Following Up: A U.S.-Less Pacific Trade Zone is Still Bogus After All These Years

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Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, CPTPP, Following Up, globalization, Reuters, TPP, Trade, Trans-Pacific Partnership, United Kingdom

Time to pat myself on the back. It’s on a trade issue that may seem obscure, but that’s actually an important example of how completely dishonestly pre-Trump Presidents, and their enablers in the Mainstream Media, tried to sell offshoring-friendly trade agreements and similar policies.

The agreement in question was the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), pushed hard by former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, but resisted in Congress through the end of 2016 and nixed by Donald Trump two days after his first White House term began.

Any number of arguments were advanced by globalization cheerleaders in government, business, academe, and journalism alike. Some were economic (e.g., the deal would “compel” the 11 other signatory countries throughout the Pacific Basin region to abide by high standards for respecting worker rights and environment protections that would level the proverbial playing field for U.S.-based companies and workers). Some were strategic (mainly, the TPP would be a great instrument for containing the rise of Chinese power and influence in the economically crucial East Asia-Pacific area). They’ve been parroted conveniently here. 

All were utter baloney. For example, as noted on RealityChek, the labor rights and environment provisions of the deal – and other parts aimed at limiting government subsidization of industries – were completely unenforceable. As for the China containment claims, they ignored the TPP rules that permitted the importation into the new free trade zone of products with lots of Made in China parts, components, and materials – meaning that Beijing would have enjoyed many key benefits of the agreement while incurring exactly none of its obligations.

But arguably the most laughable (but widely swallowed) pro-TPP talking point involved the contention that the agreement would open to U.S. exports markets representing an impressive 40 percent of the entire world’s economic output.

I put the torch to that bit of fakery in this 2015 op-ed, which pointed out that at the time, fully 62 percent of the new trade zone consisted of the U.S. economy, and that without America, the rest of the members combined added up to just slightly over 15 percent of global product.

More fun facts: Another 20 percent of the economies of the proposed free trade area was comprised by Mexico and Canada – which were already linked to the United States via the North American Free Trade Agreement (which has since been updated and improved). So the only way anyone could legitimately call the TPP a potential export bonanza for the United States was if they counted America trading with itself.

And just today, a news report came out showing that I’m still right about the minimal possibilities offered by the TPP to the United States’ domestic economy (that is, companies that make their products state-side and employ Americans). According to Reuters, the United Kingdom (UK) is planning to join the “Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).” That’s an effort by the other TPP countries to create a version of the former agreement without the United States.

The UK’s top trade official is making some familiar-sounding arguments: “Today we’re announcing our intent to pursue accession to CPTPP, one of the world’s largest free trading areas.” And to some extent, I can’t blame her. After all, the country’s trade opportunities will be significantly diminished by the Brexit decision to leave the European Union. So the UK clearly needs all the partial substitutes it can get.

But as Reuters’ coverage makes clear, the prize is even more underwhelming than when I quantified it five years ago, as the U.S.-less trade area right now represents only 13.5 percent of the global economy.

And by the way, as with the pre-Trump United States, London is bound to be disappointed with its new CPTPP partners in another important way: Most of them rely heavily on growing by racking up trade surpluses. That is, agreement or not, they’re unlikely to display any greater appetite for British products and services as they were for any U.S. counterparts or for any foreign products and services – they can’t create them themselves.

Since the 18^th century, “Rule Britannia” has been one of the most popular British patriotic songs. Joining the CPTPP could well prompt a composer to create a modern version titled “Rue Britannia.”

Im-Politic: The CCP Virus Crisis Has Become Even More of a Nursing Home Crisis

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Canada, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Europe, Following Up, lockdown, nursing homes, reopening, seniors, shutdown, Sweden, The New York Times, United Kingdom, Wuhan virus

About three weeks ago, I posted about the degree to which total U.S. CCP Virus-related deaths were occurring in nursing homes and other special facilities for seniors. And I noted that the answer – “really big” – provided significant evidence for the idea that substantial reopenings of the U.S. economy were much more feasible than widely believed.

