’s fate was never viewed as a vital U.S. interest even during the Cold War. The idea that it’s become more important now makes no sense at all from an American standpoint. Worse, the United States plainly lacks anything close to the military capability to help Ukraine decisively (just look at a map if you don’t already understand why). So policies like arming the country to the hilt, and encouraging the idea that it can resist Russian hegemony militarily, look suspiciously like virtue-signaling exercises to “fight to the last Ukrainian.” Vastly preferable for all concerned, as I see it, is something like the deal I first outlined here.

The President has said little explicitly on the subject, but his reluctance as early as the 2016 campaign to go all-in on Ukraine arms aid indicates he’s open to such thinking (again, whatever his motives).

Which is why the Kurt Volker appointment was so bizarre. For Volker has long supported a hard-line anti-Russia approach to Ukraine. In fact, he was such a strong backer of military aid (and a “military solution” to the ongoing crisis) that he viewed former President Barack Obama’s Ukraine policy as needlessly spineless. Indeed, Volker is a protege of the late Arizona Republican Senator John McCain – one of the most prominent of the Ukraine-Russia hawks, and a leading Trump critic on foreign policy and many other issues – and in 2012 became head of a new institute created at Arizona State University to promote such ideas. (That’s why the school’s student newspaper broke the story of his resignation from the Trump administration late last month.)

Neither Volker’s views nor his affiliation with McCain is the slightest bit improper. (His work for defense contractors who would profit handsomely from Ukraine arms sales? That’s another matter altogether.) What is downright weird – and troubling for two reasons – is Volker’s decision to take a job with Mr. Trump’s State Department.

The first reason has to do with whose agenda Volker was serving – the elected Mr. Trump’s, or the globalist foreign policy establishment in which he worked for three decades. Given all the evidence that’s emerged throughout the Trump administration of bureaucrats and even Trump appointees committing acts of “resistance”. (See here for numerous examples, along with this unprecedentedly anonymous New York Times op-ed.) Given Volker’s ties to McCain, and given the way the so-called Ukraine scandal has so suddenly become a threat to Mr. Trump’s presidency, it’s vital to know whether Volker was one of these subversives.

If anything, the second reason is more depressing. For Volker’s appointment in the first place once again reveals a chronic weakness of the Trump administration and “Trump-ism” that will take many years to address even if the President and his supporters started right now: Mr. Trump entered office well before he or like-minded individuals paid any attention to the task of developing a group of skilled policymakers and analysts capable of staffing an administration both competently and loyally. As a result, the President had no choice but to fill any number of key posts with figures who, even when Republican and/or conservative, were far from America Firsters.

Not that this situation excuses the resistance that so many of these officials have mounted. But until those with Trump-ian leanings and the needed resources start creating the institutions needed to give these ideas scale and staying power, conservative nationalism, or nationalist populism, or whatever you want to call it, may wind up as a flash in the pan. Moreover, even if its adherents can keep the presidency, the clandestine bureaucratic revolt that’s been waged for three years, with all its dangers to accountable, democratic government, is only likely to worsen. And you should worry about that even if you’re a Never Trump-er.

Im-Politic: Why the Impeachment Case Isn’t Even Remotely Serious Yet

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collusion, Deep State, Democrats, foreign aid, House of Representatives, Hunter Biden, Im-Politic, impeachment, Joe Biden, military aid, Mueller investigation, Nancy Pelosi, Trump, Trump-Russia, Ukraine, Viktor Shokin, Volodymyr Zelensky

OK, it’s not a verifiably un-doctored recording (apparently, they’re never available) – even though nearly all the Democratic members of the House of Representatives and many of the party’s presidential candidates view it as more than enough to warrant President Trump’s impeachment. (Removal from office? We’ve heard much less on that related but separate matter.)

All the same, the record of President Trump’s July 25 phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, sure doesn’t look like a Nixonian smoking gun to me – and yes, in the interests of full disclosure, I strongly support many of Mr. Trump’s policies.

The allegations that led the President to release this document – which was apparently prepared via the same procedures normally used for all such confidential conversations – haven’t always been made with exactly surgical precision. So in this vein, the most useful version may come from an opinion article written for the Washington Post by seven freshman Democratic House Members.

Because of the prior national security experience all of them boast, and their reputations for moderation, the concerns they expressed yesterday reportedly imbued the push for impeachment with enough momentum to spur House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to authorize the launch of an “official impeachment inquiry” – an unusual procedure that seems to have no bearing on the various ways that this body has initiated impeachment proceedings in the past, and that certainly doesn’t guarantee the holding of the kind of full House vote needed to impeach and move to a Senate trial to determine removal.

Here’s what those seven first-term Democrats wrote:

“The president of the United States may have used his position to pressure a foreign country into investigating a political opponent, and he sought to use U.S. taxpayer dollars as leverage to do it. He allegedly sought to use the very security assistance dollars appropriated by Congress to create stability in the world, to help root out corruption and to protect our national security interests, for his own personal gain.”

