Tag: North Korea
Find a way out
It would be hard to add much to what others have written justifying impeachment of President Trump. Certainly any Democratic president doing what Trump has done would have long ago been impeached, including by the current Democratic-controlled House. The only serious argument against impeachment is the Republican-majority Senate’s unwillingness to convict and remove him from office. That argument can be countered: without impeachment, Trump will be able to run in 2020 claiming (convincingly only to his die-hard supporters) that even the Democrats have not found anything he did that was wrong.
Underlying many of Trump’s impeachable offenses is one big one: he has erased the line between public and private interest. The usual American definition of corruption is use of public office for private gain. If you erase the line between public and private interest, nothing is corrupt: you can use government funds to have military air crews, security people, and White House staff stay at hotels you own. You can favor diplomats and business people who patronize your resorts. You can play inordinate amounts of golf on government time, you can give classified information to foreigners you regard as friends, and of course you can pressure a foreign government to investigate already debunked allegations against your likely opponent in the next election.
Trump has no concept of the public interest. He is all about himself. This is the essence of his character: narcissism. Morality, principles, norms, standards, and procedures are all irrelevant. Facts are what he determines them to be. Global warming isn’t happening. A hurricane headed up the East Coast of the US will hit Alabama. Relationships are what he says they are. He is in love with Kim Jong-un, who is good because he sends Trump nice letters despite the blatant cruelty of his ferociously dictatorial regime. Good people are people who are good to Trump. One day that is John Bolton. Bad people are people Trump doesn’t like. A few weeks later that is again John Bolton.
Right now Trump is focused on Iran. He shows no sign of understanding that he caused the current crisis with Iran by withdrawing from the nuclear deal. Iran is bad. So maximum pressure, mainly through sanctions, is justified, even if they affect food and medicine, even if America’s European allies won’t join in, and even if the result is a devastatingly accurate missile attack on Saudi oil production facilities. The failure of the US to live up to its obligations, undertaken by a previous president, doesn’t matter to Trump. He doesn’t like that previous president and is unconcerned with moral standing or legality.
What counts is only what Trump defines as reality: the Iranians are bad and the nuclear deal is bad, though he is hard put to identify why except that it expires. So he withdrew, making the constraints on Iran expire even faster than they would have under the deal. Only W’s invasion of Iraq comes close to hurting American standing in the world and international interests as much as withdrawal from the nuclear deal. Trump doesn’t care about American standing and interests but only about his own personal gratification. The crowds at his rallies roar approval, and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Mohammed bin Salman concur, when Trump denounces the nuclear deal. That’s enough.
I’d much rather see Trump impeached for his failed approach to Iran than for a dumb phone call implying a cut off of Congressionally appropriated funds if Ukraine doesn’t do as asked. But impeachment for mishandling Iran isn’t likely, so next best would be an exit from the escalatory spiral with Tehran. The Iranians are still offering a way out: “permanent for permanent” as Foreign Minister Rouhani puts it: permanent lifting of sanctions in 2023 by the US Congress in exchange for a permanent bar on Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, written into law. Jason Rezaian. who knows Iran far better than I do, thinks something much more modest is all that can be done: lifting of sanctions that affect food and medicine in return for freeing of US prisoners in Iran.
Whichever: the important thing is to find a way out. The Trump Administration is about to enter an intense period of investigation with impeachment all but certain. The risks that domestic political pressure will incentivize a desperate president to do stupid things are going to be very high. The important thing is to find a way out of the escalatory spiral with Iran so that doesn’t happen.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Bolton and Trump unleashed
John Bolton and Donald Trump were always an odd couple: the one a consistent hawkish interventionist and bureaucratic operator in mustachioed professorial guise, the other an erratic big-talking little-stick narcissistic braggart. They found common cause on withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) maximum pressure against Iran, thus trading the 10-year delay in Tehran’s ability to build a nuclear weapons for less than one year, but as soon as the President started looking for negotiated settlements with Tehran, Pyongyang, and the Taliban, Bolton resorted to undermining Trump’s efforts. Ironically, Bolton was fired only a few days after he won his battle against the Afghanistan agreement.
Zal Khalilzad was trying to do the right thing: exchange the withdrawal of US troops Trump wants before the November 2020 election in exchange for Taliban promises
a) to negotiate a political settlement with the Kabul government and
b) not to harbor international terrorists.
The reported deal involved withdrawal only to the number of Americans in Afghanistan at the end of the Obama Administration, and the Taliban promises would have been hard to enforce. But it was a start.
