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

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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: More Childish Attacks on Trump

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alliances, allies, Council on Foreign Relations, foreign policy establishment, George H.W. Bush, Greece, IMF, International Monetary Fund, international organizations, internationalism, Iran deal, JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, journalists, Mainstream Media, media, military bases, NAFTA, New Zealand, North American Free Trade Agreement, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Paris climate accord, Philippines, Richard N. Haass, Ronald Reagan, TPP, Trans-Pacific Partnership, Trump, UN, UNESCO, United Nations, Withdrawal Doctrine, World Bank, World Trade Organization, WTO

I’m getting to think that in an important way it’s good that establishment journalists and foreign policy think tank hacks still dominate America’s debate on world affairs. It means that for the foreseeable future, we’ll never run out of evidence of how hidebound, juvenile, and astonishingly ignorant these worshipers of the status quo tend to be. Just consider the latest fad in their ranks: the narrative that the only theme conferring any coherence on President Trump’s foreign policy is his impulse to pull the United States out of alliances and international organizations, or at least rewrite them substantially.

This meme was apparently brewed up at the heart of the country’s foreign policy establishment – the Council on Foreign Relations. Its president, former aide to Republican presidents Richard N. Haass, tweeted on October 12, “Trump foreign policy has found its theme: The Withdrawal Doctrine. US has left/threatening to leave TPP, Paris accord, Unesco, NAFTA, JCPOA.” [He’s referring here to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that aimed to link the U.S. economy more tightly to East Asian and Western Hemisphere countries bordering the world’s largest ocean; the global deal to slow down climate change; the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization; the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – the official name of the agreement seeking to deny Iran nuclear weapons.]

In a classic instance of group-think, this one little 140-character sentence was all it took to spur the claim’s propagation by The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Marketwatch.com, Vice.com, The Los Angeles Times, and Britain’s Financial Times (which publishes a widely read U.S. edition).  For good measure, the idea showed up in The New Republic, too – albeit without mentioning Haass.

You’d have to read far into (only some of) these reports to see any mention that American presidents taking similar decisions is anything but unprecedented. Indeed, none of them reminded readers of one of the most striking examples of alliance disruption from the White House: former President Ronald Reagan’s decision to withdraw American defense guarantees to New Zealand because of a nuclear weapons policy dispute. Moreover, the administrations of Reagan and George H.W. Bush engaged in long, testy negotiations with long-time allies the Philippines and Greece on renewing basing agreements that involved major U.S. cash payments.

Just as important, you could spend hours on Google without finding any sense in these reports that President Trump has decided to remain in America’s major security alliances in Europe and Asia, as well as in the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (along with a series of multilateral regional development banks).

More important, you’d also fail to find on Google to find any indication that any of the arrangements opposed by Mr. Trump might have less than a roaring success. The apparent feeling in establishment ranks is that it’s not legitimate for American leaders to decide that some international arrangements serve U.S. interests well, some need to be recast, and some are such failures or are so unpromising that they need to be ditched or avoided in the first place.

And the reason that such discrimination is so doggedly opposed is that, the internationalist world affairs strategy pursued for decades by Presidents and Congresses across the political spectrum (until, possibly, now) is far from a pragmatic formula for dealing with a highly variegated, dynamic world. Instead, it’s the kind of rigid dogma that’s most often (and correctly) associated with know-it-all adolescents and equally callow academics. What else but an utterly utopian ideology could move a writer from a venerable pillar of opinion journalism (the aforementioned Atlantic) to traffick in such otherworldly drivel as

“A foreign-policy doctrine of withdrawal also casts profound doubt on America’s commitment to the intricate international system that the United States helped create and nurture after World War II so that countries could collaborate on issues that transcend any one nation.”

Without putting too fine a point on it, does that sound like the planet you live on?

I have no idea whether whatever changes President Trump is mulling in foreign policy will prove effective or disastrous, or turn out to be much ado about very little. I do feel confident in believing that the mere fact of rethinking some foreign policy fundamentals makes his approach infinitely more promising than one that views international alliances and other arrangements in all-or-nothing terms; that evidently can’t distinguish the means chosen to advance U.S. objectives from the objectives themselves; and that seems oblivious to the reality that the international sphere lacks the characteristic that makes prioritizing institution’s creation and maintenance not only possible in the domestic sphere, but indispensable – a strong consensus on defining acceptable and unacceptable behavior.

One of the most widely (and deservedly) quoted adages about international relations is the observation, attributed to a 19^th century British foreign minister, that his nation had “no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” Until America’s foreign policy establishment and its media mouthpieces recognize that this advice applies to international institutions, too, and start understanding the implications, they’ll keep losing influence among their compatriots. And rightly so.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: So You Think Trump is a Dangerous Nut on North Korea?

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Alex Ward, alliances, allies, Ana Fifield, Ankit Panda, Associated Press, BBC, CNN, Cold War, Council on Foreign Relations, David J. Rothkopf, David Jackson, deterrence, Diane Feinstein, Ed Markey, foreign policy, foreign policy establishment, Kim Jong Un, media, Nicole Gaouette, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Peter Baker, political class, Rick Gladstone, Stewart Patrick, The Atlantic, The Diplomat, The New York Times, Trump, United Nations, USAToday, Vox.com, Washington Post

Weird as it sounds, the North Korea nuclear crisis has created two significant benefits – though unfortunately neither has yet created either establishment or popular pressure to change an increasingly reckless American approach.

Still, it’s promising that dictator Kim Jong Un’s rapid development of nuclear weapons that can reach the U.S. homeland is not only revealing that America’s longstanding approach to defense alliances is now exposing the nation to the risk of nuclear attack even when its own security is not directly at stake. It’s also more recently begun exposing America’s many foreign policy and other elite mainstays either as ignoramuses or (much more likely) shameful hypocrites.

