Month: June 2017
Obstruction
It is clear in former FBI Director Comey’s written testimony that he thought President Trump tried to obstruct the investigation of his former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn. Comey quotes the President:
“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”
What is slightly less clear is whether Trump was trying to obstruct the investigation into his own contacts with the Russians.
As Comey explains in his memo, it is standard procedure to assure a target of a foreign intelligence operation that the target is not under investigation, only the attempt to influence or blackmail him. That is what Comey says he did, more than once, in connection with the dossier a former British intelligence agent had prepared on Trump’s Russia connections. Trump couches all his comments about himself in terms of removing the cloud from his presidency by making it known to the public that he himself was not under investigation, which is arguably not obstruction unless that intent can be demonstrated.
Comey did not tell Trump that his and his campaign’s connections to the Russians were not under investigation. That is now the objective of Special Counsel Mueller’s efforts, as a result of Trump’s firing Comey. Trump presumably did not understand the distinction between a counter-intelligence investigation in which he was the target of a foreign operation and one in which his own activities might be at issue. He is not a guy who readily perceives such fine distinctions.
According to Comey’s testimony, Trump’s concerns in several conversations revolve primarily around his own public image and Comey’s personal loyalty. Neither of those surprises. The conversations sound more like a Mafia boss squeezing a subordinate than a president talking to an independent agency chief responsible for prosecuting crimes. Comey reports Trump saying,
“I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.” I [Comey] didn’t move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence.
That must have been fun!
In my experience, smart US government officials are assiduously respectful of the judicial process. They do not try to interfere to affect their course unless given an explicit opportunity to answer questions, testify, or provide a deposition. Trump’s behavior was out of order, but proving it was criminal obstruction would require evidence of intent, which is not yet available with respect to the President’s own interactions with the Russians, even if it would be pretty easy to assume it.
Comey’s testimony is prepared with admirable skill, literary style, and forethought. I doubt anyone will get much more out of him in the oral testimony tomorrow. This is a man capable of discipline, restraint, and good judgment, even if he behaved badly towards Hillary Clinton. Trump would be well-advised to rethink tweeting spontaneously tomorrow, or tweeting at all. Anything he says might be used against him in a court of law, as his tweets on the travel ban will be.
Of course I won’t mind if the President shortens his time in office. He has already done major damage to the US healthcare system, American alliances, and the international system. He would gladly sell us out to the Russians if provided the opportunity. I wouldn’t want to obstruct his self-destruction.
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Uncharted territory
All eyes are on testimony today by National Intelligence Director Coats and Acting FBI Director McCabe as well as tomorrow’s appearance former FBI Director Comey concerning the President’s efforts to obstruct investigations into his links to Moscow. Coats and McCabe have already disappointed, by refusing to talk about their conversations with President Trump. I’d have been surprised if they did. President Nixon charted this territory more than 40 years ago, with consequences. The truth will out, one way or another.
At the same time, the Middle East is once again entering uncharted territory.
Qatar has long been at odds with the Kingdom, mainly over Doha’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood and for Al Jazeera, a mainstay of broadcast news and talk in the Arab world. Apparently encouraged by President Trump’s plea to cut off terrorist financing, the Saudis neglected their own culpability in allowing resources to flow to terrorists and have turned the screws instead on Qatar, breaking diplomatic relations, cutting off trade and transport, and compelling Gulf Cooperation Council members to follow suit. Then today the Islamic State attacked the parliament building and a monument to Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran, in a transparent effort to heighten sectarian conflict.
President Trump’s gullibility in swallowing whole the Kingdom’s allegation that blocking Qatari financing for the Muslim Brotherhood would be a big win against terrorism has to make them worry. But Doha is unlikely to evict the large American air base it built and hosts, if only because that would leave Qatar even more isolated. Qatar’s only places to turn are Iran, with which it shares a gas field in the Gulf, and Turkey, which is reportedly rushing troops to the emirate. Saudi Arabia has supposedly issued a long list of demands. When that is not met, an effort to topple Qatar’s emir, while perhaps not the Kingdom’s strongest suit, may well be where things are headed.
The attack in Iran, following on ISIS attacks in London, Baghdad, and elsewhere suggests the Islamic State is well-launched on its post-caliphate phase. Mosul has mostly fallen. Kurdish and Arab forces are investing Raqqa. Free Syrian Army and regime-allied forces are racing for Deir Azzour and Bukamel on the Iraqi border. ISIS will be going underground and into the desert, looking for opportunities and trying to inspire homegrown attacks in many different countries. That presents no serious military threat, but it strikes fear and loathing into more people than ISIS’s rule in Mosul and Raqqa. That is terror’s main purpose, which President Trump seems happy to amplify with his travel ban and other gross over-reactions.
The net result is a tangle. Washington is backing the Kingdom, even though Riyadh’s actions are splitting the Gulf Arabs and weakening the united front against terrorism and Iran that President Trump claims to have created last month. At the same time, the Islamic State has attacked Iran, which blames the attack on its sworn enemies, Saudi Arabia and the US. Iran is an enemy of the Islamic State (though not always of Al Qaeda), which would put it on the same side in the fight against ISIS as the US, but don’t expect anyone in Tehran or Washington to acknowledge that. In the Middle East, the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. In uncharted territory, some rules of thumb don’t apply.
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Dobrodošli!
I’m thrilled Montenegro joined NATO yesterday, not least because it signals to the rest of the Balkans that the door to Atlantic institutions is still open. But I’ve got to admit that it is a difficult moment for the Alliance: Russia is doing its best to block NATO expansion and the President of the United States is doing his best to undermine its mutual defense commitment.
