Our So-Called Foreign Policy: No Common Sense, No Peace in the Middle East

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Aaron David Miller, Arabs, Bill Clinton, Blob, Camp David, Ehud Barak, Gaza, globalism, Hamas, Henry A. Kissinger, Israel, Middle East, Nathan Thrall, occupied territories, Oslo Accords, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Palestine Liberation Organization, Palestinians, PLO, Robert Malley, settlements, Six-Day War, United Nations, West Bank, Yasser Arafat

If I was a gambler, here’s a big bet I’d make:  As certain as the continuation of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is, the continuation and worsening of the (often well-meaning) delusions and (often willful) ignorance it’s spawned is even more certain.

I’m not talking about some of the worst absurdities generated by the most recent fighting – like claims that the big excess of Palestinian over Israeli casualties reveals some special degree of ruthlessness on the Israeli side, or an equally special need for Israel to display more restraint responding to rocket attacks on its people. Leave aside for now the precautions Israel clearly has taken to minimize collateral damage or the Hamas fondness for human shields. Israel’s light losses have nothing to do with its enemies’ scruples – not when you’re talking about the firing of literally thousands of projectiles. Instead, this enormous number of rockets took such a meager toll largely because of effective defenses. Put differently, if Hamas didn’t kill many more Israelis, it wasn’t for lack of trying.

Instead, I’m referring to more polished talking points that for decades have dominated the debate over this conflict as conducted inside U.S. administrations, among most elected national officials, and by the mainstream bipartisan globalist foreign policy “Blob” of academics, former officials, think tankers, and journalists. Not that these views are all in perfect lockstep, but the central idea, in its current form, is that the Israelis’ are now so much more powerful than any combination of their enemies that the most sensible course of action to take is cutting the Palestinians a break. In victory, magnanimity, as Winston Churchill famously said. But rather than make entirely affordable concessions, Israel has chosen to rub the Palestinians’ nose in defeat, especially with more aggressive West Bank settlement policies and an ever harsher overall occupation.

In one not-trivial way, this new conventional wisdom improves on its predecessor. That perspective held that, at some point, the power balance between Israel and the Palestinians would start tipping against the former – either because the Palestinians, including Israel’s Arabs, would become so much more numerous than the Jews, or because they’d in tandem with their brethren across the Middle East their power would become irresistible). Therefore, Israel’s only hope or long-term survival would be compromising while it still had any leverage at all.

I’ve written previously on why, from an International Affairs 101 perspective, the earlier version of the conventional wisdom was so wrong-headed. Especially in the wake of the first Persian Gulf War, it was so out of whack with the actual distribution of power in the Middle East, and what by even then was the Arab wotld’s glaringly obvious indifference to the Palestinians, that it could only hope to feed Palestinian pipe dreams that they could gain at the negotiating table through a combination of obstructionism and international pressure what they could not possibly win on the battlefield.

But the uproar over the latest fighting is exposing two intimately related flaws in the new conventional wisdom that are comparably serious – and far more important than childish squabbles over who fired first, or about acceptable and unacceptable levels of force.

The first has to do with Israel’s own alleged obstinacy. However inflexible or high-handed Israel may or may not seem today, there can be no question that the Jewish state has at various times pulled back to varying degrees – including the dismantling of settlements – from various territories taken over after the Six-Day War of 1967. The Palestinian leadership has moved on important issues as well – chiefly on Israel’s right to exist in peace (in the Oslo Accords of 1993). But these two instances of compromise could not be more dramatically different .

Israeli territorial concessions – including withdrawals from the Sinai peninsula (completed in 1982) and Gaza (completed in 2005), from Jericho on the West Bank (1994), and from some West Bank and Gaza settlements freezes and even  some teardowns (in the early 2000s) – entailed tangible assets that directly enhanced the security of this geographically tiny state by making it less tiny. Moreover, although Israeli settler groups have periodically violated these Israeli policies, the Jewish state’s decisions have been the product of an international actor that is capable of enforcing its agreements and that has chosen to do so.