The reason? They profess to be shocked, just shocked (Google “Casablanca” and “Louis Renault”) that President Trump has threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea in order “to defend itself or its allies.” As if they’ve never heard of “nuclear deterrence.” And don’t know that such saber-rattling has been U.S. policy for decades.

To review briefly, since fairly early in the Cold War, and especially since the former Soviet Union developed its own impressive nuclear forces, American leaders have overwhelmingly concluded that the only reasonable uses of these weapons was preventing a nuclear attack on the United States itself, or a similar strike or conventional military assault on one of the countries it was treaty-bound to protect. The idea was that even nuclear-armed potential aggressors the Soviets and Chinese (and the North Koreans, once they crossed the threshhold) would think at least twice before moving on targets if they had reason to fear that the United States would launch its own nukes against those countries.

From time to time, some politicians and analysts suggested that the effects of such nuclear weapons use could be restricted to efforts to take out the enemy’s remaining nuclear weapons or otherwise fall short of “totally destroying” that adversary. But for the most part, the idea of limited nuclear war has been rejected in favor of vowing annihilation. And except for disarmament types on the Left and super-hawks on the Right (who supported the aforementioned “counterforce” approach), the political class comprised of office-holders and journalists and think tankers was just fine with the nuclear element of U.S. alliance strategy.

It’s completely bizarre, therefore, that almost none of the press coverage – including “experts'” analyses – of Mr. Trump’s September 19 statement evinces any awareness of any of this history. Instead, it’s portrayed the “totally destroy” threat as appallingly monstrous, unhinged rhetoric from an unprecedentedly erratic chief executive. Just as bad, President Trump is accused of playing right into Kim’s hands and shoring up his support with the North Korean populace.

For instance, here’s how Washington Post reporter Ana Fifield yesterday described the consensus of of North Korea specialists she had just surveyed:

“Kim Jong Un’s regime tells the North Korean people every day that the United States wants to destroy them and their country. Now, they will hear it from another source: the president of the United States himself.

“In his maiden address to the United Nations on Tuesday, President Trump threatened to “totally destroy North Korea.” Analysts noted that he did not even differentiate between the Kim regime, as President George W. Bush did with his infamous “axis of evil” speech, and the 25 million people of North Korea.”

Here’s the New York Times‘ take, from chief White House correspondent Peter Baker and foreign policy reporter Rick Gladstone:

“President Trump brought the same confrontational style of leadership he has used at home to the world’s most prominent stage on Tuesday as he vowed to ‘totally destroy North Korea‘ if it threatened the United States….”

Similarly, USAToday‘s David Jackson described the Trump speech as “a stark address to the United Nations that raised the specter of nuclear warfare” and contended that “Trump’s choice of words on North Korea is in keeping with the bellicose rhetoric he’s already used to describe the tensions that have escalated throughout his eight months in office.”

As for the Associated Press, the world’s most important news wire service, it was content to offer readers a stunning dose of moral equivalence: “In a region well used to Pyongyang’s pursuit of nuclear weapons generating a seemingly never-ending cycle of threats and counter-threats, Mr. Trump’s comments stood out.“

CNN‘s approach? It quoted a “senior UN diplomat” as claiming that “it was the first time in his memory that a world leader has called for the obliteration of another state at the UNGA [United Nations General Assembly], noting even Iran’s most fiery leaders didn’t similarly threaten Israel.”

For good measure, reporter Nicole Gaouette added, “The threat is likely to ratchet up tensions with North Korea while doing little to reassure US allies in Asia, said analysts who added that the President now also runs the risk of appearing weak if he doesn’t follow through.”

The Council on Foreign Relations’ Stewart Patrick, who served on the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff under former President George W. Bush, told the BBC that the Trump threat is implausible, and that “I think the folks in the Pentagon when they look at military options are just aghast at the potential loss of life that could occur with at a minimum hundreds of thousands of South Koreans killed in Seoul.”

For David J. Rothkopf, a former Clinton administration official and protege of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who went on to edit FOREIGNPOLICY magazine (where I worked many years before), the problem is much simpler: “The president of the United States chose, in a forum dedicated to diplomacy, to threaten to wipe another nation — a much smaller one — off the face of the earth in language that was not so much hard-line rhetoric as it was schoolboy bullying complete with childish name-calling.”

Many members of the U.S. Congress were no better. Said California Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein: “Trump’s bombastic threat to destroy North Korea and his refusal to present any positive pathways forward on the many global challenges we face are severe disappointments. He aims to unify the world through tactics of intimidation, but in reality he only further isolates the United States.”

Massachusetts Democratic Senator Ed Markey brought up a war powers angle: “The more the president talks about the total destruction of North Korea, the more it’s necessary for the country and the Congress to have a debate over what the authority of a president is to launch nuclear weapons against another country.”

What’s of course especially ironic about Markey’s words is that such a U.S. policy of “no first use” of nuclear weapons would effectively destroy the American alliances that liberals like Markey have become enamored with lately, and that President Trump is often charged by these same liberals as attempting to dismantle.

Some other news organizations and websites have behaved even more strangely – lambasting the Trump threat but then acknowledging deep inside their accounts that the President said nothing fundamentally new.

For example, the viscerally anti-Trump Vox.com website predictably led off one of its accounts with, “On September 19, President Donald Trump gave his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly. His harsh rhetoric toward North Korea stood out — mostly because he threatened to obliterate the country of 25.4 million people.”

Six paragraphs later, writer Alex Ward got around to mentioning that “A few [specialists] noted that it was similar to what other presidents, including President Obama, have said before.”

And in an Atlantic post titled, “A Presidential Misunderstanding of Deterrence,” author Ankit Panda of The Diplomat newspaper accused President Trump of using “apocalyptic rhetoric” and threatening “to commit a horrific act expressly forbidden by international humanitarian law….”