Bolton didn’t want the withdrawal at all. But that’s not what blew up the agreement. It was Trump: he apparently decided he wanted a meeting with the Taliban at Camp David, with the president himself trying for a better deal in the role of closer. This was a terrible idea, in particular a few days before 9/11. The Taliban however never agreed to come to the US, so Trump cancelled the non-existent meeting, supposedly because of the death of an American soldier. That isn’t credible, since more than a dozen Americans died during Zal’s negotiations without any dramatic American reaction. Negotiating in the absence of a ceasefire is always a dubious proposition.
Poor Zal is left holding the bag. We’ll know when he abandons hope: he’ll resign. In the meanwhile, Afghan President Ghani, who is competing in a presidential election September 27, is breathing a sigh of relief–he wants the US troops to stay–and Bolton has the satisfaction of watching the US re-escalate the air war, even as he looks for a tell-all book deal and a cushy spot in the private sector. Unleashed, he will also no doubt become a cheer leader for military action against Iran and support for Israel’s annexations.
The President is also unleashed. He is desperate for some sort of international triumph before the election only 14 months hence. The Chinese are holding their own in the tariff war, the Middle East “deal of the century” has evaporated, the North Koreans are thumbing their noses, and Iran is demanding sanctions relief in exchange for deigning to talk with Washington. Trump is left with little alternative in Afghanistan but escalation and unilateral withdrawal, unless Zal succeeds in putting Humpty Dumpty back together again.
Everyone wants to know how US foreign policy will change as a result of Bolton’s firing. I focus mainly on the Balkans and the Middle East. On the latter, it is clear enough that Trump will back the Jewish state to the hilt, no matter who the next national security adviser is. He will also likely try to complete the US withdrawal from Syria, over Pentagon objections. He’ll continue to support the war in Yemen, unless the UAE and Saudi Arabia fall out so catastrophically that there is nothing left to support.
The Balkans is a bit harder to predict, as the Administration has been less than clear about its approach. Bolton was open to a land swap between Serbia and Kosovo that would have destabilized the entire region, likely killing two Clinton birds with one stone: rump Kosovo might have become the eastern province of Albania and Bosnia might have descended into chaos as Republika Srpska tried to secede. But there is no guarantee Bolton’s successor won’t take a similar approach. Ethnonationalists of a feather flock together. An American serving a white nationalist president is always going to give Balkan nationalists a hearing.
Here is the podcast I did with Mark Goldberg shortly after writing this piece.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Stevenson’s army, September 4
– NYT has long article on the US-Israeli conflict over attacking Iran.
– Politico has a neat graphic on the trade wars.
-State admits political reprisals.
– Lawmakers angry over mil con funds shifted to border wall and delays in releasing military aid to Ukraine.
My long Labor Day weekend in Atlanta made me miss a couple of other editions of Stevenson’s army, so here they are:
September 3
– NYT says North Korean missile tests show much improved capabilities, which Trump minimizes. Even SecState Pompeo said to believe DPRK is just stringing US along.
– NYT also says sharp disagreement inside administration over future CIA role in Afghanistan.
– Media have more details about US-Taliban agreement.
– Hill has long potential agenda this month.
– Xi tells Duterte that China rejects international court ruling on South China Sea.
– Iraq imposes new ROEs for US air operations.
September 1
Today marks the 80th anniversary of the start of World War II in Europe — Hitler’s attack on Poland.
It also marks a new round of US tariffs on Chinese goods. NYT has a summary of the where the trade war stands.
WaPo has an interesting story of how the Russians tried to interfere in US politics in Maryland, of all places, in 2016. It reveals their divisive playbook, which they and others are likely to use again next year.
The FT has a fascinating article on the East India Company by the author of a new book on that company. With its own private armies and taxes, bolstered by lobbyists and investors in London, the EIC was the first, but certainly not the last, private company that really functioned as a government.
And now for some reading suggestions. I like revisionist histories that force me to re-think my understanding of the past. Here are four from the past couple of years that I found especially persuasive.
World War I: I’m now persuaded that Russia shares much of the blame for the start of the Great War by its policies to dominate Turkey and by mobilization during the July 1914 crisis. After deep dives into long-hidden Russian archives, Sean McMeekin showed that even Barbara Tuchman got the sequence wrong by relying on the falsified memoirs of the Russian Foreign Minister. McMeekin’s books on Russian diplomacy and the July crisis changed my view of German war guilt, though Austria-Hungary still deserves shared blame with Russia.