The reason: If the virus’ main dangers were so highly concentrated in a single, highly vulnerable, and already confined population, then by definition, such dangers to the rest of the public were considerably less serious than widely believed. Therefore, relatively low-risk populations could be permitted to reengage in normal economic activity sooner rather than later.

Three weeks later, the case for faster, wider reopenings is even stronger – along with the arguments for focusing virus containment measures on seniors, and especially those inside or outside such facilities.

For example, that previous post cited data indicating that about twenty percent of all U.S. virus deaths were taking place in elder care facilities. More recently, a comprehensive New York Times survey pegged the share at 35 percent.

Moreover, data are coming in making clear that this pattern is hardly confined to the United States. In Canada, the share has been reported at 81 percent. Across Europe, national shares are thought to be between 42 percent and 57 percent. In the United Kingdom, it’s estimated at 25 percent.

Possibly the most intriguing findings concern Sweden. That’s because its lockdown was the lightest imposed among the wealthier national economies. The overall Swedish virus death rates, however, have been right in the middle of the pack for Europe.  (See here for the latest numbers.) Yet the Swedish government has also reported that nearly half those deaths have taken place in elder care facilities.

In other words, if Sweden had its nursing home act together, its virus fatalities would have been about 185 per million people – which would have put it well behind the United States, Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Sweden’s economy, unfortunately, seems unlikely to escape taking a major virus-related economic hit anyway. But the toll seems largely due to its relatively small size and as a result its relatively heavy reliance on foreign trade – not to its failure to shut down more broadly.

The United States, of course, is much less reliant on foreign trade. In theory, then, if its nursing and similar facilities get the aid they need, America’s economy can continue reopening – and even faster than at present – without running major further health risks. Indeed, as I’ve also noted previously, such reopening per se could well curb other emerging public health dangers. Moreover, as observed by the Washington Post editorial board, moving toward the Swedish model might speed up progress toward creating herd immunity in the United States. This status would mean considerable protection against the second virus wave that might arrive along with cooler weather this fall.

As always, “reopening” doesn’t mean an immediate, complete return to the pre-virus normal. And serious uncertainties continue surrounding the nursing homes data, and indeed all virus-related data. But a pattern visible in so many high income countries can’t be dismissed, either, and it should put ever more pressure on backers of slower reopenings to justify their positions.

Im-Politic: Even Globally, Much of the CCP Virus Story is a New York Story

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CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Im-Politic, London, New York City, New York State, San Marino, The New York Times, United Kingdom, Worldometers.info, Wuhan virus

On Saturday, I posted about the astonishing (at least to me) extent that the CCP Virus crisis in the United States is a nursing home story. Today I’m presenting an even more jaw-dropping finding (at least to me): To an at least equally astonishing extent, the U.S. coronvirus crisis is a New York State and New York City crisis. In fact, the world totals are profoundly affected by the New York State and City numbers as well.

It’s not that the New York-centric nature of the outbreak in America has been ignored. But it’s still shocking to find out, for example, that according to the reliable Worldometers.info website, total State virus cases (293,991 as of early this morning – the same as for all the Worldometers data immediately following) account for not only nearly 30 percent of the 988,928 U.S. cases. They represent nearly one in ten reported cases worldwide.

When it comes to deaths, New York State’s 22,275 represents a much higher 40.70 percent of all American fatalities, and more than a tenth of the global total of 207,970.

Put differently, if New York State was a country, its 293,991 total cases would rank second in the world – behind only the 988,928 total U.S. cases. For mortality, if the State was a country, its 22,275 fatalities total would rank fourth behind the United States, Italy, Spain, and France.