But the way I read it, nothing in this version of the conversation does much to support either charge. Some of the key passages seem to be the following:

“President Zelenskyy: … I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost. ready to buy more Javelins [portable anti-tank missiles] from the United· States for defense purposes.

“The President [Trump]: I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it. There-are a lot. of things that went on, the whole situation . I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I .would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, ·it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.”

Despite the non-coercive language, President Trump clearly established a quid pro quo involving U.S. military aid and Ukrainian cooperation on an investigation having to do with American politics. For me, the key is his use of the word “though” in his first sentence. (Not that Mr. Trump will win any articulateness awards.)

But where is the evidence that the quid pro quo involves a simple “political opponent,” as the seven House Democrats insist? (Obviously, it’s former Vice President and current Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden.) Everything in this passage, from his mention of “Crowdstrike” to the “nonsense” that “ended with a very poor performance” by Robert Mueller has to do with:

>the accusations (which that former Special Counsel’s investigation’s findings determined were untrue) that Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with the Russian government to ensure his election at the expense of Democratic rival Hillary Clinton; and

>the counter-accusation that those Russia collusion charges were manufactured by Mr. Trump’s opponents in the FBI, the intelligence community, elsewhere in the so-called Deep State, and the Obama administration. (This possibility is currently being investigated by the Trump Justice Department.)

That counter-accusation is especially important here. If anything like it is true, it’s imperative for the health of American democracy that it be discovered. And in turn, if a foreign government like Ukraine’s can shed light on the facts, why wouldn’t anyone except the guilty and their allies want Washington to use foreign policy leverage to achieve that result – which would unmistakably serve important U.S. national interests.

Of course, Biden’s name did appear in the five-page document – about a page after the above passages – in this statement from Mr. Trump:

“The other thing, There’s a lot talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.”

These sentences have to do with a Ukrainian probe of the ties between Biden’s son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company – and Biden’s public boast in 2018 that, as Vice President, in 2016, he secured the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor who had vowed to investigate the company in question by threatening to withhold a billion-dollar American loan package if that official, Viktor Shokin, stayed in office.

His supporters contend that the quid pro quo Biden offered differed fundamentally from the Biden quid pro quo that Mr. Trump seems to have presented in his July phone call because Biden was carrying out firmly established U.S. government policy in order to serve the country’s national interests while President Trump’s interests were purely selfish and political.

All of which could be true. Except the 2016 date of the Biden episode should warn against imputing purely or even mainly non-political motives to his actions. In this vein, revelations during a presidential election year that Biden’s son was involved in shady or even criminal foreign doings certainly wouldn’t help the fortunes of the incumbent administration’s political party – so the former Vice President’s motivations might have been exclusively political.

Some considerations on this score do work in Biden’s favor, though – mainly evidence that Western European governments and the International Monetary Fund, all of which were complaining that Ukrainian corruption was undercutting their own aid programs, also sought Shokin’s firing. But illicit activity in Ukraine has been so pervasive that these non-American actors might have their own embarrassments to hide.

Just as important: If the Vice President of a previous administration, or any of his colleagues, was manipulating American foreign policy to cover up the activities of the Veep’s son, isn’t something that urgently requires examination from a national interest standpoint? Wouldn’t this be the case whether that former Vice President was currently running for office or not? In fact, wouldn’t that especially be the case if that former Vice President was running for office?

To be sure, the seven freshman Democrats also appear to be accusing President Trump of pressuring Ukraine to help dig up dirt on the Bidens (again, for solely political reasons) by freezing the disbursement of a previously approved military assistance package shortly before his phone call with Zelensky. 

Mr. Trump has admitted doing so, and as has been pointed out, he’s offered different explanations for this decision (which was overturned earlier this month). I agree that sounds fishy. But the reasons themselves (that other U.S. allies were shirking their obligations to help Ukraine, and that continuing Ukrainian corruption could prevent many of the funds from being spent effectively) are anything but ludicrous.

Also interesting:  More than three weeks before the aid freeze was first revealed by the Washington Post – and connected with the Zelensky phone call – ABC News reported that the administration was sitting on the Ukraine military assistance but not as part of any campaign to undermine Biden. Instead, the delay stemmed from a broad debate between Trump administration supporters of foreign aid generally and colleagues who were highly critical. The main reported complaints from Democrats had nothing to do with Biden, either. They centered on the President’s supposedly excessive coziness with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

And most interesting of all:  Mr. Trump never brought up the frozen aid in his phone conversation with Zelensky. If the seven freshman Democrats are right and the President had blocked spending the funds “for his own personal gain,” why didn’t he even signal this blackmail attempt to its target?        

Ongoing and broadening investigations of all these controversies by Congressional committees and by the Justice Department could well provide definitive answers to all the above questions, and even produce more and/or worse bombshells. Indeed, maybe the phone call document itself has been doctored. But when it comes to impeachment, or even besmirching the Trump record, that’s exactly what should be the main point now. There haven’t been such answers or bombshells yet. And until some start appearing, talking up impeachment will continue looking  like a thoroughly reckless course of action – and one with plenty of boomerang potential.