But then he immediately turned around and admitted,

“The remarks echoed similar, countless deterrent threats levied against North Korea by past U.S. presidents with more subtlety and innuendo, perhaps allowing for a more calibrated and flexible response. But ultimately vowing to ‘totally destroy’ North Korea if America or its allies come under attack is, in fact, not all that sharp a break from existing U.S. policy.”

If these treatments of the North Korea crisis were simply efforts to demonize President Trump by abusing history, that would be contemptible enough, but what else is new from America’s too often incompetent and scapegoat-addicted elites?

But something much more dangerous is at work here. Individuals who, for good reasons, have not been regarded as kooks are using Never Trump-ism to foster a genuinely kooky idea. They’re suggesting that the alliances so central to America’s foreign policy making for decades should be viewed as little more than kumbaya symbols, and that anyone speaking frankly about their possibly deadly and indeed horrific implications is beyond the pale – even though the proliferation of nuclear weapons has unmistakably rendered these arrangements far more perilous.

In other words, they’re spreading the worst, and most childish, of all canards about foreign policy, or about any dimension of public policy – not that a particular set of choices is sound or not (that’s almost always legitimately debatable), but that hard choices never need to be made at all.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: What to do about North Korea

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China, embargo, Japan, Kim Jong Un, missile defense, missiles, Nikki Haley, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, sanctions, Shinzo Abe, South Korea, Trade, Trump, United Nations

Tuesday’s post explained my reasons for concluding that, contrary to the emerging conventional wisdom in the U.S. foreign policy establishment that North Korea’s use of its growing and increasingly powerful arsenal of nuclear weapons can be deterred with the same kind of policies that the United States used to keep the nuclear peace during the Cold War.

As I’ve argued, the resulting dangers mean that the best way to serve America’s paramount interest (by a long shot) of preventing a nuclear attack on its own territory is to pull U.S. forces out of the immediate area, and letting Northeast Asia’s powerful, wealthy countries deal with dictator Kim Jong Un as they see fit. This move would both ensure that the governments with the greatest stake in keeping North Korea’s missiles in their silos, and even eliminated, bear the costs and risks of handling the problem, and that the only plausible pretext for Pyongyang attacking the United States itself is eliminated.

Of course, Washington has chosen not to take this route. But America’s response so far to the escalating North Korea threat is turning into a major failure based even on its own criteria for success. After all, the latest North Korean missile overflew Japanese territory. Although the overflight was brief, the combined U.S. and Japanese response could not help but send a message of weakness and egg on Kim further.

According to Japan’s defense minister, Tokyo decided not to shoot down the missile because the government determined it wasn’t intended to land on Japanese territory. I don’t know how to say “Baloney!” in Japanese, but complete contempt is the only justifiable reaction. For despite this stated confidence, as the missile approached, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government sent out regular early morning alerts to the public – including in far off Tokyo – warning it to “seek cover” and describing the situation as “very dangerous.”

Another nonsensical rationale for the inaction from both Japanese and U.S. forces, this from a staunch defender of America’s Asia policy status quo: “If we shoot and miss, it would hand Kim Jong-Un an incalculable propaganda victory.” That’s of course true – because as this former official has noted, anti-missile technology is anything but proven. But of course, keeping the defensive missiles in their launchers also winds up telling North Korea that the United States and its allies have little faith in their systems.

Moreover, the Pentagon and its foreign counterparts can conduct all the tests they want, but adequate confidence in missile defenses won’t be legitimately justified until they’ve shown they can work in real-world situations. And better to try shoot-downs sooner rather than later – both because North Korea’s offensive capabilities will only improve as time passes, and because its better to find out about the real-world shortcomings of allied systems ASAP.

So if I’m Kim Jong Un, I’m looking at the U.S. and Japanese failure even to try a shoot-down and asking myself, “Let’s see what else I can get away with?” And when he develops reasonably reliable intercontinental missiles capable of hitting American territory and destroying American cities, he could easily conclude that the “what else” includes major threats against South Korea that would be entirely credible, and that could move him closer to effective mastery over the entire peninsula.

How, then, can Washington and its regional allies send some credible messages themselves? The following list is meant to start a (long overdue) serious discussion:

>First, the allies can actually try to shoot down North Korean missiles judged on a flight path anywhere near some of their territories. Again, even if they miss, they’ll at least get some truly reliable data on their systems’ capabilities.

>Second, they could urge the United Nations to authorize a total ban on trade and commerce with North Korea. The United States, Japan, and South Korea could also announce that they will enforce the ban with punitive measures against violators. The North’s business partners would then face a clear – and no-brainer – choice: They can continue trading with economically miniscule North Korea or they can continue trading with three of the world’s largest economies, but they can’t do both.

It’s true that North Korea’s biggest trade partner is China, that all three allies have extensive economic ties with the PRC, and that even the United States – a clear loser in China trade – has been reluctant to disrupt these relations significantly. But now the subject is war and peace and the core security of Japan and South Korea. If this reluctance continues even after North Korea has sent missiles over Japanese territory, Kim will inevitably conclude that his main adversaries lack the stomach to resist further provocations.

>The United States, Japan, and South Korea could blockade air and sea trade with North Korea. China’s overland trade would continue – but ever-stronger economic sanctions on China finally could persuade Beijing to halt this commerce once and for all.

>The United States could further pressure China by deciding to sell all of its neighbors – including Taiwan – any conventional weapons they wanted, and to provide whatever training they needed to operate them effectively. (President Trump is thinking along these lines regarding South Korea, but the new policy should go much further.) This step of course would also help deal with China’s aggressiveness in the South China and East China Seas, and boost America’s own production and export of these advanced manufactures. So Beijing would need to decide whether coddling North Korea was worth seeing Asia’s other countries – including many bearing major historic and/or current grudges against China – become much stronger militarily

>Finally – for now – the United States could announce a full-scale review of its nuclear non-proliferation policies in Asia, with a special focus on whether it would continue opposing the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Japan and South Korea. As with the previous proposal, China would need to decide whether coddling North Korea was worth seeing one of its major national security nightmares – nuclear arms possessed by the same Japan that launched devastating attacks against it in 1894 and 1937 – come to life.