Adjusted for total population, though, the State’s role is even more prominent. With 14,985 cases per one million residents, its infection rate would be second, globally – behind the 15,856 figure for the tiny European republic of San Marino (which is completely surrounded by northern Italy, itself a virus hot spot). New York State’s death rate per million (1,135) also trails only San Marino’s (1,208).

New York City’s place in the U.S. and global pictures is more prominent, still. These numbers for the five boroughs come from The New York Times, and they seem to cover a slightly different time-frame than the Worldometers numbers (which don’t provide statistics for major cities). But these differences are marginal at best, and leave the over situation virtually unchanged.

With 158,268 recorded cases, New York City alone contains 16.00 percent of the U.S. total, and its 11,648 deaths come to 21.00 percent of all U.S. deaths.

As for the global comparison, New York City’s cases equal just under 5.25 percent of worldwide infections, and its fatalities are 5.60 percent of the global total.

If New York City alone was a country, however, its case totals would rank fifth worldwide, and its fatalities sixth. When the population adjustments are made, both New York City’s 1,874 cases per million and it 1,380 deaths per million are the world’s worst if the city was a country.

For a final set of statistics showing how outsized New York City’s CCP Virus has become, let’s compare it with London – another huge metropolis that boasts vast, normally jammed subway and bus systems. In fact, their populations are pretty similar – with New York’s at just under 8.4 million and London’s at just under 9 million. (Both totals are the first that came up on Google searches.)  Moreover, like the United States, the United Kingdom has been criticized for its response to the disease.

But New York City’s 158,268 CCP Virus cases are 6.7 times London’s 23,608. And its 11,648 fatalities are 2.53 times London’s 4,606. (See here for the London virus data.) 

One reason for part of the disparity – London (with 18,679 people per square kilometer according to this source) is less than half as densely populated as New York City (38,242 residents per square kilometer). But although London’s lesser degree of crowding seems nicely to explain the fatality gap, it appears to have much less to do with the infection gap – which would seem to be more closely related to density.

Any way you slice it, however, both the U.S. and even global CCP Virus stories are New York stories. That may mean that the recovery story will depend largely on New York as well.   

Making News: National Media Coverage for RealityChek’s Views on the China Trade Deal…& More!

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Boris Johnson, Brexit, China, European Union, IndustryToday.com, Making News, Market Wrap with Moe Ansari, Marketwatch.com, NAFTA, North American Free Frade Agreement, Phase One, Trade, trade deal, U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, United Kingdom, USMCA

I’m pleased to announce that my views on the new U.S.-China “Phase One” trade deal have just come out via some national media organizations.

First, yesterday’s post arguing that the agreement doesn’t cut the mustard when it comes to advancing U.S. interests was re-posted on the widely read Marketwatch.com website.  Here’s the link.

Second, I was interviewed yesterday on the subject on the nationally syndicated radio show “Market Wrap with Moe Ansari.”  Click here for the link to the podcast.  My segment starts right about the 27-minute mark.  And special bonus!  We also discussed the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada-Agreement (USMCA) that replaces the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the reelection of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom – which surely makes the country’s departure from the European Union (“Brexit”) are certainty.

In addition, my December 11 RealityChek report on the disappointing performance of the inflation-adjusted wages earned by Americans during the Trump years was re-posted on the IndustryToday.com website.  Click here to see it.

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

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Fair-Weather U.S. Allies?

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alliances, allies, China, East China Sea, Eastern Europe, France, Germany, globalism, internationalism, Japan, NATO, North Atlantic TYreaty Organization, North Korea, nuclear deterrence, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Pew Research Center, Russia, South Korea, Soviet Union, United Kingdom

Establishment analysts and commentators have looked at the results of the Pew Research Center’s recent survey on overseas attitudes towards U.S. foreign policy under President Trump and decided that their most important findings are that his America First approach is costing America valuable influence on the global stage.