Im-Politic: The Washington Post Goes All Fake News on Trump, Biden, and the UN

Tags

Anne Gearan, Ashley Parker, Biden, election 2020, General Assembly, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, Mainstream Media, Philip Rucker, Trump, Ukraine, UN, United Nations, Washington Post

On Sunday, I wrote about an Associated Press article dealing extensively with manufacturing that I said might not have been Fake News, but sure came close. Today, the Washington Post published an article about President Trump’s activities at the UN General Assembly meeting in New York City that unquestionably deserves that label.

The theme of the article was made clear by the headline: “Trump uses U.N. meeting to wage domestic political attack on Biden.” Sounds pretty disgraceful, right? I mean, after all, every September the world’s leaders gather for this event, and address weighty issues ranging from threats to peace to climate change (a big focus this year). And here comes this notoriously egomaniacal and selfish boor of an Oval Office occupant determined to ignore his responsibilities as steward of the national interest and global leader – and the tradition of domestic politics stopping at the water’s edge. Instead, all he cared about was using this solemn conclave to slime former Vice President Joe Biden, a likely opponent during the next presidential election campaign.

As often not the case these days, moreover, the article itself faithfully reflected the header. According to authors Anne Gearan, Philip Rucker, and Ashley Parker, the President “turned” the General Assembly, “where foreign leaders converged to confront climate change and other global pandemics, into the backdrop for an assault on a domestic political opponent.”

They continued: “Trump used his meetings with heads of state to flay Biden, celebrate his personal attorney’s altercations and tend to his media feuds.”

For good measure, they wrote that Mr. Trump “seemed to revel in the opportunity to kick up dust around Biden, who has led Trump in virtually every public poll for several months.”

In other words, could the President be more of a reckless lout?

Readers were also told that participants in the global gathering were “baffled by the sudden interjection of a complex Trump scandal that they found mystifying.” And the authors dutifully quoted (globalist) “experts” to validate their emphasis on the President’s allegedly alarming weirdness:

“‘It puts foreign leaders in a difficult if not impossible position,’ said Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. ‘How do you manage this complicated person who doesn’t play the game by the rules, and how do you somehow protect this important relationship? Everybody’s a bit wary.’

“Victoria Holt, managing director at the Henry L. Stimson Center, said the arcane details of the Ukraine story and its overlap with U.S. politics are largely beside the point for other leaders here. ‘I’m sure they are scratching their heads,” she said. “The United States is supposed to be leading on major issues” such as climate change.’”

Except a glancing reference in its paragraph completely destroyed the alarming premise of the article. As the authors briefly noted, the controversy over Mr. Trump’s own and the Biden family’s dealings with political leaders and oligarchs from Ukraine “hung over Trump’s first day at the annual U.N. meeting, beginning with a volley of shouted questions from journalists….”

Another unintentionally revealing observation: “Trump stayed away from the Ukraine topic in his only major prepared remarks of the day….”

That is, it wasn’t Mr. Trump who injected domestic politics into this year’s General Assembly and its work. It was journalists like the Post reporters. (Unless you attach lots of importance to the fact that the President tweeted about the subject beforehand – which the Post reporters clearly didn’t, since they devoted no other passages to it.) Talk about blaming the victim.

The Washington Post, of course, is the newspaper that throughout the Trump administration has been sanctimoniously warning that “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” As so often the case, though, it’s ignored how shamefully biased reporting by democracy’s supposedly impartial watchdogs represent an equally dangerous threat.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: What’s Really Wrong with Trump’s NATO Policies

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alliances, allies, America First, Crimea, Eastern Europe, Korea, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear deterrence, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Soviet Union, The National Interest, tripwires, Trump, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

As this year’s summit of the leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) begins, it’s nothing less than vital for Americans to understand two points about President Trump’s approach to the Atlantic alliance:

First, the President’s globalist critics are right in pointing out that Mr. Trump is thoroughly, and even dangerously, mishandling U.S. relations with NATO.

Second, these critics completely misunderstand why the President is off-base.

The heart of the globalist case against Trump-ian NATO policies goes generally like this: Mr. Trump drastically underestimates the contribution made by the alliance to U.S. national security interests not only in Europe but around the world. Especially worrisome are his threats to reduce America’s military presence in Europe if other NATO members don’t boost their defense budgets to agreed on levels, and the chance that he could strike some kind of a deal with Russian leader Vladimir Putin at their upcoming meeting that would in some way accept Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and designs on Ukraine. The result would be the kind of appeasement that could encourage more Russian aggression against former satellites of the old Soviet Union that are NATO members today, and against the Baltic states, other new NATO members that were part of the Soviet Union proper after being taken over in 1940.  

Yet this critique fundamentally misreads the Trump NATO strategy – at least as it stands this week. Many of the latest alarm bells were set off by a Washington Post report describing a Pentagon investigation of “the cost and impact of a large-scale withdrawal or transfer of American troops stationed in Germany” – where most U.S. forces in Europe are deployed.

Although semi-denied by the Defense Department, the alleged finding seemed consistent with Mr. Trump’s suggestions that if the NATO allies don’t pick up more of the alliance’s military spending burden, America’s commitment to their defense might weaken. (Interestingly, a similar statement was made earlier this year by Defense Secretary James Mattis, who is generally considered a national security traditionalist who values America’s alliances much more than the President).