Shortly after the latest North Korea launch, American envoy to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, declared, “No country should have missiles flying over them like those 130 million people in Japan. It is unacceptable. They (North Korea) have violated every single UN Security Council Resolution that we’ve had. So I think something serious has to happen.”

She’s absolutely right in implying that neither the United States nor the so-called world community has done anything “serious” yet regarding the threat posed by North Korea. Options like the above would qualify. If Washington genuinely wants to maintain its current North Korea and broader East Asia strategies, they need to be actively, and urgently, considered.

Im-Politic: Americans are Far from Bitterly Divided on Everything

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Affordable Care Act, border wall, climate change, criminal illegal immigrants, Democrats, deportations, Gallup, illegal immigration, Im-Politic, infrastructure, Mexico, Obamacare, polls, regulations, Republicans, tariffs, taxes, TPP, Trade, Trans-Pacific Partnership, United Nations

America today is deeply divided on the new Trump presidency and many substantive issues. But the message sent by a new Gallup poll is that there’s considerable consensus when it comes to identifying the nation’s major challenges. And although polls have recently gotten a deserved black eye over their election performance, this fundamental finding tracks intriguingly with that reported (by a different organization) that I wrote about a little over a year ago.

Gallup sought Americans’ views on which of President Trump’s campaign promises they believe that it’s “very important” for him to keep. Here are the top four – which were also the only choices that topped 50 percent:

>”Enact a major spending program to strengthen infrastructure” 69 percent

>”Reduce income taxes for all Americans” 54 percent

>”Establish tariffs on foreign imports” 51 percent

>”Deport the more than 2 million illegal immigrants who have

    committed crimes” 51 percent

At least as interesting, three of these four stated Trump priorities enjoy strong bipartisan support:

>infrastructure: 68 percent of Democrats, 71 percent of Republicans

>tax cuts: 46 percent of Democrats, 62 percent of Republicans

>tariffs: 45 percent of Democrats, 62 percent of Republicans

The exception – interestingly – is

>deport criminal illegal immigrants: 33 percent of Democrats, 70 percent of         Republicans

Now here are the Trump priorities that Gallup found Americans regard as least important (note – which does mean that they oppose them):

>”Cancel billions in payments to UN climate change program” 30 percent

>”Withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership” 26 percent

>”Build a wall along the border with Mexico” 26 percent

>”Require that for each new federal regulation, two must be

    eliminated” 23 percent

Just FYI, the administration has already announced officially that it’s pulling out of the Pacific trade deal.

And guess what? There’s a great deal of bipartisan consensus on the relative unimportance of these matters, too:

>UN climate change payments: 23 percent of Democrats, 38 percent of Republicans

>Trans-Pacific Partnership: 19 percent of Democrats, 32 percent of Republicans

>border wall: 12 percent of Democrats, 38 percent of Republicans

>regulations: 14 percent of Democrats, 31 percent of Republicans

Finally, I couldn’t help but notice that the most divisive Trump priorities, according to Gallup, are the aforementioned deportations of criminal illegal immigrants and…repealing Obamacare. A total of 46 percent of Americans told Gallup this move was “very important,” but although 68 percent of Republicans were on board with scrapping the Affordable Care Act quickly, only 26 percent of Democrats agreed.

I know that the president has his own pollsters – and of course his own opinions. But I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if their list of top White House priorities didn’t wasn’t very similar to those identified by Gallup as the public’s. Nor would I be surprised if achieving these goals – and softpedaling many of the others – made for a great first 100 days.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: An Empty Obama UN Farewell

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assimilation, education, geopolitics, global integration, globalization, international law, international norms, Islam, labor standards, Middle East, Muslims, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, radical Islam, reeducation, refugees, skills, sovereignty, TPP, Trade, trade enforcement, training, Trans-Pacific Partnership, UN, United Nations

National leaders’ speeches to each year’ UN General Assembly – even those by American presidents – are rarely more than meaningless boilerplate or cynical bloviating. But President Obama’s address to the organization yesterday – as with some of its predecessors – is worth examining in detail both because it was his last, and because Mr. Obama clearly views such occasions as opportunities to push U.S. and international public opinion in fundamentally new directions where they urgently need to head.

In yesterday’s case, the president saw his mission as justifying his belief that Americans in particular need to reject temptations to turn inward from the world’s troubles, and more completely embrace forces that inexorably are tightening international integration economically and even in term of national security.

To be fair to Mr. Obama, he sought to offer “broad strokes those areas where I believe we must do better together” rather than “a detailed policy blueprint.” But even given this caveat, what’s most striking is how many of the big, tough questions he (eloquently) dodges.

Here’s the president’s main premise and conclusion:

“…I believe that at this moment we all face a choice. We can choose to press forward with a better model of cooperation and integration. Or we can retreat into a world sharply divided, and ultimately in conflict, along age-old lines of nation and tribe and race and religion.

“I want to suggest to you today that we must go forward, and not backward. I believe that as imperfect as they are, the principles of open markets and accountable governance, of democracy and human rights and international law that we have forged remain the firmest foundation for human progress in this century.”

This passage makes clear that Mr. Obama doesn’t buy my thesis that the United States is geopolitically secure and economically self-sufficient enough in reality and potential to thrive however chaotic the rest of the world. Nor does he believe the converse – that the security and prosperity the nation has enjoyed throughout its history has first and foremost stemmed from its own location, and from its ability to capitalize on its inherent advantages and strengths, not from cooperating or integrating with the rest of the world.

The president’s contention that “the world is too small for us to simply be able to build a wall and prevent it from affecting our own societies” rings true for most countries – even assuming that he doesn’t really think that this stark choice is the only alternative to complete openness to global developments and commerce and populations and authority, however promising or threatening. But he seems oblivious to America’s “exceptionalism” geopolitically and economically.

