Day: August 23, 2020
Trump’s national insecurity
President Trump has made a big show of Tik Tok’s threat to US national security and is forcing its owner to sell the app to an American company. But its data collection on mostly American teenagers is not unusual or particularly threatening. It is not even clear that Tik Tok is worse than Facebook in kow-towing to Beijing’s political preferences.
So how is Donald Trump doing on real threats to American national security? Here are a few:
- The Russian offer of bounties to the Taliban to kill Americans: Trump is still denying the fact, even though his Secretary of State claims to have belatedly protested to the Russian Foreign minister.
- Russian efforts to affect the outcome of the November election: Trump appears to be helping more than hindering them, mainly by avoiding any effort to counter Moscow. The Russians are on his side, and he knows it.
- The North Korean nuclear and missile threat to the US: Kim Jong-un has told the Americans to forget about economic incentives to get him to give up nuclear weapons. There is no progress at all on limiting them or his missiles.
- The Iranian nuclear program: It is closer to having the materials and technology to build a nuclear weapon than it has ever been previously. Trump has begged the Iranians to come back to the negotiating table, which they refuse to do without sanctions relief that is far more likely in a Biden administration. Tehran will bide its time.
- Al Qaeda and the Islamic State: While the former has not had any recent spectacular successes lately and the latter has lost its territorial caliphate in Iraq and Syria, both are still active jihadist threats to the US. Al Qaeda has burrowed into a dozen or more states in one form or another. It is only a matter of time until they try again to hit the US.
- Taking down Venezuelan President Maduro: Admittedly its a stretch to say he is a threat to the US, but the Trump Administration views him as one. They have failed to displace him. Having failed Trump named the person in charge to handle the Iran failure as well. There is a kind of logic there, but not a productive one.
Where I would rate the Administration partly effective is in responding to China’s technological espionage, but in ways that are so clumsy and self-serving that most of the world is not supportive. Nor is it clear that Beijing is reducing its intellectual property theft.
In trying to block Huawei from selling 5G technology, the Administration has also had some modest successes, like the UK’s decision to roust out Huawei technology. But even the threat of not allowing connections to the US has not bullied many other countries into cutting Huawei off from their telecomms.
The sad fact is that the US is far weaker on the international scene than it was four years ago. President Trump has offended allies, taken little or ineffective action against adversaries, and failed to reduce or contain real threats. Making America great again internationally has meant making America less safe, less respected, and more vulnerable.
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Stevenson’s army, August 23
– SAIS Prof Hal Brands argues that the Federalist papers lay out good ideas for a grand strategy.
-There’s a new, well-reviewed documentary about the US-promoted coup in Iran in 1953. Be on the lookout for it.
– I just saw, and highly recommend, a documentary about the failed Iranian hostage rescue mission in 1980, Desert One. It has interviews with Iranians, senior US officials, and several military participants. It doesn’t discuss the aftermath or lessons derived from that failure, the most significant of which was the military reform movement leading to the Goldwater-Nichols Act. [I was involved in the SASC briefings and hearings after Desert One and worked with many of the people who developed GNA.]
FYI, I’ll be away a few days and unable to read my favorite broadsheet newspapers, so unlikely to send much around.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Silence is also a message, of disloyalty
Donald Trump, who often sounds as if he can’t control the words coming out of his mouth, is strikingly silent on some things:
- the Kremlin’s poisoning of Alexei Navalny;
- Russian support to Belarus President Lukashenko’s falsification of election results;
- Russian bounties paid to Taliban fighters for killing Americans.
There is a common denominator here: Vladimir Putin, to whom Trump has been sending fawning letters for a long time. The Senate last week confirmed on a bipartisan basis that Putin sought to help Trump in the 2016 election. He is also trying now, the US intelligence community says.
So it is no surprise that Trump hesitates to speak up against Putin. Trump likes people who like him, as confirmed once again this week when he welcomed the support of the QAnon conspiracy theorists, whom the FBI characterizes as a domestic terrorism threat. Putin supports Trump, Trump doesn’t criticize Putin. QAnon support Trump, Trump doesn’t criticize QAnon.
But I doubt that is the whole story. Trump has also shown disloyalty to those who are loyal to him, claiming that he barely knows them once they get in trouble. Steve Bannon got a taste of Trump’s disloyalty when he was arrested this week for defrauding people who gave money for building a wall on the border. Trump and Don Jr. had welcomed this effort, but now the President says “”It’s a very sad thing by Mr. Bannon…I didn’t like that project. I thought it was a project being done for showboating reasons…I didn’t want a wall that was going to be an inferior wall.” Of course that won’t stop Trump from pardoning Bannon or commuting his sentence after conviction to prevent him from spilling the beans about Trump.
Trump has never to my knowledge said anything even remotely critical of Putin. The message he is sending by his silence is that Putin can do no wrong. The President of the United States will not call him out publicly (and there is no indication Trump has done it privately). Trump’s motives are obscure, but the likelihood is that Russian financing of his real estate is a major factor. Putin is enjoying his impunity. He has semi-successfully intervened not only in Ukraine but also in Syria and Libya. He is backing a notorious election fraud in Belarus. He is murdering opponents at home and abroad. He intervened in the 2016 US election and is doing it again in 2020.
It is true that under Congressional pressure the Trump Administration has levied sanctions on Russia, mainly for its invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea as well as malicious cyber activities and other malfeasances. But even the attempted murder by poisoning of a Russian defector in the UK did not arouse Trump to protest. Trump has said he would welcome foreign assistance in his election campaign, as he did in 2016, violating US law. And he has speculated about pardoning Edward Snowden, who sought refuge in Russia (and got it) after publishing American secrets without availing himself of normal channels of dissent or whistle-blower protection.
President Trump’s loyalties are all too clear. They are not to the United States. He has proven far more loyal to Moscow. That’s the message his silence sends.
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