Tag: NAFTA
Making retreat sound good
The United States is getting ready to retreat from Afghanistan. After more than 19 years of war following the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks, Washington has reached an agreement for a seven-day lull in attacks (not a formal ceasefire), after which the Taliban will negotiate a broader peace with Afghanistan government officials supposedly acting in their personal capacities. The US will reduce its presence from 13,000 troops to below 9,000 within months, whether or not the Afghans reach an agreement. Other arrangements remain secret but presumably include some sort of Taliban pledge not to provide safe haven to international terrorists as well as commitments on human rights, though these are likely to be vague, unenforceable, and perhaps worthless.
What this amounts to is US retreat from a theater in which more than about 2500 American military have lost their lives, and something like 10 times that number have been wounded. President Trump will vaunt this as fulfilling his campaign promise to end endless wars, but a substantial number of troops will remain at risk. The Afghanistan government may survive in Kabul, but the Taliban already control about 18% of its districts and contest another 48%:
US withdrawal and refocus on counterterrorism will likely increase those percentages, unless the Afghan security forces demonstrate much greater capability than they have to date.
At this point, there isn’t much of an alternative. The American public, pliable as it is on use of force in a crisis, doesn’t want recommitment to the fight in Afghanistan. President Trump has long been impatient with the war there. The Democrats don’t like it either. It has been clear since last fall’s abortive agreement, which Trump cancelled at the last minute due to renewed violence, that the American envoy, Zal Khalilzad, had no mandate or desire to press the Taliban for more than a decent exit and commitment to staving off Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
The Taliban see them at least in part as rivals for establishing Islamic governance, so there may be some reason to hope that they won’t quickly provide the kind of safe haven that Osama bin Laden enjoyed in the 1990s. Taliban ambitions mainly focus on restoring the Islamic Emirate inside Afghanistan, not projecting power beyond or provoking further intervention. They may even be prepared to fight the more internationally minded jihadis, if only to keep the Americans from renewed activity.
Afghanistan’s President Ghani, however, will have a lot to worry about once the Americans have drawn down. New York and Washington will not be at immediate risk, but Kabul will be. The population there may not want the Taliban to return, but history suggests the government has a hard time defending itself from insurgents in the countryside. Factiousness is endemic in Afghanistan. Ghani is not a man who compromises readily, and he wrote the book on Western-style statebuilding: Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World. Protecting the human rights of women, minorities, and Afghans committed to real democracy is going to be a tall order.
This is not the first of Trump’s retreats. He settled for little in the renegotiation of NAFTA, caved on the tariff war with the Chinese, backed off denuclearization of North Korea, all but abandoned the opposition to President Maduro in Venezuela, and floated a peace plan for Israel and Palestine that dropped like a stone. While he remains verbally belligerent to Iran, he thankfully seems to have given up on the drive to war. He has little to nothing to show for his belligerence and bravado on the world stage, where he is regarded more as buffoon than champion, except in Israel and Russia.
Being able to claim that he has ended the long war in Afghanistan will stand Trump in good stead with those who know nothing about Afghanistan during the coming election campaign. The flim-flam man will make a necessary retreat sound good.
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Trump’s radical foreign policy fails
Time for a roundup on where President Trump stands on his promise to deliver great deals for America. Spoiler alert: there are no surprises and only one modest success.
Every administration chooses its priorities. Trump has chosen Iran, North Korea, China, Russia, Venezuela, NAFTA, and immigration.
The “maximum pressure” program on Iran has caused economic distress but no willingness to renegotiate the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action (JCPOA), from which the United States withdrew. Iran is back to enriching uranium and accumulating quantities above the JCPOA limits, but Tehran is still hoping Europe, Russia, and China will find ways to import its oil. Iran is also flexing its muscles in the strait of Hormuz, signaling its ability to cause an oil supply disruption that would hike oil prices globally.
North Korea is thumbing its nose at Trump’s effort to portray Kim Jong-un as his best friend. His short-range missile launches are a clear signal of defiance. There is no progress to report in the nuclear negotiations, and it is increasingly clear that the US will need to settle for an agreement that falls way short of the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization it has sought. Some sort of freeze is the best that can be hoped for.
The trade war with China is going badly: it is costing both Americans and Chinese a lot, slowing economic growth worldwide, and undermining global norms for trade and investment that the Trump Administration claims to be defending. There is little hope it will end soon. Trump seems to be committed to making the tariffs permanent, but it is hard to picture how he can face the electorate in 2020 if the tariffs have led the world and the US into recession.
Trump promised improved relations with Russia, and he has not retreated from his effort to befriend President Putin and hold him blameless. But Moscow has made life difficult: its documented interference in the 2016 election, its continued efforts worldwide to counter US interests, its occupation of part of Ukraine, its repression of domestic dissent, and a Congress determined to hold Putin accountable has forced Trump to tighten and expand sanctions. Relations with Russia are not improving (and shouldn’t).
Trump is ratcheting up sanctions on Venezuela, trying to force out President Maduro. But so far shock and awe has not shocked or awed the Venezuelans, as Harold Trinkunas put it in today’s New York Times. President Maduro is still in power. Juan Guaidó and his supporters are still in the streets, where enthusiasm has flagged. Most of Latin America would like a negotiated settlement, but John Bolton is not up for that. He wants Maduro to flee.
The NAFTA renegotiation was an apparent success so far, as it generated a new US-Mexico-Canada Agreement with modest updating and improvements. But the negotiation with Ottawa and Mexico City was only half the challenge. The new agreement faces serious challenges to its approval in September in a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives that President Trump has done little or nothing to court. Will the House really approve NAFTA 2.0 while it is conducting investigations that could lead to impeachment?
Immigration is the one area of actual success for Trump, if you buy into the need to reduce it: illegal entries and asylum seekers are said to be down. Refugee entries are definitely down. But the price has been astronomical: separating children from parents, inhumane and even deadly conditions in detention facilities, denial of refugee resettlement to people in danger of their lives, and inspiration to white supremacists to commit violence. And for those who think the wall is important: little of it is being built.
The Trump Administration is a radical one: it has tried in all these areas to achieve goals that are extreme. The failures are obvious. The question is whether enough Americans will care. Certainly people worldwide do: America is not popular these days, especially but not only with its European allies. Trump is a white supremacist, but the Nordics he so much admires don’t like him.
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