Even if you don’t find those conclusions transparently self-serving – since the vast majority of these analysts and commentators are staunch supporters of a more traditional globalist or internationalist approach – consider this alternative interpretation: The Pew survey strongly suggests that the globalist strategy, which has been in place for decades, has failed miserably in a crucial respect. Even though its core principles have required that the United States accept enormous cost and risks (including nuclear) on behalf of allies all over the world, the Pew researchers have found that even under President Obama – a pretty run-of-the-mill globalist – the populations of these same allies had little appreciation for these American burdens.

For me, the most glaring example is South Korea. As RealityChek readers know, for years I’ve been noting that the rapid recent progress of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program means that the United States’ longstanding commitment to use nuclear weapons if necessary to defend the South from a northern invasion or simply to deter such an attack is now qualitatively more dangerous than in the past. For if North Korea has not already developed the means to launch a nuclear strike that could take out an American city – or two or three – it’s not far from achieving that goal.

The North’s progress was glaringly obvious in 2013, when Pew last asked South Koreans if they believed that “In making international policy decisions, the U.S. takes into account the interest of countries like ours a great deal/fair amount.” Yet that year, only 36 percent of South Koreans answered “Yes.” This year, only 24 percent of South Koreans gave that answer.

Japan is also protected by an American nuclear umbrella – at least in principle. As with the case of South Korea, it hosts large American military forces whose presence aims to bolster the credibility of that promise. And North Korea has actually fired missiles over Japanese territory – meaning that the threat it poses to Japan and to those U.S. forces is anything but merely theoretical. (If only because the American forces in Japan that defend the islands are supposed to help their comrades-in-arms if war breaks out on the Korean peninsula.) Japan is also alarmed by Chinese encroachments in the East China Sea.

But in 2013, only 38 percent of Japanese agreed that American foreign policy takes their interests into account even a fair amount. This year, that number is down to 28 percent.

The security situation in Europe is not nearly as fraught. But Russia has certainly taken actions that arguably threaten the security of new members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that used to be part of either the old Soviet Union or the Soviet bloc. And as NATO allies, these countries are also entitled to nuclear protection from the United States even though their fates had never before been considered vital American interests and even though Russia retains nuclear forces more than large enough to devastate the United States many times over.

Yet although the new NATO members either border Germany (like Poland) or are located pretty close by, and even though Germans presumably would not want to see Russia reestablish dominance, even in 2013, only 50 percent of Germans believed that Washington takes their interests significantly into account in its foreign policy. The 2018 figure? With Russia at least as menacing? Nineteen percent. And the Germans are anything but outliers, as Pew found roughly the same trend in France and in the United Kingdom (although the share of their populations detecting any meaningful American regard for their interests in 2013 was a good deal lower than in Germany – just 35 percent and 40 percent, respectively).

A common retort by globalists and by allies is that allied populations have no reason to be especially grateful to the United States because these alliances serve crucial American interests, too. But what they forget is that populations (especially from countries whose governments have been champion security free-riders) that don’t believe the United States cares much about them aren’t likely to be populations likely to support the American military when push comes to shove in their regions – as opposed to calling for some version of accommodating the aggressors.

Not that I’m criticizing allied populations. At least in their initial stages, any conflicts will take place almost exclusively on their territories. And P.S. – these kinds of strains were troubling alliance relations for decades before Trump. But the by the same token, the Pew results underscore two truths about U.S. alliances that should be disturbing globalists more than ever.

First, the nuclear risks they still appear to be entirely satisfied with are being run for stakes (the security of relatively small, unimportant countries, as opposed to Japan and the entirety of Western Europe) that are less rationally justifiable than ever. And second, when the United States needs to lead the resistance to aggression, it may have fewer followers than ever.

