Tag: North Korea
Failure is what he does best
I agree with Susan Rice. President Trump did the right thing to walk away from his talks with Kim Jong-un in Hanoi:
The problem is Trump shouldn’t have been in Hanoi at all. Kim got what he needed, the photo-op that shows his people he can deal with he President of the United States on an equal basis:
Trump claims Kim has promised to continue his moratorium on nuclear and missile testing, but development efforts will certainly continue without international inspections or even an inventory of materials and equipment. The US will keep the sanctions in place, but they have been fraying. Neither Russia nor China is likely to be maximally cooperative on sanctions against North Korea given their parlous relations with the US.
But the problems with the deal Trump is trying to cut go deeper. Trump has been dangling economic development based on foreign investment as bait for Kim to give up his nuclear program. Kim knows that foreign investment would require far-reaching judicial and economic reforms impossible in a totalitarian state. He is doing far better on his own by allowing the gradual evolution of private economic activity while maintaining the repressive apparatus that keeps him in power. Even small moves like allowing private gardens have had a dramatically positive impact on food supply.
Kim also returned home from Hanoi with a presidential reprieve for the murder of a US citizen:
Did Trump press Kim on holding someone responsible for Warmbier’s death? Not at all.
Trump is once again reduced to distracting us from failure: he claimed before leaving Hanoi that the US had somehow intervened to cool escalating tensions between India and Pakistan and that Jared Kushner’s phantom Middle East peace plan would emerge soon, because the US has cut off aid for the Palestinians. Neither claim is credible.
Yesterday was a bad day for Trump not only in Hanoi but in Washington, where his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen made all to clear who and what the President is: racist, conman, and cheat. Republicans are busily attacking Cohen’s credibility, as he has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress previously. But they are not discussing the merits of Cohen’s charges, which would require a defense of Trump that would be difficult to mount.
Trump will now try to cut a trade deal with China. The tariff war he triggered is causing real pain in rural America, where part of Trump’s base lives. He also needs Beijing’s help with Pyongyang. He will cave on the tariffs and claim victory, then try to distract attention, maybe with an effort to begin to build his unneeded but much wanted wall on the southern border, triggering a raft of lawsuits and screams from whichever department of government he takes the money from. That effort too will fail, but Trump will move on to something else. Failure is what he does best.
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Good and bad news
The good news is that the UK Labour Party is signaling it will back a second Brexit referendum. The bad news is that Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif, partly responsible for negotiating the nuclear deal, has resigned.
Brexit: It has been apparent for some time now that the United Kingdom will be far worse off after it leaves the European Union. In fact, it is unlikely even to remain the United Kingdom, as Scotland and Northern Ireland could have good reasons for breaking up Her Majesty’s realm. Factories and financial institutions are fleeing. It is inconceivable that London can get a better trade deal with the US–or anyone else–acting alone rather than as a part of a more than 500-million person free trade area. Britain’s geopolitical weight is also vastly magnified inside the European Union compared to what it would be outside.
The problem has been how to cancel Brexit without defying the 2016 advisory referendum that launched it. Prime Minister May has been promising to deliver what the vote asked for by a margin of about 3.5 percentage points. Polls now indicate that Brexit might well be defeated in another referendum, if only because of demographic changes in the last three years. But a lot also depends on wording and the (unpredictable) political and economic circumstances in which a second referendum takes place. Nor is it clear yet whether Labour has the support in parliament to call a new referendum, though the defection of members from both Labour and the Conservatives in recent days increases the odds.
Zarif: The Iranian Foreign Minister resigned the same day he failed to appear in a video of Bashar al Assad meeting with the Supreme Leader. Whether that caused the resignation, or he had already resigned, is not clear, but Zarif was the relatively outward-looking face of the Iranian regime. His resignation will raise doubts about whether Iran intends to continue to comply with the nuclear deal, despite the American withdrawal and the failure of Europe to deliver the economic benefits anticipated. With Zarif out, a move by Tehran to abrogate the deal entirely is a step closer.
Some Americans would welcome that, as it might enable Washington to get the Europeans back in line and squeeze Tehran harder with sanctions. But it also opens the possibility of an Iranian push to develop nuclear weapons, sooner rather than later. Certainly anyone watching how well President Trump treats nuclear-armed Kim Jong-un could argue that Iran would be better off with a nuclear deterrent. The problem with that notion is Israel, which not only has nuclear weapons but might be inclined to use them to prevent Iran from getting close to a deployable nuclear weapon. Yes, it is possible that a deterrence relationship might emerge, but in the meanwhile the world could become a very dangerous place.