FDR’s boldness: I had long admired Franklin Roosevelt’s strategic bravery in maneuvering the United States in support of Britain and against Hitler, believing that he was just ahead of public opinion, skillfully pulling it along. Lynne Olson”s Those Angry Days persuaded me that, much of the time, FDR vacillated, doing less than many of his advisors urged and hoped. He still was a great leader, just not quite as bold as I had thought.
Slave Power’s influence on foreign policy: I never thought that slavery and its perpetuation had much impact on American foreign policy until I read Matthew Karp’s eye-opening history. Karp details how the South dominated key foreign policy posts and consciously advocated policies to protect and even extend slavery in the decades before the War of the Rebellion. Defenders of slavery really had a “deep state.”
The Revolutionary War: I used to have a typical American high school student’s view of our war for independence as a story of brave patriots, toughened at Valley Forge and led by George Washington, who finally triumphed at Yorktown. Two books have changed my understanding of that conflict. One was Andrew Jackson O’Shaunessy’s study of British politics during the conflict, The Men Who Lost America. He argues that the British gave up for broader strategic reasons. Add to this Holger Hoock’s Scars of Independence, which describes the local violence on both sides and the mistreatment of Loyalists during and after the war. The good guys won, but they won dirty.
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. If you want to get it directly, 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).
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Proliferation without borders
Dr. Pantelis Ikonomou, a former IAEA Safeguards inspector asks:
After 30 years of service as a senior officer in the International Atomic Energy Agency, the world’s watchdog for nuclear weapons non-proliferation and disarmament, an organisation that primarily you, US and Russia, created and continue to support, I dare to address to both of you a rhetorical question:
“How could an international nuclear safeguards inspector comprehend and explain to the stunned public your recent nuclear behavior, in particular your withdrawal from the bilateral Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty that you achieved in 1987 on prohibiting the development and deployment of a wide range of nuclear weapons?”
In March 2018 President Putin stated that nuclear weapons are essential for his county to maintain its position as a great world power. In order to convince the international community, he presented the terrifying capabilities of new Russian nuclear weapons that could target any place on the planet without been detected, thus, rendering nuclear deterrence a useless myth.
Six months later, in October 2018, President Trump replied that the US would unilaterally withdraw from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, claiming that Russia does not comply with its obligations.
Moscow rejected the accusations, blaming Washington for refraining from the negotiations on the extension beyond 2021 of the New START treaty, which controls strategic nuclear weapons.
In a continuous blame game the Russian president warned that any deployment of intermediate range missile by the US in Europe will force Russia to respond equally. Moreover, he made it terrifyingly clear that the increase nuclear threat could «result to the global destruction of human civilization and perhaps even of our planet».
Europe reacted immediately urging INF’s survival. The treaty’s elimination will turn Europe into a launcher and target of the ‘’new and modern’’ nuclear weapons of both the US and Russia, respectively. Furthermore, the European strategic objective of an autonomous defense policy will become difficult to achieve.
China, knowing that it will become the target of new US intermediate-rang nuclear missiles deployed in Japan and South Korea, immediately and firmly excluded its possible involvement in a new multilateral INF treaty, which eventually could embrace China’s nuclear adversary, India.
Several nervous countries, such as Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea, maintain active programs to develop intermediate ballistic missiles suitable for carrying nuclear weapons.
If the two super powers, the US and Russia, assisted by the rest of the NPT nuclear weapons states (China, UK and France) won’t proceed to the creation of a new international INF treaty, they will owe the world answers to vital geopolitical questions:
- Do the US and Russia not realize that their nuclear policy contradicts their basic NPT undertaking (Article VI) «…to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament…»?
- Do they not recognize the immediate risk of nuclear weapons proliferation in the Middle East and north-east Asia?
- Is North Korea not enough?
- Why do they risk their own loss of global geostrategic primacy?
- Is it possible that they ignore the increasing global nuclear threat?
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
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.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Little by little is too little
On July 8 the United States Institute of Peace hosted a panel discussion titled “The North Korea Sanctions Regime a Year After Singapore.” The panel featured Dan Wertz, Program Manager at the National Committee on North Korea, Joshua Stanton, a DC-based lawyer who played a significant role in North Korea sanctions, Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, a member of the UN Panel of Experts (Resolution 1874) dealing with North Korea, and Elizabeth Rosenberg, Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Frank Aum, former Senior Advisor for North Korea at the Defense Department, moderated the discussion.
