Tag: North Korea
Overload
The Trump Administration has taken on a lot of foreign policy burdens:
- Replacing Venezuelan President Maduro with opposition interim President Guaido.
- Ending North Korea’s nuclear program.
- Solving the Israel/Palestine conflict.
- Getting Mexico to end transit of asylum-seekers headed for the US.
- Negotiating a trade deal with China.
- Initiating talks on nuclear, missile, and regional issues with Iran.
Right now, President Trump is in London taking on still a few more burdens: encouraging Brexit, negotiating a trade deal with whatever remains of the UK thereafter, and pushing Boris Johnson as the next Prime Minister. So far, he is failing at all these things.
That is not surprising. The US government finds it hard to do two things at once, much less six high priorities and dozens of others lower down the totem pole. It is hard even to talk about priorities when there are so many. And some interact: you can’t impose tariffs on China without weakening Beijing’s commitment to sanctions on North Korea. Nor can you get Europe to support Jared Kushner’s cockamamie Middle East peace plan while dissing the Union’s interest in maintaining the nuclear agreement with Iran.
Any serious president would be re-examining and resetting priorities, with a view to accomplishing something substantial before the November 2020 election, less than 18 months off. Trump isn’t going to do that, because he believes he can create reality by what he says rather than what he accomplishes. Today in London he said the protests were negligible and the crowds adoring. He was booed pretty much everywhere he went in public. The photos with the Queen (courtesy of @Weinsteinlaw) couldn’t be more telling:
But no doubt Trump and his loyal press will portray the state visit as a great triumph.
That however does not change the reality. Trump has bitten off far more than he can chew. American prestige almost everywhere is at a nadir. Only in countries where ethnic nationalism or autocracy or both are in vogue does Trump enjoy some support: Hungary, Poland, Brazil, the Philippines, and Israel. Making America great again is admired only by those who have similar ambitions.
Without wider international support, there is little prospect that Trump can deliver on more than one or two of his foreign policy priorities before the next election. Failure to cut back on the multiple, sometimes contradictory, efforts makes it less likely that any will succeed. The Administration is overloaded and doomed to failure.
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The last error
Pantelis Ikonomou, a former IAEA nuclear inspector, thinks out loud:
- Though nuclear proliferation is a paramount global threat, super powers fail to demonstrate sufficient competence in responding.
- World expectations based on the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that nuclear weapons states will preserve global peace in accordance with their responsibilities are plainly becoming wishful thinking.
- The authority and competence of the world’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has been downgraded by its founders and historical proponents, the nuclear weapons states.
- Denuclearization of North Korea is going nowhere. The pendulum-like rhetoric on both sides, Washington and Pyongyang, combined with the risk of miscalculation or a military error, enlarges the dangerous vicious cycle.
- Washington might seriously consider the mitigation of Pyongyang’s fears for its security, as Beijing suggests, rather than playing the military threat card. This was after all the prevailing approach in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal
- US withdrawal from JCPOA (2018) and Iran’s recent announcement of partial withdrawal from it lead to new risky situations. Tomorrow, no one should be surprised.
- At the same time, US National Security Strategy (2017) and the Pentagon’s Nuclear Posture Review (2018) both stated that American nuclear capability will be strengthened and its nuclear arsenal modernized. Reason given: deterrence of Russia.
- On a precisely equivalent level are President Putin’s repeated statements (2018-2019): Russia needs to maintain its super power status through advanced nuclear capabilities.
- The rest of the “legal” nuclear club – China, the UK, and France – follow suit. Why not? – they might ask.
- In parallel, the de facto non-NPT nuclear weapons states, India, Pakistan, most probably Israel and now North Korea, keep developing their nuclear arsenals and ballistic capabilities.
- Moreover, more nuclear candidates, are getting ready for their geopolitical nuclear race.
- Unfortunately, nuclear issues are complex, making a sound solution of nuclear crises difficult even for strong, authoritarian, and ambitious world leaders.
- Nuclear armaments are not a financial or political game. They are the leading global threat to human civilization.
- It is time to getting serious. The speed of developments makes derailing of constraints on nuclear weapons control likely. That would be the last human error.
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Confusion and distrust
The Trump Administration is in a remarkable period of serial failures. Denuclearization of North Korea is going nowhere. Displacement of Venezuelan President Maduro has stalled. The tariff contest with China is escalating. Even the President’s sudden shift to backing Libyan strongman Haftar’s assault on Tripoli seems to have fizzled.
The domestic front is no better: Trump is stonewalling the House of Representatives but must know that eventually the courts will order most of what the Democratic majority is requesting be done. Special Counsel Mueller himself will eventually testify and be asked whether his documentation of obstruction of justice by the President would have led to indictment for any other perpetrator. A dozen or so other investigations continue, both by prosecutors and the House. These will include counter-intelligence investigations, which Mueller did not pursue, with enormous potential to embarrass the President and his close advisers.