Following Up: More on the Trump Tariffs

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aluminum, Australia, Canada, David J. Lynch, Defense Department, defense manufacturing base, downstream industries, European Union, Following Up, George W. Bush, Gordon Hanson, James Mattis, Kentucky, manufacturing, Mitch McConnell, multiplier, Paul Krugman, Paul Ryan, steel, steel-consuming industries, tariffs, terrorism, The New York Times, Trade, Trump, U.S. Business and Industry Council, United Kingdom, Washington Post, Wisconsin

I could spend all day today rebutting ignorant, biased, and simply inane commentary on President Trump’s Thursday announcement that stiff tariffs will be imposed on U.S. imports of steel and aluminum (along with watching the plethora of college hoops on TV today!). Instead, I’ll offer some follow-on thoughts to the tariff talking points I posted yesterday.

>The European Union in particular seems outraged by the Trump decision, and has threatened to retaliate with tariffs on its own on a wide range of products, including some from Wisconsin and Kentucky. These of course happen to be the home states of House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. It’s an understandable, and certainly clever, impulse, and in 2003, something like it succeeded in convincing former President George W. Bush to lift steel tariffs he had imposed 18 months earlier.

Of course, Bush 43 was no Trump. He was a committed free trader and globalist, and/or agent of of America’s powerful corporate offshoring lobby. But here’s something that needs to be considered by Messrs Ryan, McConnell, and other lawmakers at whom the Europeans or other powers may take aim: What if, shortly after September 11, Osama Bin Laden had threatened to destroy major targets in their home states or districts unless the United States withdrew militarily from Afghanistan and left him alone. Would the affected legislators have run to the White House to plead for an abandonment in the war on terror? Not likely.

I know that war and economics are different (although given the importance of economic strength as a source of military strength and overall national success, the similarities and overlap are widely overlooked). But don’t doubt for a minute that American politicians’ reactions to these European threats will be watched closely in all the world’s capitals, and that signs of weakness will be factored into foreign decisions to abide by or violate current trade agreements at the U.S.’ expense, or take other measures to gain advantage in their own, American, or third-country markets that clash with free market and free trade norms.

So here’s hoping that American Members of Congress and Senators will show some backbone, and make clear to the nation’s trade partners that they won’t permit themselves and the country at large to be hanged separately.

>Speaking of hanging separately, quite naturally, U.S. steel- and aluminum-consuming industries are concerned that their global competitiveness will be harmed if they’re forced to use more domestic metal in their products. They need to keep two considerations in mind. First, if foreign governments are permitted by Washington’s inaction to dump major American industries like aluminum and steel out of existence, consuming sectors would be next in line. 

Second, there is indeed no inherent reason to make the consuming industries pay any penalty at all. When I was at the U.S. Business and Industry Council, which represented many steel-consuming companies and industry groups, we persuaded them that the best solution would be tariff protection for them as well. The tariff complaints coming from such sectors today reveals that the Trump administration hasn’t put this possibility on the table. That’s a major missed opportunity, and the President should realize that such offers not only can build support for the steel and aluminum tariffs. They can also expand the constituency for broader America First trade policies. (New Trump statements on possible auto tariffs make clear exactly the types of steps needed, although as is usually the case, they work best when applied across-the-board.)   

>Speaking of missed opportunities, here’s another (big) one – the handling of some allied countries’ indignation about being treated as threats to America’s national security because of their steel and/or aluminum shipments. In several major cases, these complaints could have been prevented had the administration recognized that Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom are defined by American law as part of the nation’s defense “technology and industrial base.”

I’m not necessarily a supporter of this policy, but since it exists, these countries have an entirely legitimate point regarding their possible inclusion in the metals’ tariff regime. And the Trump administration should have explained to them that they were of course being exempted. Moreover, the Defense Department should have told the rest of the administration about the legal and legislative situation. Yet Pentagon chief James Mattis’ memo to his administration colleagues outlining his department’s position on the tariffs never mentioned it.

Not that these allied countries are entirely blameless for the row. They could have raised the issue when the prospect of sweeping U.S. tariffs was first raised. But all indications are that they preferred to grandstand.