But widely overlooked in the latest trans-Atlantic tumult are Mr. Trump’s actions – which should speak louder than words. And many of them were nicely summed up in this Associated Press article:

“Notwithstanding Trump’s grumbles about America shouldering the defense burden of Europe, his administration plans to boost spending to support it.

“In the aftermath of Russia’s annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine in 2014 and its subsequent military incursion into eastern Ukraine, the Pentagon ramped up joint exercises in eastern and central Europe and spent billions on what it calls the European Deterrence Initiative aimed at Russia. After spending $3.4 billion on that initiative last year, the Trump administration has proposed boosting it to $6.5 billion in the 2019 budget year.”

It’s bad enough that a U.S. decision to increase the American military footprint in Europe will completely kneecap the Trump administration’s efforts to push more allied military spending by convincing the allies that continued free-riding and foot-dragging will carry no cost. Far worse is the focus of this new U.S. spending on beefing up the American/NATO presence in Poland and the other new alliance members in Eastern Europe. Indeed, that article about studying cutting American forces in Germany reported that one option being considered was moving some – presumably permanently – to Poland, which borders Russia.

The Poles and the other countries once under the Soviet thumb are understandably heartened by these possible moves. Troublingly, however, this apparent Trump gambit indicates that he’s just as ignorant about the paramount reason for overhauling U.S. NATO strategy as his globalist critics: Because of the alliance’s expansion to cover so many countries so close to Russia, because Moscow has recently been responding so sharply, and because NATO legally requires the United States and all other allies to rally to the defense of any NATO member under attack, the chances have risen that America could become embroiled in a war with a nuclear-armed Russia.

And worse still, the more American units are stationed in Europe, and the more permanent these deployments (so far, they’re periodically rotated in and out), the greater the odds that such a conflict will go nuclear – because defending Russia’s neighbors with conventional forces alone will prove impossible, and because the American forces will become a tripwire whose defeat or impending defeat would generate heavy pressure on any U.S. President to respond with a nuclear strike that would risk Russian retaliation.

A resulting, and tragic, irony: The security of Germany and the countries of Western Europe have for decades been considered vital American interests, primarily because their industrial and technological strength and potential could dramatically affect the balance of global power. The security of the countries to the East have never been considered vital American interests, partly because they have never remotely possessed these capabilities or potential, and partly because geography will always make them fatally vulnerable to Soviet or Russian ambitions.

So the possibly emerging Trump position amounts to assuming greater risks (including of nuclear attack on the American homeland) for assets of much less value.

As I’ve written, the continuation of status quo American policies on the Korean Peninsula poses similar nuclear risks to protect an ally – South Korea – that’s certainly impressive economically but hardly decisive to U.S. safety or prosperity.

I’m still firmly on board with President Trump’s declared intention of replacing longtime globalist foreign policies with an America First approach. But like everything else in life, this transformation can be carried out badly and well. Without a major course change, Mr. Trump’s policies could easily wind up leaving the nation with the worst of both international strategies.

P.S. If you’re interested in seeing how I would deal with the above dilemmas, check out my new article in The National Interest – on what a genuine America First foreign policy would look like, and why it would be far better than its predecessor, or the strange hybrid the Trump administration has created to date.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: North Korea, China, & the (Inevitable) Limits of Diplomacy

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agriculture, China, commodities, diplomacy, energy, Iran, Kim Jong Un, LIbya, Made in China 2025, manufacturing, Muammar el-Qaddafi, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Saddam Hussein, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, tariffs, technology, Trade, trade deficit, tripwire, Trump, Ukraine

Diplomacy has sure taken a beating these last few days. And revealingly, that looks like a good thing.

Let me explain: I have no problem whatever with countries trying to resolve their differences peacefully, through dialogue and compromise. But in the nuclear age, and especially after America’s Vietnam debacle, this age-old concept has turned into a foreign policy magic bullet in the United States – including among the nation’s bipartisan globalist establishment. So the collapse (for now) of plans for a summit between President Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, and the failure so far of the President to make any headway in curbing China’s predatory trade practices, could be welcome developments. For these developments could remind Americans of diplomacy’s limits in promoting U.S. national interests (the overriding priority of the nation’s foreign policy), and how even on crucial issues of war and peace, it can be completely pointless and even dangerously distracting.

On North Korea, there have always been strong grounds for skepticism that negotiations could achieve America’s main objective – the complete elimination of Kim Jong Un’s nuclear weapons. It’s true that Kim has appeared more interested in economic reform than his father or grandfather – who preceded him in power. Therefore, in principle, he would be more responsive to economic carrots and sticks. On the one hand, he might be amenable to surrendering his arsenal in exchange for foreign investment and aid (along with security-related concessions from the United States like formal recognition of his regime, a peace treaty ending the decades-long state of war between Pyongyang and its enemies). On the other hand, he might be more concerned about the impact of the sanctions that President Trump has both broadened and intensified.