The Palestinian concessions on Israel’s right to exist in secure conditions entailed intangibles that had no material affect on the regional strategic situation because the Palestinians have always been powerless to end Israel’s existence. Indeed, they conferred on Israel no benefits that the Israelis could not substantially gain for themselves – and in fact had gained because of their military superiority.

Just as important, Palestinian leadership groups have never effectively eliminated threats to Israeli lives and property emanating from their community for any substantial period of time.

The question of whether these Palestinian groups could not or would not eliminate these threats has been actively debated, but from the Israeli standpoint, the matter is completely academic. What counts have been the results, and they’ve been sorely inadequate, to put it kindly. In other words, until Israel has reasons to believe that further concessions will result in major, lasting payoffs, the case for such flexibility or magnanimity or however you describe it will be an understandably hard sell.

The second fatal flaw in the recent conventional wisdom has to do with the belief that many more significant Palestinian concessions would be in the offing if peace talks began. The Arab-Israeli conflict may fairly be said to have begun in an act of Arab (including Palestinian) rejectionism – of the 1947 United Nations plan partitioning what had been British Palestine, and which led to Israel’s creation in the first place. This rejectionism, moreover, set a revealing precedent: In the ensuing war begun by the Arab states, Israel won some 50 percent more land than the UN plan allotted it.

These two patterns of Israeli flexibility and Palestinian rejectionism seem to have been illustrated most tragically (and especially for the latter) at the Camp David peace talks in 2000. There’s been no definitive account of the last-minute breakdown of these negotiations, and therefore it hasn’t yet been possible to confirm widespread claims that Palestine Liberation Organization leader (PLO) Yasser Arafat bears most of the blame. But I’ve been struck by the following two observations by former U.S. diplomats involved in the Clinton administration mediation efforts and who are by no means pro-Israel hardliners.

The first comes from Aaron David Miller, a 25-year State Department veteran who worked extensively on Middle East issues. Writing on the twentieth anniversary of the Camp David talks, he recalls that then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak “went further than any Israeli prime minister had gone before” – and on core issues “like borders, security, refugees, and of course Jerusalem’s ownership.” Yet Miller continued, his proposals were nowhere close to what Arafat needed….”

As Miller explains, the PLO chief was tightly constrained by the demands of hardliners in his own organization and those even further out on the extremes, and given the brutal nature of Palestinian and wider Arab politics, understandably feared that any departure from the rejectionist line would bring a bullet into his head. And Barak’s own ability to bring Israeli opinion along was doubtful at best, especially since his political future looked doubtful.

So his argument that the U.S. mediation effort was doomed from the start, mainly it seems because the issues dividing the two sides were “mission impossibles” (but also because the American President made serious tactical goofs), and that the blame for failure was shared, appears reasonable at first glance.

But this interpretation would be genuinely constructive only if the Palestinians and Israelis were then or are now somewhat evenly matched. That’s not remotely the case. Most crucially, the Camp David failure shows that, as desperate as the plight of the Palestinian people was not only at that moment, but had been for decades, their designated representative ruled out of hand decisions that could alleviate their present suffering and build a foundation – however fragile and, yes, uncertain, for future progress because they wouldn’t deliver unalloyed, immediate victory. Indeed, as the author notes, Arafat “was in no hurry to reach any kind of agreement” and had even warned his American hosts that “a premature summit might lead to an explosion.”

Arafat’s warning proved prescient, since Palestinian forces retained impressive capabilities to spark what Miller calls “a hellish descent into violence and terror” for the region. But their continuing inability to triumph or meaningfully change the military facts on the ground ensured that their own already immiserated people would pay by far the highest price.

Revealingly, Miller’s account is roughly paralleled by a piece from a former Clinton administration colleague, Robert Malley.

Malley is plainly much more sympathetic to the Palestinians, and their leaders, than Miller. And perhaps the sharp edge in this article reflects its writing practically in the immediate aftermath of the Camp David failure, rather than from two decades into the future.