>As should now be expected, the media coverage of the tariff controversy has often veered off into economics and policy La-La Land. Two of the funniest examples I’ve seen so far (and they’re nearly identical): criticizing the announced tariffs because they only boast the potential of bringing back high-value manufacturing to the United States instead of lots of industrial jobs.

Think I’m kidding? Here’s Washington Post correspondent David J. Lynch: “If tariffs prompt companies to move production back to the United States, they would likely opt for highly automated plants that require fewer workers. Trump’s tariffs ‘would bring back 21st-century factories where we lost 20th-century factories,” [economist Gordon] Hanson said this week at the National Association for Business Economics conference in Washington.”

Here’s no less than Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul M. Krugman: “[T]he tariffs now being proposed would boost capital-intensive industries that employ relatively few workers per dollar of sales; these tariffs would, if anything, further tilt the distribution of income against labor.”

What both authors are somehow missing is how manufacturing is valuable for much more than high wage employment. It’s long been the nation’s leader in productivity growth. It generates nearly 69 percent of private sector American spending on research and development. And don’t forget its high employment and output multipliers – which mean that each dollar of manufacturing output punches far above its weight in generation production and jobs elsewhere in the economy.

That last point is particularly relevant to Krugman’s claim about labor’s low share of national incomes. The manufacturing employment multiplier tells us that adding to industry in America – including capital-intensive industry – will promote employment in related sectors like logistics, plus revitalize the retail and other service sectors of the towns and cities and counties where the new factories are built. Those jobs may not pay as well as the manufacturing jobs lost. But they’re sure better than the economic death that often results when communities lose their factories.

Following Up: Britain’s May is Moving – Though Too Slowly – to Define the Real Terrorism Problem

Tags

Barack Obama, Following Up, Islam, Islamism, London Bridge attacks, Manchester bombing, multiculturalism, Muslims, Susan Rice, terrorism, terrorists, Theresa May, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, travel ban, Trump, United Kingdom

British Prime Minister Theresa May’s remarks following Saturday night’s London Bridge attacks include one of the most forthright, perceptive, and necessary statements from an international leader (excepting President Trump) about the difficulties free societies face in combating terrorist acts committed by Muslims.

Specifically, these comments appear to recognize that these abominations are not simply the product of individuals having nothing whatever to do with their co-religionists, or with the supposedly peaceful, law-abiding, thoroughly assimilated – in other words, utterly unexceptional – communities they comprise. That is, May has closely approached stating that something is decidedly, and often dangerously, abnormal in too many of the Islamic neighborhoods and congregations found in the non-Islamic world, and particularly in the United Kingdom and in the rest of Europe.

As the Prime Minister declared, “While we have made significant progress in recent years, there is – to be frank – far too much tolerance of [Islamist extremism] in our country. So we need to become far more robust in identifying it and stamping it out – across the public sector and across society. That will require some difficult and often embarrassing conversations, but the whole of our country needs to come together to take on this extremism – and we need to live our lives not in a series of separated, segregated communities but as one truly United Kingdom.”

That last clause is extraordinarily important. As I wrote in the wake of last month’s suicide bombing in Manchester, the United Kingdom has officially glorified multiculturalism to such a degree that it has encouraged in many ways the emergence of Muslim population clusters with considerable degrees of autonomy from even the legal system – let alone the values – that holds in the rest of the country.  

May unmistakably has now attacked those policies, and by extension the assumption behind them:  that many of the core teachings of Islam are no better and no worse than those developed in the British Isles throughout their long history. They are simply different. As a result, if certain Muslims living in Britain wish, say, to govern family life with the precepts of their faith rather than British law, they should enjoy ample freedom to do so. Indeed, denying them these rights in the absence of clear and present dangers to – to what, it’s not entirely clear; certainly not the freedoms enjoyed in Britain by other individuals, like women – would be the antithesis of liberty and tolerance.