Even if I’m wrong, however, and even accepting Mr. Obama’s “broad strokes” objectives, this lengthy presidential address gives national leaders and their citizens almost no useful insights on how countries can achieve his goals. Here are just two examples:

The president recognizes the need to make the global economy “work better for all people and not just for those at the top.” But given the trade deals he himself has sought, how can worker rights be strengthened “so they can organize into independent unions and earn a living wage”? The president insisted again that his Pacific Rim trade deal points the way. But as I’ve noted, the immense scale of factory complexes even in smallish third world countries like Vietnam makes the necessary outside monitoring and enforcement impossible.

Similarly, no one can argue with Mr. Obama’s recommendation to invest “in our people — their skills, their education, their capacity to take an idea and turn it into a business.” But as I documented more than a decade ago in my The Race to the Bottom, governments the world over, including in the very low-wage developing world, recognize the importance of improving their populations’ skill and education levels. In addition, multinational corporations can make workers productive even in these very low-income countries – and continue paying them peanuts compared with wages in more developed countries. Why should anyone expect his recommendation to give workers in America a leg up?

It’s easy to sympathize with the president’s call “to open our hearts and do more to help refugees who are desperate for a home.” Who in principle is opposed to aiding “men and women and children who, through no fault of their own, have had to flee everything that they know, everything that they love,…”?

But as Mr. Obama indirectly admitted, many of these refugees come from a part of the world where “religion leads us to persecute those of another faith…[to] jail or beat people who are gay…[and to] prevent girls from going to school….” He also described the Middle East as a place where too often the “public space” is narrowed “to the mosque.”

It was encouraging to see him recognize the legitimacy – though perhaps not the necessity – of insisting “that refugees who come to our countries have to do more to adapt to the customs and conventions of the communities that are now providing them a home.” But is he blithely assuming success? And it was less encouraging to see him ignore the excruciatingly difficult challenge of adequately vetting migrants from war-torn and chaotic countries.

Finally, on the political side of integration, the president seems to lack the courage of his convictions. For despite his high regard for international law, and support for America “giving up some freedom of action” and “binding ourselves to international rules,” he also specified that these were long-term objectives – presumably with little relevance in the here and now. Indeed, Mr. Obama also argued that, even way down the road, the United States wouldn’t be “giving up our ability to protect ourselves or pursue our core interests….”

So it sounds like he’d relegate even future international law-obeying to situations that really don’t matter. Which is fine. But how that gets us to a more secure world is anyone’s guess.

It’s true that Mr. Obama will be leaving office soon, and that his thoughts no longer matter critically. But at the same time, American leaders have been speaking in these lofty globalist terms for decades. If the president is indeed right about global integration and the future, what a shame that he didn’t make more progress in bringing these ideas down to earth.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Which Paris Message Will ISIS Hear?

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Bill Gates, carbon emissions, climate change, Congress, counter-terrorism spending, France, ISIS, military spending, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Paris attacks, Paris Climate Conference, Security Council, terrorism, United Kingdom, United Nations

President Obama has made a pretty good point in arguing that going ahead with the global climate change conference in Paris this week despite the recent terror attacks on that city is an “act of defiance” against ISIS and other extremist groups – Islamic or not. Unfortunately, he and other major world leaders have missed a message they’re inevitably sending to the terrorists with other recent decisions – which signal the absence of anything close to similar resolve to develop a credible military strategy for defeating them.

No one should have any illusions that the Paris talks themselves will produce meaningful progress toward controlling the carbon emissions widely thought to be dangerously warming the planet. In fact, none of its decisions will be legally binding (although there have been some interesting attempts to parse this concept). But not only has the issue been persistently on the international agenda for decades. More than 170 countries – including the largest sources of the problem – have made specific proposals to reduce emissions. In addition, eight of the biggest emitters have collectively promised to double their supplies of renewable energy.

There also seems to be broad agreement on a specific goal – avoiding an average global temperature increase of 3.6 percent more degrees Fahrenheit. Even the private sector is joining in, led by Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ pledge to spend $2 billion of his own money to foster green innovation. This commitment is conditioned on greater government efforts, but other wealthy individuals reportedly are interested in contributing, too.

Contrast these developments – inadequate and flawed as they are – with global efforts so far against ISIS. In the wake of the Paris attacks, President Obama has declared only that the United States will “intensify” its current strategy – and that no major deployments of American ground troops will be made. The leaders of Britain and France have announced their intent to increase defense spending, but early indications are that at least some of the new counter-terrorism funds will come from other defense accounts – even though Europe faces a more aggressive Russia, too. Moreover, these increases come after years of major defense spending decreases and (at least in retrospect) shockingly inadequate budgeting against terrorism in particular.

And although the United Nations has condemned the Paris attacks and the Security Council has authorized military action against ISIS, no member state (as usual) is required to spend a penny or risk a single life to vanquish this “global and unprecedented threat to international peace and security” and no follow-up actions – or even words – appear in the offing. Moreover, let’s not forget that the U.S. Congress has failed even to pass a new authorization to use military force in the region in response to President Obama’s request.

So although it’s encouraging to see a business-as-usual attitude on climate change issues adopted by world leaders in defiance of terrorists, the lack of comparable resolve on the battlefield seems all too likely to overwhelm its intended effects.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Obama’s Potentially Dangerous Nonsense on Global Rules

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international cooperation, international law, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, power, United Nations

Usually, the most compelling criticisms of presidential speeches before the UN General Assembly are that they’re cynical exercises in idealistic rhetoric delivered for public relations purposes, and that they tell us almost nothing useful about a particular administration’s foreign policy. The most compelling criticism of President Obama’s latest speech before the UN General Assembly is very different: It seems likely that he really believes the platitudes he spouted about the need to conduct American diplomacy and international relations in general according to the rule of law. In the process, at least, Mr. Obama made abundantly clear why his own foreign policy record has been so ineffective.