The result is utter confusion in US foreign policy. Secretary of State Pompeo today postponed a meeting with President Putin and is stopping instead in Brussels to crash a meeting the UK, Germany, and France had convened to talk about how to preserve the Iran nuclear deal. This is happening on the same day that President Trump is meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán, whose anti-democratic maneuvers have made him unwelcome in London, Berlin, and Paris.
Pompeo will be pitching hostility to Iran, based on the presumption that it is responsible for attacks on tankers over the weekend off the coast of Fujairah, one of the (United Arab) Emirates located outside the Gulf of Hormuz. Tehran has denounced the attacks, which may or may not indicate something. The perpetrators are unknown. While concerned about the attacks, the Europeans will want the US to tone down the hostility towards Iran, with which they want to maintain the nuclear deal from which the US has withdrawn.
Germany is likely to be particularly annoyed with the Americans, not least because Pompeo last week canceled at the last minute a scheduled meeting with Chancellor Merkel in order to go to Iraq, where he failed to convince Baghdad to join the sanctions against Iran. She has become the strongest defender of liberal democracy and the rules-based international order that President Trump has so noisily and carelessly abandoned, while at the same time displeasing the US Administration by continuing the Nord Stream 2 natural gas deal with Russia.
In diplomacy, holding on to your friends is important. Washington under Trump has elected not to accommodate the more powerful Europeans and Iraq but rather to support the would-be autocrats in Hungary and Poland, as well as the Brexiteers in the UK and the Greater Israel campaigners who also advocate war with Iran. All of this was completely unnecessary, since it would have been possible to pursue additional agreements with Iran on regional and other issues without exiting the nuclear deal.
The Administration has thrown away the friends it needs and acquired a few it does not. It has lost the key Europeans and has nothing whatsoever to show for it. It has gotten nowhere with Putin, despite the President’s obsequious fawning. Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which are both crying foul about the tanker attacks, are unreliable. They have been known to purvey fake news in the past (especially in initiating their conflict with Qatar), so might they be doing so again?
The result is monumental confusion and distrust. America’s friends are offended. Her enemies are encouraged. Elections have consequences.
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It’s all about him
Rarely has an Administration compiled a clearer record of losing than this one is doing right now:
- President Trump’s best friend Kim Jong-un is busily launching short-range missiles while the US holds the door open for negotiations.
- The push to replace Venezuelan President Maduro with Interim President Guaido has stalled after several attempts.
- The “maximum pressure” policy on Iran is pushing Tehran towards restarting part of its nuclear program while alienating America’s European allies.
- The “Deal of the Century” between Palestinians and Israelis is stillborn.
- The tariff war with China is escalating.
The Administration knows only one negotiating tactic: squeezing hard to cause pain, while offering economic benefits if only the adversary will give in. Other peoples’ national pride, interests, and values are not taken into account. It is just assumed that “they” are just like us and want all the same things, mainly nice hotels.
That’s not how diplomacy works. To change an adversary’s behavior, you have to consider not your own value function but theirs. Kim Jong-un doesn’t want foreign investment or economic benefits he cannot control. Maduro isn’t interested in leaving Venezuela, even if the Americans leave him an escape route to Cuba. Iran has withstood sanctions before and will do so again. The Palestinians won’t take money instead of a state. Chinese President Xi Jinping isn’t going to weaken the Communist Party’s grip on the economy to please Donald Trump.
Of course Donald Trump will never admit defeat on any of these issues. Whatever happens, he’ll announce victory, exaggerating his own prowess and role. It really doesn’t matter what the truth of the matter is. After lots of sound and fury, Trump readily settles for half a loaf or less, as he did on the “renegotiation” of the North American Free Trade Agreement. His primary concern is not getting a good deal for America but rather ensuring that he looks strong to his domestic constituency and can count on them to go to the polls. It’s not about America. It’s all about him.
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Counterproductive
The loss of a large part of Notre Dame de Paris is profoundly sad. There is little I can say to amplify what so many others have already written. But sadder still is a President of the United States who can’t keep his mouth shut and always seems to choose the most destructive course of action. In this case, he suggested:
So horrible to watch the massive fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Perhaps flying water tankers could be used to put it out. Must act quickly!
What neither he nor I knew was that dumping water on an ancient stone building can weaken its mortar and cause even more damage than the fire, perhaps even collapse of the whole structure.
This is Trump’s modus operandi. He is unable to acknowledge that he may not know better than others, which requires that he surround himself with yes-people. They encourage his self-aggrandizement, preventing any reevaluation or self-correction. So Trump cancels US assistance to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, hoping that will somehow block their citizens from leaving. No one can say him nay. But that move is pretty much guaranteed to make conditions in those three countries worse and cause more asylum-seekers to arrive in the US, not fewer.
Ditto policy on Iran. Trump’s tight squeeze there without support from Europe, China, or Russia is strengthening Iran’s hardliners and making even extension of the Iran nuclear deal, which begins to “sunset” in just a few years, more difficult. National Security Adviser Bolton has even begun to lay the foundation for a military attack on Iran, by claiming it could be done under the existing Congressional Authorization to Use Military Force. One more Middle East war: precisely what the world needs right now. Iraq and Afghanistan haven’t yet cost enough.