All the same, it’s significant that he portrays the years of diplomatic near-paralysis that preceded Camp David as ones marked by “more Israeli settlements, less freedom of movement, and worse economic conditions [for the Palestinian people].” Further, Malley implicitly accepts the view that “Barak broke every conceivable taboo and went as far as any Israeli prime minister had gone or could go” – again, unquestionably important given the lopsided balance of power.

And although the author writes that “Strictly speaking, there never was” an actual offer from the hyper-cautious Israelis, he also argues that proposals presented by Clinton several months later – albeit, near the very end of his presidency – “showed that the distance travelled since Camp David was indeed considerable, and almost all in the Palestinians’ direction.” He goes so far as to add that

“Offer or no offer, the negotiations that took place between July 2000 and February 2001 make up an indelible chapter in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Taboos were shattered, the unspoken got spoken, and, during that period, Israelis and Palestinians reached an unprecedented level of understanding of what it will take to end their struggle.”

Yet Arafat still said No, in the evident belief that his most prudent response to an unusually promising opportunity for something better was a veiled threat was rejecting the good in favor of his concept of the perfect. Why was he acting even in the slightest bit picky, however, despite the inevitable result of condemning his people to even more hardship?

As I wrote above, the answer to this paramount question – beside which all the debates surrounding the latest Gaza fighting are harmful distractions – is that Palestinian leaders have been encouraged to assume that any number of (thoroughly irresponsible) international actors (e.g., members of the UN General Assembly and even Security Council) could eventually hand them the clout they have no potential to win through their own devices. The result – which in their eyes evidently has been worth long-term suffering in the West Bank and Gaza – would enable them to deal with Israel at least as equals and possibly, in combination with a near-global consensus, as superiors.

And my confidence in this conclusion has just been borne out upon reading a third piece on failed Middle East diplomacy whose author (an analyst at an entirely mainstream Blob-y think tank) lays the blame overwhelmingly on Israel (while curiously admitting that it holds all the regional power cards and that its preference for a fundamentally secure status quo over a promised rosy future makes perfect self-interested sense).

According to Nathan Thrall, the Palestinians have long hoped that “the support of the majority of the world’s states” will “eventually result” in the kind of two-state agreement that these states have repeatedly make clear they support, but one that is totally unhinged from relative power considerations – that in fact mocks these by pretending that Israel’s pre-1967 borders are adequately secure – and that does nothing to assauge Israeli concerns paper promises that its new Palestinian counterpart will be willing or even able to halt attacks from its own territory.

In a 1974 interview, former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger ruefully observed that Americans “believe that every problem is soluble,” are “at ease with redoing the world,” and suggested that his compatriots instinctively rebel “against the pragmatic aspect of foreign policy that is security-oriented, that achieves finite objectives, that seeks to settle for the best attainable, rather than for the best.” He linked this confidence with favored geographic circumstances that obscured the tradeoffs that, for less fortunate countries, are often the inescapable price of simply scraping by.

For all its current advantages, it’s difficult to imagine a country with less in common with the United States in these literally existential senses than Israel. The sooner a critical mass of Americans and their leaders recognize this gulf, and its implications, the more helpful they’ll be able to be not only to the Israelis, but to the Palestinians, who have for so long been the greatest victims of Middle East delusions.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Biden’s Aides Show How Not to Deal with China

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Alaska, Antony J. Blinken, Asia-Pacific, Barack Obama, Biden, China, Donald Trump, global norms, globalism, Hong Kong, human rights, Indo-Pacific, international law, Jake Sullivan, liberal global order, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Reinhold Niebuhr, sanctions, Serenity Prayer, South China Sea, Taiwan, tariffs, tech, Trade, Uighurs, United Nations, Yang Jiechi

You knew (at least I did) that America’s top foreign policy officials were going to step in it when they led off their Alaska meeting yesterday with Chinese counterparts by describing U.S. policy toward the People’s Republic as first and foremost a globalist exercise in strengthening “the rules-based international order” rather than protecting and advancing Americas’ own specific national interests.