Yet it was always difficult to believe that Kim would prize any of these considerations above his regime’s defense against overseas threats, and for these purposes, nuclear weapons are hard to beat. As widely noted, he’s surely been impressed by the gruesome fates of fellow autocrats who gave up their nuclear hopes (Libya’s Muammar el-Qaddafi) or who hadn’t the chance to develop these weapons (Iran’s Saddam Hussein).

Further, Kim also is no doubt aware of a third recent example of a country paying heavily for signing away its nuclear weapon status: Ukraine. In 1994, that nation agreed to dismantle the large nuclear force stationed on its soil when it was part of the Soviet Union, and left there after the USSR’s demise. In return, it received security promises from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia that its territorial integrity would be respected. A quarter century later, Moscow has seized effective control over much of the country’s eastern half.

Moreover, if a Trump-Kim summit and follow-on negotiations resulted in a compromise that left the North with some kind of nuclear arsenal, this “victory” could eventually become disastrous for America and its homeland. For there would be no guarantee that Kim would have truly abandoned his family’s goal of dominating the Korean peninsula through nuclear-aided conquest or intimidation of the South. And as long as large U.S. ground forces remained in South Korea, the outbreak of war would still threaten to draw Washington into a conflict with a foe capable of hitting its territory with nuclear warheads.

That still-live prospect should be an awfully powerful reason for switching to a strategy I’ve long advocated – ditching diplomacy, withdrawing the U.S. troops in South Korea that expose the United States to nuclear danger, and permitting North Korea’s neighbors to handle Kim and his nuclear ambitions any way they wish.

Trade diplomacy with China doesn’t threaten to turn an American city into a glowing ruin. But it’s all too likely to result in open-ended talks that do as little to combat the economic and security threats created by Beijing’s trade predation as previous negotiations involving President Trump’s predecessors. As I’ve recently written, even if his administration could come up with a coherent set of priorities, adequately verifying any Chinese compliance with U.S. positions is a pipe dream.

But this latest American attempt at trade diplomacy faces two other seemingly insuperable obstacles. First, the President’s objective of reducing the U.S.’ massive bilateral trade deficit with China appears to neglect the makeup of this deficit – which matters more than its size. Specifically, his proposals to date envision narrowing the trade gap mainly by boosting American exports of farm products and energy to China.

Both sectors of the U.S. economy are obviously important. But neither can become a major driver of sustainable American prosperity, because they’re essentially involved in producing commodities – which have never added nearly as much value to national economy as manufactures. That’s why developing countries invariably view a transition from agriculture to industry as the key to their hopes for rising living standards, and why even wealthy energy producers like Saudi Arabia have resolved to focus more on manufacturing and other higher value activities.

And P.S. – that’s no doubt why the Chinese clearly consider this American demand the most appealing on the Trump agenda.

As for the intertwined threats of continued and rampant Chinese intellectual property theft, and of China’s master plan to lead the world in a wide array of “industries of the future” (the Made in China 2025 program), U.S. tariffs on the goods and services these policies already enable Beijing to produce and export could well deal its ambitions a major blow. And clearly, that’s the Trump administration’s aim.

But if so, why negotiate over these matters? The United States has made reasonably clear what it wants China to do. And it’s declared its intent to retaliate with trade curbs if China balks. If the Trump administration is serious about this approach, and confident that it will succeed, what is there left to talk about? Either the Chinese accede (in which case, as I wrote this week, towering verification challenges would remain), or they dig in their heels and the tariffs follow.

Further talks, unless they’re simply aimed at clarifying American positions, can only muddy the waters and encourage endless Chinese foot-dragging – including regularly throwing Washington a few crumbs of market share – by telegraphing a Trump reluctance to pull the trigger. All the while, the Chinese tech prowess ostensibly alarming Americans across the political spectrum will keep growing.

And as with the case of the Korean crisis, a far better American approach would be disengagement – i.e., a series of measures aimed at reversing the disastrously wrongheaded twenty-year U.S. effort to more closely link the nation’s fate to a country with which mutually beneficial commerce was never possible. The Trump administration has already taken some important steps in this direction. Chiefly, it has greatly tightened restrictions on Chinese takeovers of economic assets in the United States. And the President’s threatened tariffs have induced some factories to move from China to the United States. But as previously indicated, the administration also seems bent on helping U.S. companies invest more in the Chinese economy, which can only further widen the trade deficit and hand China more cutting edge American technology. And it’s given no hint of a comprehensive strategy to bring manufacturing supply chains now concentrated in China back to the United States.

The latter task, in particular, will entail a long-term effort – not exactly the American governing system’s strong suit these days. And success will also depend on thoroughgoing domestic policy reform. (See this article for one sensible list.) But compared with the apparent belief that, over any policy-relevant time frame, China’s will become an economy compatible with America’s, it’s the height of realism.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Still on Globalist Auto-Pilot

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Bloomberg.com, China, foreign policy establishment, globalism, internationalism, Iran, Islamic terrorism, Israel, Middle East, Noah Feldman, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Rex Tillerson, Russia, Trump, Trump administration, Ukraine

Clearly, the holiday week between Christmas and New Year’s has brought Americans no respite from transparently witless foreign policy-related Trump-bashing by the Mainstream Media. Hot on the heels of The New York Times‘ classic of fake history spotlighted yesterday in RealityChek came this Bloomberg.com piece accusing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (and by extension the entire Trump administration) with two of the worst diplomatic sins imaginable – not recognizing instances where the United States lacks the leverage to achieve its goals, and lacking a strategy to solve this problem.