The president’s brief for continuing to build “a system of international rules and norms that are better and stronger and more consistent” was impressively detailed. But it ignored all the big obstacles that have kept world affairs an endless and often bloody struggle for power and advantage. It presented no plausible ideas for getting the world from here to there. And it ignored the even more compelling reasons for the United States in particular to reject the president’s seemingly unimpeachable goals.

As Mr. Obama noted, the Hobbesian system he condemns has set the mold for world politics “for most of human history.” But he never even broached the question of “Why?” Had he been the slightest bit curious, he surely would have recognized that no effective system of global rules has ever existed in the security realm because the international sphere completely lacks the essential condition that makes meaningful legal systems possible in the first place: a strong consensus on what represents acceptable and unacceptable behavior.

Groups of individuals that develop this consensus are naturally able to create the two main defining characteristics of genuinely legal systems. First, they can turn this consensus into a set of specific do’s and don’ts that apply equally to all, regardless of power, wealth, or status. Second, they can agree on procedures to resolve disputes peacefully and figure out how to apply these rules to specific sets of circumstances when questions arise.

Although documents such as the UN Charter and the Declaration of Human Rights indicate that acceptable behavior has in fact been defined, the story of the post-World War II period shows that it’s a paper creation. In fact, no actual consensus whatever exists even on whether these principles should apply equally to all countries, much less on binding dispute-resolution mechanisms. And as President Obama should have noted, the United States has been one of the prime culprits. Along with the other major victors of World War II, it insisted that the UN accord them special status via creation of a Security Council in which each could veto any decision made by the organization even if every other member supported it.

But before you condemn that era’s American leaders for ending a new golden age of international law before it even began, ask yourself why Washington should have agreed to to permit its actions to be checked by any other countries or groups of countries. Should it have trusted in the superior wisdom or virtue of the Soviet Union? Of Britain and France, who were reeling economically and who were still struggling to maintain empires in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East? Of Latin American countries geographically isolated from most impending world crises, too poor and weak to make significant contributions to resolving them, and generally ruled by dictators?

Further, even if a respectable argument could be made for taking international consensus into account in a major way in American foreign policy-making, what’s the moral argument for deciding that the opinions and judgments of other government should always or usually trump that of the leaders elected by the American people? And what was the pragmatic argument for accepting this kind of system, given that the early postwar United States was amply capable of providing for its own security and prosperity?

Decades later, America’s relative power in world politics clearly has waned. But the nation is still more than able to ensure its safety and prosperity through its own devices, especially if it defines its major interests realistically. And who are the foreign intellectual and ethical paragons to which the U.S. government should defer today? Dictators like Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping? European leaders who keep shirking their appropriate share of the common western defense burden, and who are always happy to do business with rogue states in apparent confidence that American can always be trusted to deal with any dangers that emerge? Third world countries ruled by various kinds of autocrats and/or dependent on various forms of U.S. and other foreign aid?

Equally mysterious: How would Mr. Obama proceed to create a global legal system out of the chaos that exists today, and which his own words indicate has taken a turn for the worse lately? His rhetoric – including this speech – continually reveals a conviction that expelling power considerations from world politics would benefit all countries, even the large ones. But where is the evidence that he’s making converts? Is he considering setting an example by voluntarily yielding America’s prerogatives in the UN and other international organizations? Does he want the UN Secretary-General to serve as some kind of de facto or de jure world president? Does he have someone or something else in mind? And if, as appears, he has no blueprint, why should anyone take his words seriously?

But at least those questions are hypothetical. Another big question surrounding the president’s approach to foreign policy constantly comes up in the here and now, and needs to be answered satisfactorily for anyone to have any legitimate faith in his diplomacy: Does he recognize that mustering superior power and wealth is necessary for American success even in dealing with those threats he rightly noted “no nation…can insulate itself from”? From all appearances, the answer is “No,” and this failure to understand that national wherewithal must be available and applied even to meet shared global challenges raises the prospect that America’s legitimate interests will get rolled repeatedly.

Here’s why. It’s true that “the risk of financial contagion; the flow of migrants, or the danger of a warming planet,” and similar problems, potentially affect all countries, and create powerful incentives for cooperation. But the president seems to have no clear idea of how that cooperation gets created. Hopefully, he isn’t counting on some group of allegedly disinterested experts to come up with answers so brilliant that all governments will simply acknowledge their merits. It seems evident that he’s not counting on the rest of the world to believe that the United States will come up with ideal solutions on its own. So how does he propose to achieve any progress?

My distinct impression is that he has no such strategy here, either, and that he’s overlooking the reality that the highly diverse states that comprise the international sphere bring to all negotiations and other cooperative endeavors different historical experiences, cultural traditions, locations, and economic strengths and weaknesses. As a result, they (including the United States) inevitably are going to define acceptable, let alone ideal, outcomes from their national standpoint in equally diverse ways, at least much of the time.

The possibility of persuasion can’t be ruled out in world politics. But in those many instances where the force of American ideas is not sufficient to prevail at the bargaining table, and where American preferences matter, the force of American force – and wealth – will be vital for increasing the odds that solutions significantly reflect American interests and preferences. Therefore, whether sticks or carrots are used most often, it should be evident that those countries with the most wherewithal will be able to use those devices most effectively, and that consequently maximizing power in all of its usable dimensions needs to be among the nation’s top foreign policy priorities.