This emphasis on the part of Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan simultaneously made clear that they had no clue on how to communicate effectively to the Chinese or about China’s own aims, and – as was worrisomely true for the Obama administration in which both served – unwittingly conveyed to Beijing that they were more concerned about dreaming up utopian global arrangements than about dealing with the United States’ own most pressing concerns in the here and now.

It’s true that, in his opening remarks at the public portion of yesterday’s event that Blinken initially refered to advancing “the interests of the United States.” But his focus didn’t stay there for long. He immediately pivoted to contending:

“That system is not an abstraction. It helps countries resolve differences peacefully, coordinate multilateral efforts effectively and participate in global commerce with the assurance that everyone is following the same rules. The alternative to a rules-based order is a world in which might makes right and winners take all, and that would be a far more violent and unstable world for all of us. Today, we’ll have an opportunity to discuss key priorities, both domestic and global, so that China can better understand our administration’s intentions and approach.”

Where, however, has been the evidence over…decades that China views the contemporary world as one in which peaceful resolution of differences is standard operating procedure, much less desirable? That multilateral efforts are worth coordinating effectively? That might shouldn’t make right and that China shouldn’t “take all” whenever it can?

Even more important, where is the evidence that China views what globalists like Blinken view as a system to be legitimate in the first place? Indeed, Yang Jiechi, who in real terms outranks China’s foreign minister as the country’s real foreign affairs czar, countered just a few minutes later by dismissing Blinken’s “so-called rules-based international order” as a selfish concoction of “a small number of countries.” He specifically attacked it for enabling the United States in particular to “excercise long-arm jurisdiction and suppression” and “overstretch the national security through the use of force or financial hegemony….”

Shortly afterwards, he added, “I don’t think the overwhelming majority of countries in the world would recognize…that the rules made by a small number of people would serve as the basis for the international order.”

Yang touted as a superior alternative “the United Nations-centered international system and the international order underpinned by international law.” But of course, even if you swallow this Chinese line (and you shouldn’t), it’s been precisely that system’s universality, and resulting need to pretend the existence of an equally universal consensus on acceptable behavior and good faith on the part of all members, that’s resulted in its general uselessness.

Meanwhile, surely striking Beijing as both cynical and utterly hollow were Blinken’s efforts to justify U.S. criticisms of China’s human rights abuses as threats to “the rules-based order that maintains global stability. That’s why they’re not merely internal matters and why we feel an obligation to raise these issues here today.”

After all, whatever any decent person thinks of Beijing’s contemptible crackdown in Hong Kong, arguably genocidal campaigns against the Uighur minority, and brutally totalitarian system generally, what genuinely serious person could believe that the United States, or other democracies, had any intention or capability of halting these practices?

What might have made an actually useful, and credible, impression on the Chinese from a U.S. standpoint would have been blunt declarations that (a) Beijing’s saber-rattling toward (global semiconductor manufacturing leader) Taiwan and sealanes-jeopardizing expansionism in the South China Sea, and cyber-attacks were major threats to American security and prosperity that the United States would keep responding to with all means necessary; and (b) that Washington would continue using a full-range of tariffs and sanctions against predatory Chinese economic practices as long as they continued harming U.S. businesses and their employees. That is, Blinken and Sullivan should have emphasized Chinese actions that hurt and endanger Americans – and against which in the economic sphere, Donald Trump’s policies showed Washington could make a significant difference.

It’s possible that in the private sessions, President Biden’s emissaries will dispense with the grandstanding and zero in on the basics. (Although that shift would raise the question of why this approach was deemed unsuitable for the public.) But the Biden-ites weirdly advertised in advance that China’s economic abuses and the technology development threat it poses wouldn’t be U.S. priorities at any stage of the Alaska meetings.

In the mid-20^th century, American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr popularized (although probably didn’t write) a devotion called the “Serenity Prayer” whose famous first lines read “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” I’m hoping someone puts copies into Blinken’s and Sullivan’s briefcases for their flight back from Alaska.

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

Tags

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.