But Noah Feldman’s December 28 column at least boasted one (unintended) virtue: If the president and his top aides read it intelligently, they’ll realize that in many cases, they’re making an even more fundamental, but eminently correctable, mistake. Just like Feldman – and the internationalist/globalist (choose your adjective) foreign policy establishment he’s part of – they keep failing to ask first-order and even second-order questions about America’s role in the world. And strangely, these are exactly the kinds of questions that President Trump often asked when he was candidate Trump.

Feldman, an international law professor at Harvard, correctly observes that the Trump administration has taken on the tasks of ending the North Korean nuclear weapons program, pressuring China to help out in a significant way, persuading Russia to back off in some unspecified way from its campaign to control neighboring Ukraine, weakening Iran’s ability to boost its influence throughout the Middle East, and pushing Pakistan to stop supporting Islamic radicals in the region.

The author also mentions that “Neither [Tillerson] nor Trump is responsible for limits to U.S. leverage” – though maybe he could have made this crucial point before the next-to-last sentence in his article?.

But like the Trump administration, Feldman never bothers to ask exactly why the United States needs to seek these objectives (the first-order question) or whether, if they are essential or desirable, the standard forms of international engagement chosen by the Trump administration (and all of its predecessors as long as they were faced with these issues) are the best responses.

Ukraine policy is the most glaring example of neglecting first-order questions. Whatever you think of Russian revanchism or Putin, it’s inexcusable to overlook that American leaders have never considered Ukraine’s independence to be anything close to a vital or even important interest for two very good reasons. First, it was actually part of the old Soviet Union from 1924 until the end of the Cold War, with absolutely no impact on U.S. security, independence, or welfare. Second, it is located so close to Russia, and so far from the United States, that there is absolutely no prospect that American or NATO military actions could defend or liberate it without resorting to the (possibly suicidal) use of nuclear weapons.

So however tragic that country’s fate has been, the only sane conclusion possible from the standpoint of U.S. interests is that the best Ukraine policy is no Ukraine policy at all. And given this structural American inability to do Ukraine much good, steps like the recent Trump administration decision to supply defensive weapons to the Ukrainians sound like suspiciously like an American decision to fight to the last Ukrainian.

The other three foreign policy challenges obviously can’t be ignored. But the common assumption – especially in the ranks of the country’s bipartisan foreign policy establishment – that the answer involves some mixture of more military pressure or smarter diplomacy (more foreign aid is usually included as well, though it hasn’t figured very prominently in the North Korea, Iran, or Pakistan debates) urgently needs reexamination.

For as I’ve often written, in many cases, Americans could well find it much less dangerous, much cheaper, and much more effective to capitalize on the country’s matchless combination of military strength and geographic isolation to neutralize these particular threats.

To summarize briefly, if Washington pulls U.S. troops out of South Korea, it would eliminate any rational need for North Korea to strike U.S. territory with nuclear weapons (which is all too likely to result from a new Korean war that engulfs those units), and with its own massive nuclear forces, the United States could credibly threaten to obliterate the North if it sent its missiles against America for any other reason. North Korea’s nuclear weapons would still be a problem for its immediate neighbors. But all those countries (including South Korea) are more than powerful and wealthy enough to deal successfully with the North on their own and even singly.

Re Middle Eastern threats, the United States should focus much more on securing its own borders to keep terrorists and much less on defeating them on foreign battlefields – let alone on “fighting their ideology” by encouraging economic development and democracy. The region’s massive dysfunction on every conceivable level (including the cultural) will keep practically guaranteeing that new jihadist or other extremist forces will replace any that are crushed militarily, and that reform efforts will go exactly nowhere.

Further, by now it should be clear to any fair-minded person that the United States has more than enough energy to marginalize the power of Middle East oil producers over its economy and the world economy. And if you don’t like fossil fuels, let’s work harder to boost the use of alternatives. Finally, as with North Korea, America’s own deterrent is the best counter to any Iranian nuclear threat to the U.S. territory.  (And for those concerned with Israel’s security, the Jewish state of course has its own nuclear capabilities.)

The point here is not that any of these more domestic focused substitute strategies will be easy to put into effect or accelerate. The point is that they will be far easier to put into effect or accelerate than their more traditional counterparts, principally because America’s government, society, business community etc will have much more control over these measures than over events abroad.