Stanton views the history of US leadership on North Korea issues as many “instant gratification policies” instead of better thought out and more effective long-term policies. North Korea is highly dependent on access to US financial systems because of the status of the dollar. Since many North Korean transactions have to go through US banks, financial sanctions blocking transactions and freezing North Korean accounts can be highly effective.
Stanton believes the conversation on sanctions relief is coming about two years too early. More pressure on the Kim regime is needed so that he has a diplomatic incentive to work with the US. Even small sanctions relief is enough for North Korea to catch a breather and continue the status quo. The argument that North Korea can’t survive without nuclear weapons and therefore won’t give them up is ahistorical, according to Stanton, because North Korea has survived for decades without nuclear weapons and can continue to do so. The threat to North Korea is mainly internal.
On possible sanctions relief, Stanton clarifies that Congress has set strict rules dependent not only on issues such as nuclear disarmament and denuclearization but also contingent on human rights, human trafficking, and other issues. The current direction in congress is towards stricter rules for sanctions relief, with the goal of complete, verifiable and undisputed denuclearization of North Korea. The US has to work together with its allies to set up financial sanctions that pressure Pyongyang while at the same time allowing transactions for non-military purposes that benefit the North Korean people. Humanitarian aid should be given to North Korea regardless of political or military actions since it benefits the poor and starving civilians, a point all the panelists agreed on.
Kleine-Ahlbrandt notes that the goal of the UN sanctions regime is to persuade North Korea to dismantle its nuclear and missile programs and prevent the proliferation of WMDs. Sanctions shouldn’t be the objective, which is to catalyze what she calls “effective dialogue.” At the same time the negative impact of sanctions on the economy and civilian population of North Korea should be limited. The UN sanctions regime is broad, but member states have insufficiently implemented the sanctions and evasion tactics by North Korean entities and individuals have undermined compliance. North Korea currently has full access to the international financial system through complicit foreign nationals, a network of agents, and cyberattacks aimed at financial institutions.
Wertz views the sanctions as having a threefold purpose: signaling to North Korea that provocative actions such as missile tests come at a cost, constraining progress on WMDs and other military capabilities, and coercing North Korea through sanctions pressure to make concessions and abandon the nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Coercion is difficult because translating economic pressure to political actions is difficult. UN sanctions, which are focused on the missile and nuclear programs, can be modified if political consensus is reached within the UNSC on whether North Korea’s behavior warrants relief.
US sanctions are trickier since they are premised on a broad range of topics from WMDs to human rights, cyber-attacks, currency counterfeiting and more. The executive branch has some leeway on how it administers individual sanctions or waives them on a case by case basis, but to lift sanctions as a whole the White House has to certify to Congress that North Korea has made significant progress on several of the issues listed. This divergence of US and UN sanctions could potentially lead to a clash if North Korea abandons its nuclear program but doesn’t improve on human rights or other issues.
Wertz suggests that a program of phased sanctions relief in return for meaningful concessions on the nuclear program could be in the US interest down the road and lists five principles for sanctions relief:
- Any trade of sanctions relief for North Korean nuclear concessions should be premised on the ultimate goal of denuclearization but should also make sense on its own terms.
- The US should start with the sanctions that have the least direct connection to the nuclear program and can be most easily adjusted and snapped back.
- The US shouldn’t ease up on measures intended to deny hard currency to North Korea until it can guarantee the money won’t be funneled to military programs.
- Sanctions relief should be structured in a way that pushes North Korea towards an open economy and minimal respect for labor rights.
- If sanctions relief goes forward the United States and allies should continue to enforce sanctions that haven’t been lifted, but not expand the scope of sanctions.
Rosenberg suggests the lack of compliance with sanctions is in part because many individuals or companies don’t understand or know about the rules. Awareness and compliance protocols in industries other than finance are rare. Before sanctions are removed, Rosenberg says it is valuable to think about what unwinding sanctions could look like. Sanctions shouldn’t be lifted as an incentive; behavioral change has to happen before sanctions are lifted because they are in place for specific concerns. Instead more work should be put into establishing communication and cultural as well as diplomatic exchanges as incentives, none of which require sanctions relief.
Rosenberg also warns that a “little-by-little” approach to removing sanctions in exchange for limited progress doesn’t work. North Korea’s track record of cheating on sanctions means incremental change might create a façade behind which North Korea can do as it pleases. The only politically viable way ahead for the US is major sanctions relief after North Korea makes major and verified progress on denuclearization.
Here is the video of the event:
RSS - Posts