In a country with representative, accountable government, one of the most important functions that leaders can serve is educational – not in a high handed, lecturing sense, but in terms of identifying plausible, desirable objectives, the trade-offs involved in achieving or forgoing them, and the pluses and minuses of various available policy tools. With his oratorical gifts and his smarts, Mr. Obama’s potential to play this role was undeniable. That’s why it’s so tragic that he’s chosen, in so many of his big-think exercises in foreign affairs, to propagate myths and homilies that are not only gauzy and empty, but potentially dangerous.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: A Big Overlooked Lesson of the Iran Deal

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AIIB, allies, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, burden sharing, China, Cold War, IMF, Iran, Iran deal, John Kerry, multilateralism, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, sanctions, Security Council, United Nations, World Bank

Whatever you think of President Obama’s deal aimed at preventing Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon, it’s vital to recognize that it greatly compounds the evidence that a key pillar of recent U.S. foreign policy is crumbling – the belief that many crucial American international objectives can successfully be pursued multilaterally. The terms of the deal powerfully indict extensive reliance on formal U.S. alliances and less formal groupings of allegedly like-minded countries. They also indict extensive reliance on international institutions like the United Nations. And they make more urgent than ever the development of alternatives.

Even President Obama has described the terms of the Iran deal as sub-optimal. But he and his aides have insisted that it is better than any feasible alternative non-military approaches to Iran’s nuclear program. The president appears to be correct on this score, and consequently, a compelling case can be made for the deal’s approval by Congress. Nonetheless, it’s imperative to understand why an agreement with genuinely disturbing weaknesses has in fact been the best peaceful option available.

The principal reason, as made clear by Mr. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, is that even the western powers involved in the Iran negotiations have decided that the economic sanctions to which they have agreed have exacted a high enough price, and that the further costs they might have to pay due to efforts to strengthen the deal are unacceptable. In other words, for Britain, France, and Germany, the desire to resume potentially lucrative commercial ties with Iran outweighs the benefits of increasing pressure on Iran’s economy in order to, say achieve the right of no-notice, “anytime, anywhere” inspections of suspect Iranian sites. Similarly, the allies judge new business opportunities to be more important than requiring Iranian compliance with the agreement’s terms for longer time spans before restoring its ability to buy arms – including ballistic missiles – on the international market.

Kerry has noted that the United Nations has been even less interested in keeping The Bomb out of Iran’s hands. He has pointed out that the Security Council had not decided to condition early ends to the weapons- and missile-buying embargoes on signing a nuclear deal with Iran. The Council conditioned these actions on nothing more than Iran’s agreement to participate in nuclear negotiations. That’s why, Kerry argues, he needed to agree to these relatively early sunsets to begin with, and why he insists that the United States will be isolated in the world community if Congress does not agree.

In other words, a goal described by the president as vital – keeping Iran nuclear weapons free – has been significantly compromised because the allies do not fully share U.S. concerns. Nor does most of the rest of the world. As a result of this fundamental disagreement, it’s difficult to understand, as I’ve written, why anyone supposes the allies or the UN membership would agree to reimposing (“snapping back”) sanctions while the agreement is in place, much less holding Iran’s feet to the fire once the deal’s various provisions lapse.

Economics just delivered a similar message to Washington. The United States had initially decided to oppose China’s decision to set up an international development bank to serve as an alternative to the existing World Bank. Chinese leaders argued that the Western-dominated Bank was too slow to finance the massive infrastructure needs of developing countries in Asia and elsewhere, but U.S. leaders suspected that China was really seeking to gain international influence at America’s expense. Washington also worried that a Chinese dominated aid bank would be managed irresponsibly from a financial and governance standpoint, and that its projects would run roughshod over the environment. Anyone who knows anything about Chinese financial, governance, and environmental practices would need to regard these fears as legitimate.

As I’ve written, however, despite this U.S. opposition, even most of its closest allies decided to join the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) anyway. They have cited two main reasons that even many prominent Americans agree with, but that turn out to be bogus on closer inspection – and that underscore the weaknesses of multilateralism. First, many of the allies themselves maintained that their participation would promote best business and environmental practices at the new institution. Second, they – and many influential Americans – describe the aid bank as an understandable Chinese reaction to the U.S. Congress’ refusal to approve increasing China’s voting power in the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Yet the U.S. allies that have jumped on the AIIB bandwagon are acting so eager to win new infrastructure contracts that it’s hard to believe they’ll pressure Beijing to adopt high standards. Moreover, increasing China’s IMF vote amounts to increasing the global clout of a government and economic system that’s by far the worst kleptocracy of all major countries. That’s a terrible idea, which in particular overlooks the multi-decade failure of western policies to moderate China’s behavior by integrating it into the world economy. The results to date have been a country that’s immensely stronger militarily, far more aggressive towards its neighbors, increasingly protectionist on the trade and investment fronts, and increasingly repressive towards domestic dissent.

The United States has never been especially successful at alliance management. In particular, it was never able to convince either its European or Asian allies to contribute proportionately to the common defense and security burden. And the Europeans frequently broke with Washington even on the military conflicts of the day – to the point of continuing to trade with North Vietnam during the Indochina conflict. But failures during the Cold War took place in a period when America possessed much greater relative military and economic power than today. So it needed allied cooperation much less to achieve goals it considered important. The Iran deal and AIIB failures show that a lack of allied cooperation is now enough to prevent America from achieving such goals.

Which means that, as during the Cold War, the main point is not the United States has been necessarily right and other countries necessarily wrong in these disputes. The main point is that America today finds itself in a position in which the rest of the world (including its closest allies) can – and have – fatally undermined measures needed to achieve objectives that Washington regards as deserving the utmost importance. As a result, whether its leaders know it or not, the nation faces a basic choice. It can either accept the global consensus, and decide to live in a world that its own leaders have stated will pose unacceptable risks. Or it can start figuring out ways to attain an acceptable level of security through its own devices.

The possibilities are wide-ranging, depending on how the American political system defines the nation’s overseas priorities, how much it decides to spend on achieving them, and how much wealth the economy can generate – thereby determining how intense the inevitable resource competition between “guns and butter” will be. My own hope is that U.S. leaders recognize two truths that seem to be recognized by the public already. First, foreign policy is about achieving important goals that cannot be attained through domestic policy. Second, although the United States lacks the power to become acceptably safe and secure by stabilizing, pacifying, enriching, or democratizing the rest of the world, it has ample power to survive and prosper even in the deeply flawed and indeed dangerous world it faces today.  