Double ditto on North Korea, where the President has lurched from threatening (nuclear) war to befriending one of the world’s worst tyrants and meeting with his good friend (shall I say lover?) twice to no good effect. Now the Administration is contemplating a third meeting. What’s that saying, attributed to Einstein, about doing the same thing and expecting a different result?
Triple ditto on the Israel/Palestine conflict, where Trump is trying to squeeze the Palestinians by denying them humanitarian and law enforcement assistance. There aren’t enough desperate young Palestinians ready to take up the cudgels?
In none of these situations is it difficult to imagine the Trump Administration’s decisions making things go from bad to worse. And there are others:
- the decision in Syria to withdraw, then not to withdraw, but still to withdraw;
- the President’s comment that US troops should stay in Iraq to keep an eye on Iran, which makes it more difficult for Iraqi politicians to give the necessary approval;
- telling the world the US isn’t interested in Libya, which opened the door to a military push on Tripoli likely to re-ignite the civil war there, or possibly lead to re-imposition of a military dictatorship;
- threatening military action in Venezuela, where everyone understands there is no serious military option, thus reducing the US to a paper tiger;
- continuing to cozy up to President Putin despite Russian behavior in Ukraine and the Sea of Azov, not to mention interference in US politics on a daily basis;
- the threat to close the Mexican border, which would devastate the US and Mexican economies.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the President is incorrigible, mainly because he doesn’t abide correction. His response to criticism is to double down on failed policy and hope that will work, or turn 180 degrees and hope that will. It doesn’t. The more this shambolic Administration continues, the more the rest of the world, friends and enemies, will adjust by hedging that reduces American influence. Trump is destined to be remembered as not just ineffective but also counterproductive.
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Pompeo midway to failure
Secretary Pompeo in testimony todaycited the Administration’s foreign policy priorities:
- Countering Russia and China,
- Denuclearization of North Korea,
- Venezuela,
- Iran,
- and supporting allies and partners.
So how are they doing?
The only serious effort to counter Russia has come from the Congress, which has levied several layers of sanctions on Moscow for interference in the 2016 US election, and from the State Department, for Moscow’s murder of a defector in the United Kingdom. President Trump has still not said an unkind word about President Putin and continues to cite him as more reliable than the American intelligence community, without acknowledging Russian electoral interference.
On China, the Administration has been walking on eggshells, since it needs Beijing’s cooperation both on North Korea and on trade. There is little to no sign of a serious strategy to contain or compete with China (in anything but trade). China continues its buildup of military bases in the South China Sea, where it has also escalated its challenges to US naval vessels.
The North Korea talks are at a standstill after the failure in February of the second Kim/Trump summit in Vietnam. Trump is demanding immediate denuclearization in one step while the Pyongyang has maintained its vague commitment to a phased process whose endpoint is unclear. All those promises of Trump-like hotels are not going to convince Kim Jong-un that he should abandon his regime’s only real guarantee: its nuclear arsenal and ballistic missiles.
Venezuela is grinding to a stalemate, with the Russians deploying troops there and no sign of the military defections required to seat President Guaido’ in President Maduro’s chair. A US military intervention would have to be massive and long-term. Nothing short of that seems to be working. Venezuelans are voting with their feet by leaving the country, but that does not help bring down Maduro.
Sanctions on Iran have so far had little visible impact, other than giving the Europeans an incentive to find a way to continue to expand trade with Tehran. China and Russia will also find the ways and means. The Iranian economy is a mess, not only because of sanctions. The Administration hopes to compel the Iranians back to the negotiating table or to precipitate regime change. Neither outcome is visible on the horizon. In the meanwhile, hardliners have gained strength and continue to pursue regional interventions.
Support for allies and partners is a lot easier than dealing with adversaries, but the Trump Administration has been selective about it. The ultranationalists who govern Hungary and Poland and the Brexiteers in the UK get Trump’s blessing. France, Germany and the European Union get kicked hard. Israel gets endorsement of whatever it wants (so far, recognition of Jerusalem as its capital and of the annexation of the Golan Heights, not to mention a green light for killing Gaza demonstrators), leaving crumbs for the Palestinians. Saudi Arabia gets American top cover for Mohammed bin Salman against charges that he was implicated in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
To add insult to injury, Pompeo said this about the State Department, whose budget the President has proposed to cut back by 23%:
And I take it as a personal mission to make sure that our world-class diplomatic personnel have the resources they need to execute America’s diplomacy in the 21st century.
Trump’s cuts target especially the State Department’s cooperation with the military in stabilizing conflict situations like Syria and Afghanistan, which is a required prelude to the withdrawals he has rashly announced.
I suppose I need to give Pompeo an incomplete rather than an F, since it is possible the next 22 months will provide better results than the last 26. Real diplomacy does take time. But there is precious little sign of real diplomacy on the priorities Pompeo identifies.
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