During this first year of the Trump administration, no one should be the slightest bit surprised that establishmentarians like Feldman (and The New York Times‘ Landler) can’t even conceive that America’s foreign policy is stuck in a box, much less that it’s increasingly and dangerously obsolete. But President Trump ran in large measure as a foreign policy disrupter, and on many critical issues displayed impressive iconoclastic instincts. Why he hasn’t acted on more of them is one of the biggest mysteries of his presidencies so far. It could also be one of his biggest regrets.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Laughable Mainstream Media Ignorance on U.S. China Policy

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Angela Merkel, China, George W. Bush, H.R. McMaster, international order, Mainstream Media, Mark Landler, North Korea, Ooffshoring Lobby, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, responsible stakeholder, Robert Zoellick, The New York Times, Trump, Ukraine

Bad as it was, the worst aspect of Mark Landler’s New York Times piece yesterday about the first year of President Trump’s foreign policy wasn’t his contention that “liberal, rules-based international order” is a reasonable way to describe the international scene in recent memory. I mean, anyone seen much order out there lately? Or any country paying much attention to rules?

Nor was it endorsement of the conviction held by German Chancellor Angela Merkel – and much of the U.S. foreign policy establishment – that Ukraine is “a vital part of the trans-Atlantic relationship.” That’ll come as news to anyone remotely familiar with the history of either the United States or Western Europe from 1924 to 1989 – when the region was a part of the Soviet Union and its admittedly tragic fate had absolutely no discernible impact on any member of the Atlantic alliance whatever.

Instead, the worst aspect of Landler’s thinly disguised paean to the globalist approach to international affairs was his choice of former President George W. Bush’s top trade negotiator, Robert Zoellick as an authority on dealing with China.

Actually, I agree with Zoellick (though for somewhat different reasons) that Mr. Trump has made a major mistake in basing America’s China trade policy on Beijing’s efforts to help resolve the North Korea nuclear weapons crisis peacefully (and on acceptable terms of course). This week, even the president may have acknowledged this, as he’s tweeted criticism of China based on reports that Beijing has been violating UN sanctions by continuing to sell crude oil to the Kim Jong Un regime.

But the choice of Zoellick to make this accusation is laughably ignorant. Of course, it was the entire foreign policy establishment – as well as the offshoring-happy multinational corporations that finance so much of it – that made the historically foolish and dangerous mistake of assuming that indiscriminately expanding the world’s trade and other commercial ties with China would turn the People’s Republic into a country fundamentally easier to deal with on all fronts, and promote economic and political reform of its communist system.

Zoellick, however, took this naivete to a whole ‘nother level. For he was the American leader who, in 2005, declared that the time was ripe to turn China into a “responsible stakeholder” in the “international system.” The then-U.S. Trade Representative acknowledged that China had a long way to go reach this objective.

But this high profile address (to a quintessential Offshoring Lobby organization) unmistakably signaled the U.S. government’s belief that it was eminently attainable (along with the development of a relationship built on “shared interest and shared values”), and specified that its fate depended on the U.S. side on a campaign by that Offshoring Lobby to pacify those Americans who “perceive China solely through the lens of fear.” Is it any surprise that years of coddling China on trade and national security issues followed (including praise for China’s “constructive role” vis-a-vis North Korea)?

And upon considering Beijing’s ongoing refusal to curb its North Korea trade dramatically and its expansionism in the South China Sea, not to mention its intensified crack down on dissent at home and ever more brazen violation of global economic and commercial norms, can anyone reasonably doubt that Zoellick has been spectacularly wrong?

Interestingly, at one point in his article, Landler quotes Trump national security adviser H.R. McMaster as admitting that, on foreign policy, the president “has moved a lot of us out of our comfort zone, me included.” It’s a move that Landler, and most of his Mainstream Media colleagues, would be well advised to make.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why Robert Gates is a Flawed National Security Guru

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2016 election, Bill Clinton, border security, China, Crimea, debt, Donald Trump, export controls, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Iran-Contra, Middle East, NATO, NATO expansion, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Putin, Robert M. Gates, Ronald Reagan, Russia, terrorism, The Wall Street Journal, TPP, Trans-Pacific Partnership, Ukraine

The Wall Street Journal op-ed staff’s decision to publish Robert M. Gates’ article last Friday on how he sizes up the two major presidential candidates’ qualifications for the Oval Office makes sense only by the degraded and often mindless standards of the American political, policy, and media establishments.

Sure, as the tag line ostentatiously noted, “Mr. Gates served eight presidents over 50 years, most recently as secretary of defense under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.” As a result, I’m certainly interested to know his views – and especially that, although Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has a deeply flawed record, Republican Donald Trump is “beyond repair.” You should be, too. But should anyone regard Gates as the last word? I’m not convinced – nor should you be.

For starters, one of the presidents Gates served was Ronald Reagan – as a big player in that administration’s reckless and downright looney scheme (the so-called Iran-Contra affair) to evade Congress’ ban on supplying anti-communist Nicaraguan rebels with profits made secretly by selling arms to Iran’s terrorism-sponsoring, hostage-taking ayatollahs. Gates also seems to regard George W. Bush’s disastrous foreign policy presidency as standing within the bounds of acceptability. Hello?