Yesterday, May strongly suggested that in practice, this segregation has created major dangers at least to national security and public order. And she deserves immense credit for recognizing that, however “difficult and embarrassing” pluralistic democracies like her country may find creating a more united United Kingdom, a concerted effort must not only be made – it must succeed.

Nevertheless, I worry that May herself is still a bit too embarrassed to identify the main problem. For along with describing the enemy belief system as “Islamist,” she also insisted that “It is an ideology that is a perversion of Islam.” Which, if you view as legitimate her alarm at segregated Muslim communities, is a little too neat.

After all, if extremist Islamism indeed “perverts” Islam, presumably this offense would be readily apparent to the vast majority of Muslims themselves. And not only would these segregated communities refuse to tolerate it, and be joining with the national authorities in “identifying it and stamping it out” (May’s own words, as per above). An outraged Muslim majority would be taking the lead in these matters.

But nothing could be more obvious than the general failure of Muslims anywhere to fit this description. Instead, as the Prime Minister herself complains, there has been “too much tolerance,” and the most dangerous manifestations are in those communities whose segregated nature produces Islam in a form relatively un-polluted by British and other non-Islamic values (whatever you suppose them to be).

So May has a ways to go before the clarification of thought that necessarily precedes any course of action with a reasonable hope for success. But she’s clearly much further along than much of the American leadership class. Take Susan E. Rice, national security adviser to former President Obama. On ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, she was asked about President Trump’s proposal to suspend travel to the United States from a handful of majority Muslim countries that the Obama administration itself viewed as either overrun with terrorists or ruled by terrorist-sponsoring regimes. She explained her continued opposition (which is also shared by her former boss) in part this way:

“[I] think there’s a very real risk that by stigmatizing and isolating Muslims from particular countries and Muslims in general that we alienate the very communities here in the United States whose cooperation we most need to detect and prevent these homegrown extremists from being able to carry out the attacks.”

Leave aside your views on the travel ban proposal for or against. First of all, I’ve never been comfortable with the suggestion just made above (and by so many others) that there’s something fundamentally acceptable about residents of the United States (and especially citizens) conditioning their cooperation with law enforcement authorities that are combating violence on whether or not they feel stigmatized in some way by Washington, or any level of government. Are you? And remember – nearly all Muslims resident in the United States live here legally, so it’s not as if they need fear deportation like so many illegal Hispanic residents, or Hispanics here legally here with illegal friends or relatives.

But more important is Rice’s obliviousness to a glaringly obvious implication of her statement: Why, in the first place, are Muslim communities “the very communities here in the United States whose cooperation we most need to detect and prevent…homegrown extremists from being able to carry out the attacks”? It’s because so many of the actual attackers and attacker wanna-bes are coming from those communities. Obviously something about them has gone seriously wrong.

I’m not saying I know exactly what needs to be done domestically on top of existing efforts, and how new programs can be squared with essential Constitutional protections. It’s also clear that the United States doesn’t have the kind of related assimilation-segregated communities problems plaguing the United Kingdom and so much of Europe. But I do know that the more solidly the more extreme versions of multiculturalism take root in America, the larger these problems will grow. And the sooner the British more explicitly acknowledge major problems among their compatriots who practice mainstream Islam, the faster they’ll restore acceptable levels of safety to their concert halls, historic bridges, and the rest of their country.

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

Tags

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.

Im-Politic: Manchester and the Wages of Multiculturalism

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assimilation, Christopher Hitchens, Democratic Party, homegrown terrorists, Im-Politic, immigrants, Islam, London, Londonistan, Manchester bombing, multiculturalism, Muslims, New Labour, Saudi Arabia, Sharia, terrorism, Tony Blair, United Kingdom

The aftermath of the horrific Manchester bombing is seeing the reappearance of a familiar pattern that keeps dangerously muddling major issues. I’m talking about the tendency to emphasize that the suspect was a “homegrown” terrorist, not an immigrant or a refugee from a majority Muslim country. Therefore, this reasoning goes, responses that emphasize restricting immigration from such countries are at best misguided and at worst bigoted. The latter charge has even become a mainstay of the U.S. judicial system.