Moscow’s efforts are by now obvious: an attempted coup in Podgorica last October, hybrid warfare efforts in Macedonia, political and financial support for Bosnia’s Republika Srpska. A rational patriot would react to these attacks on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of their respective countries by trying to get into NATO, not stay out of it. Only Serbia has (so far) concluded that it is better off outside NATO than inside it, even if its newly inaugurated president thinks NATO membership would solve many of the countries problems and appears to regret the domestic opposition to it.
But if NATO is now more attractive than ever to the Balkan aspirants, which of course include Kosovo as well, the Article 5 commitment to mutual defense is on shakier ground than ever. President Trump not only omitted it from his speech at NATO. He also neglected to mention it either before or after that speech. Defense Secretary Mattis is busy reassuring the world that the President did recommit to Article 5, but that simply is not true anywhere but in the talking points that the Pentagon and State Department proposed and the President did not use.
What difference does this make? Here is the text of Article 5:
The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.
The mutual defense requirement was triggered for the first time after 9/11, as as an expression of allied solidarity with the United States, including patrolling by allied AWACS over the US and later other measures in support of US operations in the Mediterranean. NATO has also taken collective defense measures in response to threats to Turkey and threats from Russia.
Would NATO defend Montenegro? I have my doubts, especially with Trump in the presidency. Fortunately, an attack on the small country from another state isn’t likely. Podgorica for now at least has good relations with its neighbors, even if the Kosovo parliament has refused to allow demarcation of the border. Far more likely: Russia will continue to try to destabilize Montenegro, using the anti-independence Serb opposition and other Russophiles as its hybrid warfare instrument. Another assassination attempt cannot be ruled out, though Serbia is presumably still ready to foil it.
NATO members, Montenegro now included, are of course expected to meet their own defense requirements. Each NATO member by 2024 is expected to spend 2% of GNP on defense. Montenegro does not meet that goal yet. It makes little difference to Alliance capabilities whether it does so, but its claim on NATO support would be enhanced if it did. Petty it may seem, but President Trump is nothing if not petty.
He allowed Montenegro membership in NATO, once the Senate had approved it overwhelmingly and Defense Secretary Mattis presumably weighed in heavily. For that, not only Montenegro but also the rest of the Balkans should be grateful.
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Self defeating
I’ve been off enjoying wife Jackie’s Sarah Lawrence reunion, which followed hard on my own Haverford festivities. But I’ve not been completely out of touch. By now, it should be obvious to all that
- The President of the United States has inappropriate and counterproductive reactions to terrorist events.
- His withdrawal of the United States from the Paris climate accord is inane.
Let us consider these two propositions.
The London attacks on Saturday provoked Trump to tweets that called his own travel ban a Travel Ban (thus removing any doubt about its intentions), suggested that current American security measures are inadequate (who, pray tell, is responsible for that?), criticized the (Muslim) mayor of London for trying to reassure the city’s population that the appropriate security measures had been taken, retweeted an exaggerated report of the number killed from a notoriously unreliable source, and suggested that the use of knives by the attackers has somehow silenced the gun debate in the US.
I can’t imagine anyone I know having any one of these reactions to an attack in which the police reacted quickly and effectively to prevent what might otherwise have been a much more serious loss of life. Terrorists seek to create terror. Trump’s reactions were fearful, amplified the magnitude of the attack, and brought him to bizarre conclusions. Contrast this with his personal failure to react to the murder by a white supremacist of two men trying to defend a Muslim and a black woman in Portland, Oregon on Friday. That didn’t fit the Islamic extremism narrative Trump is trying to promote. Hence the silence, even though two Americans were murdered. Homicidal white supremacist attacks in America have been almost three times frequent as Islamist attacks since 9/11.
As for climate change, the President sought to justify his decision on the basis of falsehoods. That of course made no difference to him. Nor did support for the Paris climate agreement from American industry. He preferred to claim to be saving the relatively few coal miner jobs that remain, which won’t happen, and to be serving the interests of the citizens of Pittsburgh, which gave up coal and steel as its primary industrial activities decades ago and voted 75% for Hillary Clinton (not quite the 80% the mayor claimed).
The international ramifications of withdrawal from the Paris accord are many:
- The US may still have a seat at the table, but it will no longer be able to speak with any moral authority on the issue of climate change.
- Leadership on that will shift to China, which is giving up a lot of coal-powered electrical plants, and to Europe, both of which are forging ahead with renewable sources of energy that will produce lots more jobs than those lost in the coal industry.
- No country will in the future accept any American push on environmental standards to be included in trade agreements–all will first require that the US re-commit to Paris.
- Trump’s personal standing with many world leaders, already shaky, will decline sharply.
America may still meet its Paris agreement goals, because natural gas is replacing coal rapidly due to market forces and American states and private industry will continue to try to limit greenhouse gases. That would be the ultimate irony: we pay the price for getting out of the agreement, but still meet its targets. That and Trump’s reaction to the London incident are self-defeating.
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Justice takes forethought
My friends at the Syria Justice & Accountability Centre, on whose board I serve, have had some recent success in their media outreach. Here is the audio of their appearance on National Public Radio yesterday, focused on their collaborative efforts to apply technology in exploiting the massive data base on wartime abuses they have assembled:
NPR followed that with a Facebook Live discussion:
The Al Jazeera website has also been paying attention.
None of us think justice is imminent in Syria. But that makes those who do this work all the more valuable: it will be too late to collect the data once conditions permit trials.
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