At least as unimpressive, though, is Gates’ judgment regarding current foreign policy issues. Here are three examples. First, the former Bush and Obama Secretary of Defense warned that:

“Every aspect of our relationship with China is becoming more challenging. In addition to Chinese cyberspying and theft of intellectual property, many American businesses in China are encountering an increasingly hostile environment. China’s nationalist determination unilaterally to assert sovereignty over disputed waters and islands in the East and South China Seas is steadily increasing the risk of military confrontation.

“Most worrying, given their historic bad blood, escalation of a confrontation between China and Japan could be very dangerous. As a treaty partner of Japan, we would be obligated to help Tokyo. China intends to challenge the U.S. for regional dominance in East Asia over the long term, but the new president could quickly face a Chinese military challenge over disputed islands and freedom of navigation.”

True indeed. But then he upbraids both Trump and Clinton for opposing President Obama’s Pacific rim trade agreement, a position that he argues (despite presenting no evidence) “would hand China an easy political and economic win.” Indeed, Gates dredges up the know-nothing specter of China responding to Trump-ian tariffs with a trade war against America that it could well win because of all the U.S. debt it holds and because it’s “the largest market for many U.S. companies.”

Apparently he’s unaware that China’s debt holdings are a small fraction of the outstanding U.S. total, that the PRC remains much more important to American multinational firms as an offshore production platform than a final customer (which explains why the United States runs a huge trade deficit with Beijing), and that without adequate access to the American market, China’s export-focused economy and political stability would face mortal danger.

Worse, as chief of Mr. Obama’s Pentagon, Gates pioneered a relaxation of American export controls that greatly expanded China’s access to America’s best commercially produced defense-related knowhow. Talk about feeding the beast!

Gates’ critique of the Clinton, and especially Trump, Russia stances should inspire no more confidence. According to this supposed national security guru, “neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mr. Trump has expressed any views on how they would deal with Mr. Putin (although Mr. Trump’s expressions of admiration for the man and his authoritarian regime are naive and irresponsible).”

As Gates notes, under Putin, “Russia [is] now routinely challenging the U.S. and its allies. How to count the ways. There was the armed seizure of Ukraine’s Crimea; Moscow’s military support of the separatist movement in eastern Ukraine; overt and covert intimidation of the Baltic states; the dispatch of fighter and bomber aircraft to avert the defeat of Syria’s Assad; sales of sophisticated weaponry to Iran.

“There is Russia’s luring the U.S. secretary of state into believing that a cease-fire in Syria is just around the corner—if only the U.S. would do more, or less, depending on the issue; the cyberattacks on the U.S., including possible attempts to influence the U.S. presidential election; and covert efforts to aggravate division and weakness with the European Union and inside European countries. And there is the dangerously close buzzing of U.S. Navy ships in the Baltic Sea and close encounters with U.S. military aircraft in international airspace.”

But actually it’s Gates who’s leaving the biggest questions unanswered. Does he now view the targets of Putin’s aggression as vital U.S. interests that merit a defense guarantee that could expose the United States itself to nuclear attack? When exactly did Crimea and Ukraine, which are so close to Russia that they cannot possibly be defended by Western conventional forces, attain this status? Why were American presidents going back to 1945 wrong to take exactly this position (including all of those he served)?

Indeed, what’s changed since Gates himself recognized this reality, and warned former President George W. Bush that the NATO expansion pushed by him and his predecessor, Bill Clinton, would needlessly provoke the kind of Russian push-back now underway? And if Gates hasn’t reversed himself on Russia, why is he so scornful of Trump’s evident interest in cutting a deal with Putin?

Gates is non-partisan, but no better, when it comes to the Middle East. He accuses the two candidates or failing to define “what the broader U.S. strategy should be toward a Middle East in flames….” But his critique of Trump is especially off base. According to Gates, the Republican candidate has “suggested we should walk away from the region and hope for the best. This is a dangerous approach oblivious to the reality that what happens in the Middle East doesn’t stay in the Middle East.”

But he misses the essence of Trump’s position, which is defending America from threats emanating from the region at America’s borders – which are relatively controllable – versus in that terminally dysfunctional, faraway region – which is completely uncontrollable. Gates can legitimately disagree with this approach (which I have repeatedly endorsed), but he can’t legitimately claim that it doesn’t exist.

Gates’ critique extends to several other current flashpoints, but what’s especially revealing to me is how this supposed diplomatic sage completely mis-identifies the biggest foreign policy question facing America’s leaders and the public. It’s not, per his formulation “how [the next president] thinks about the military, the use of military force, the criteria they would apply before sending that force into battle, or broader questions of peace and war.”

As I’ve been writing since the mid-1980s, that kind of thinking puts the cart before the horse. (Here’s a good summary of my first lengthy article on the subject, which unfortunately is not available in full on-line.) America’s main foreign policy challenge is figuring out its principal overseas interests, and basing its decisions on using force on the importance of those goals. Otherwise, debates on going to war and other uses of military power will be conducted in a strategic vacuum – which already too often has been the case.

Given Gates’ wealth of experience, it’s fine for The Wall Street Journal – or any other news organization – to grant him a prominent forum from time to time. How much better it would be, however, for editors and reporters and pundits to ask him, and themselves, if he’s ever displayed any learning curve.