The dangers and fallacies of this analysis become clear upon reviewing the emergence of the United Kingdom as a major target of terrorist attacks from Muslim extremists and a major source of foreign fighters and other operatives in the Middle East and worldwide for Al Qaeda and ISIS. If these terrorists aren’t newcomers to the UK, you can be sure they were overwhelmingly homegrown in the country’s Muslim immigrant communities. And their numbers and destructiveness point to shocking British failures both to control the country’s borders adequately and to assimilate Muslims safely. More specifically, they reveal the perils of the British government’s determination starting in the 1980s, and especially in the 1990s, to make the establishment of an identity politics focused on Muslims a top national priority.

Spearheaded by former Prime Minister Tony Blair and his New Labour party, London dealt with the country’s Muslims as a group with official standing, represented in government councils by a national organization created to “represent mainstream Muslim opinion.” It provided safe haven for prominent jihadists wanted for terrorism by countries like Jordan and France. It permitted a network of Islamic religious law (sharia) courts to spread across the country and formally recognized some rulings involving divorce and other domestic issues. Perhaps most damaging in the long term, it offered “state funding for Muslim schools on the same basis as Christian and Jewish schools” and paid no attention to their curricula – many of which were developed by arch-fundamentalists from Saudi Arabia.

Among the results? As the British government reported after 2001 riots involving white and South Asian gangs in several northern industrial towns, these localities contained

“‘separate educational arrangements, community and voluntary bodies, employment, places of worship, language, social and cultural networks,’ producing living arrangements that ‘do not seem to touch at any point.’ As one Pakistani Briton told the report’s authors, ‘When I leave this meeting with you, I will go home and not see another white face until I come back here next week.’ Last year, Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, warned that much of Britain was ‘sleepwalking its way toward segregation.’ And this segregation is especially entrenched among Muslims.”

In addition, “A non-Muslim child who lives in a Muslim-majority area may now find herself attending a school that requires headscarves. The idea of separate schools for separate faiths—the idea that worked so beautifully in Northern Ireland—has meant that children are encouraged to think of themselves as belonging to a distinct religious ‘community’ rather than a nation.”

In fact, by July, 2005 – in the wake of an Islamist bombing of London’s Tube that claimed 52 innocent lives – even Blair had had enough. In major speech, he warned that anyone who did not “share and support the values that sustain the British way of life,” or who incite hatred against Britain and its people, “have no place here.” But the Manchester attack, and numerous smaller predecessors over the previous twelve years, indicate that his turnabout – which by all accounts had been ambivalently implemented – came too late to slow the destructive dynamics he set in motion.

Skeptics will rightly note that the British experience is a far cry from America’s, with the U.S. Muslim community – whether immigrant or homegrown – showing many fewer signs of dangerous radicalization. At the same time, identity politics has now become such a hallmark of one of the country’s two major political parties that even many of its leaders are warning about the consequences (though mainly at the ballot box). And the late British writer Christopher Hitchens wrote of what had by that time come ruefully to be called “Londonistan” by the time of the 2005 bombing, “It‘s impossible to exaggerate how far and how fast this situation has deteriorated.”

Making News: Back on with Thom Hartmann Tonight – Talking Brexit!

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Brexit, European Union, Making News, Populism, RT America, The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann, Thom Hartmann, United Kingdom

I’m pleased to announce that I’m slated to appear tonight on RT America’s “The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann” tonight. The segment, which is scheduled to begin at 7 PM EST, will deal with Brexit – the United Kingdom’s fateful decision to leave the European Union – and what it might mean for politics and populism in the United States and around the world.

Watch on your home cable or satellite system, or live on-line at this link. For those who can’t tune in, I’ll be posting a link to the streaming video as soon as one’s available.

And keep checking in at RealityChek for news of media appearances and other developments.