Worrisomely, though, President Obama doesn’t even yet seem to recognize the problem. Speaking at the West Point commencement last year, he made a point that’s become presidential boilerplate by now: “America should never ask permission to protect our people, our homeland, or our way of life.” Yet as demonstrated by his Iran diplomacy and, secondarily, by the AIIB fiasco, that’s exactly what the nation is doing.  And the rest of the world is anything but reluctant to say “No.”

 

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Reasons to Worry About Obama’s Iran Deal

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allies, China, European Union, Iran, Iran deal, Iran talks, lobbying, Middle East, multinational corporations, nuclear weapons, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, sanctions, United Nations

In order to evaluate the new deal to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons for the medium run, it’s necessary to examine it both down in the weeds, and at the 30,000-foot level. After reading the text that’s been made available so far, I have major concerns from both perspectives.

Regarding the details, the monitoring and verification provisions are of course paramount, given the nature of domestic politics and international relations generally, and the Iran regime’s record of violating agreements specifically. And major problems can be identified with both the Dispute Resolution Mechanism (DSM) the agreement sets up, and with its procedures for inspecting the full range of Iranian sites that might be engaged in now-banned nuclear activity.

The DSM (paragraphs 36 and 37 of Section I) lays out a process that could take as long as 80 days to complete. Disagreements over whether the agreement’s terms are being violated could in principle go through a Joint Commission established by the pact, a panel consisting of the foreign ministries of all members, an Advisory Board comprised of representatives of the two main parties to the dispute and “a third independent member,” then back to the Joint Commission, and finally to the United Nations Security Council.

Deadlines for all these phases look automatic, and if Iran is determined to be the guilty party, any sanctions that have been lifted would be reimposed if the matter is not resolved to everyone’s satisfaction within 30 days. That sounds good in principle.

But if you fly up to the 30,000-foot level, it becomes clear what is all too likely to happen in practice: Iran would have nearly three months to engage in banned activities. Moreover, influential companies in the United States and all the European countries party to the agreement would start lobbying furiously to paper over the problem and avoid both disrupting business they had already begun, and killing projects that were in works.

And even without such corporate campaigns, the European governments themselves, starved for growth, would feel major pressure to continue capitalizing on new investment, export, and thus job-creating opportunities in Iran. Indeed, economist Jeffrey Dorfman of the University of Georgia has written a terrific column making clear how powerful these appeasing commercial forces has already been in the post-Cold War era.

Moreover, all of the governments that had concluded this deal with Iran would have major vested interests in preserving it even in the face of compelling but less than overwhelming evidence of Iranian violations. It should go without saying that the leaders in power today would be highly reluctant to admit failure. But so would any successors from their political parties. And in Europe in particular, leaders across the spectrum would surely be tempted to cite one of the most prominent defenses offered for the new agreement: However flawed it may be, it’s better than nothing.

Drawn-out procedures appear to be an even bigger substantive problem when it comes to the agreement’s provisions for those sites not yet officially determined by previous diplomacy with Tehran to be part of Iran’s nuclear complex. Worse, this section of the deal (Annex 1, Section Q) arguably contains at least one major loophole.

Specifically, even before inspections of these facilities are even on the table, the international agency charged with this responsibility (the International Atomic Energy Agency) needs to “provide Iran the basis for [its] concerns and request clarification.” In other words, the IAEA needs to tell Iran exactly what it would be looking for. Iran has to respond, but only if its explanations are deemed unsatisfactory can the IAEA request access – while also being required to let the Iranians know what incriminating information it has at its disposal. And Iran can hem and haw enough to extend this process for a total of two weeks.

But access to the facilities could be denied by Iran for another week, as a series of “consultations” is undertaken. And if these fail, five of the eight members of the Joint Commission – made up of Russia and China, the European Union, and the Western countries that would feel the above “30,000-foot pressures” – would need to determine that intrusive measures were indeed required. And after that vote, Iran would have three more days to grant access. It’s not rocket science to figure out that these procedures would give the Tehran ample opportunity to hide whatever its interlocutors want to find.

And then there’s the possible loophole: The agreement requires that inspections “not be aimed at interfering with Iranian military or other national security activities.” This could simply mean that inspectors ultimately must be allowed anywhere they wish to go, but promise to tiptoe their way around. But the wording is so ambiguous that it’s easy to imagine Iran interpreting it as placing all military site completely off limits – because any foreign presence would interfere with their operations. Indeed, the very vagueness of the wording makes that scenario not a possibility but a likelihood – along with agreement by China and Russia, plus squishier western politicians and business interests.

We’re still left with that “better than nothing” argument. At this point, I worry that it’s at least nearly offset by the varying sunset provisions of the agreement. They mean that, by the Obama administration’s own reckoning, even if every syllable is implemented perfectly, largely because of the nuclear programs it will be permitted to keep, in 15 years Iran might be able to “break out” of the accord and build a functioning weapon in one year. (This break-out time today is thought by many – but not all – analysts to be two to three months.) The agreement can also be legitimately faulted for a sanctions relief schedule that could within months start greatly enriching a regime that Mr. Obama himself believes is threatening major American interests in the Middle East.

As a result, I’d vote it down if I was in the Senate and needed to decide right now. But there remain some important details that have not yet been made public, and the big strategic issues just mentioned (as well as others) are still eminently debatable. In addition, I can claim no expertise on the nuclear technology that the agreement is trying to control; those provisions might fall short of acceptability as well. So I’m glad I have some wiggle room of my own before coming to a definitive conclusion, and all Americans should be grateful that their legislators don’t need to rush to judgment, either.