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Distracting and caving
President Trump is getting ready to cave: having scheduled a Summit with Kim Jong-un for next Wednesday and Thursday in Hanoi he is now talking about another with Xi Jingping next month. Both Summits are intended to distract from judicial investigations and portend deals: with Kim on North Korea’s nuclear weapons and with Xi on trade.
Get ready, America. Your pocket is going to be picked.
No doubt there will be a flashy announcement or two. Kim might agree to destroy some nuclear facilities and sign a peace agreement formally ending the Korean war, which is something he, his father, and grandfather have assiduously sought. President Trump will tout it as a great victory. With new tariffs postponed until the summit, Xi can easily agree to buy more US soybeans, another great victory. But that is the penny ante stuff.
Real concessions would have to include Kim accounting for all his fissionable material, agreeing to dismantle and surrender his nuclear weapons, and allowing International Atomic Energy Agency inspections permanently. Xi would have to end Chinese insistence on technology transfer from US companies and cyber theft of intellectual property. There is no sign that these US goals will be achieved. They may even be unachievable.
In Venezuela, too, Trump is losing, at least for now. His effort to weaponize US aid by assembling it on the borders and daring President Maduro to prevent it from entering ended Saturday in violent confrontation. Despite the defection of dozens of Venezuelan troops, only two trucks managed to get into the country. The Venezuelan security forces are so far remaining mostly loyal.
The Americans are threatening Maduro with consequences, but at least for now his hold on power seems tight. Trump has pretty good support from across the political spectrum for his effort to unseat Maduro, but any move towards military intervention would quickly shatter the consensus. Trump may not cave to Maduro, but it is unclear whether he can somehow get the Venezuelan President to step aside without a serious rift over war powers in the US Congress.
Trump’s effort to distract attention from various judicial investigations with international summits is not likely to work. Special Counsel Mueller, despite the rumors, is not yet finished. He needs to do something about Donald Jr. and likely Jared Kushner before folding his tent. Mueller continues to hide his hand on the Russia investigation: all the pertinent material was redacted last Friday from the sentencing memo he submitted concerning former campaign chair Paul Manafort, whose connections to Moscow are manifold.
So what we’ve got is an Administration trying hard with Venezuela, North Korea, and China to distract attention, even if that means far from satisfactory negotiating outcomes with Pyongyang and Beijing as well as a perilous game of chicken with Caracas.
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Insincerity and mendacity
President Trump’s State of the Union address, delivered last night, was the opening salvo in his re-election campaign, as Mara Liasson put it on NPR this morning:
Trying to appear calm and “presidential,” Trump appealed for unity while doubling down on some of the most divisive issues in American politics: his proposed extension of the wall on the Mexican border, his appeal to the Democrats not to investigate his campaign and administration, and his attempt at rapprochement with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. The calm delivery from the Teleprompter won’t last past his next tweet.
Some of what he said was downright scary: he suggested the US could have peace only if the investigations stop. The logic is all too clear: if the Democrats and Special Counsel pursue wrongdoing, the President might respond by taking the country to war. Is this what he intended? Impossible to tell, since he is anything but logical. But lots of leaders do go to war to distract from domestic difficulties, and Trump is a master of distraction. He also often says what others never vocalize. Was he threatening war as a response to domestic political challenges?
Trump doubled down on some other bad ideas: he vowed to stick with the tariff war against China, he pledged to outspend Russia in developing intermediate range nuclear forces, and he announced 3750 more troops will be sent to the southern border to meet a non-existent flood of illegal immigrants. The tariff war is clearly a violation of America’s World Trade Organization commitments, a nuclear arms race with Russia is not where America needs to go, and the use of the US Army to roll out barbed wire (it is prohibited from law enforcement functions) is one of the most expensive and useless ways to protect the border, apart from the border wall. There is no sign whatsoever that Trump has moderated his radical and unfounded approaches to trade, defense, and immigration.
Syria and Afghanistan, America’s two biggest wars at present, got short shrift. Trump reiterated his commitment to bringing the troops home from Syria without however any idea of what will happen after they leave. In Afghanistan, he referenced the negotiations with the Taliban but also gave little idea of the strategy for what happens after withdrawal. Trump is in effect declaring victory and getting out of both wars–the uproar such an approach would have caused were a Democratic president pursuing it would be deafening. The Senate has objected on a bipartisan basis to these announced withdrawals, but there is little indication Trump is listening.
The misstatements and abuses of facts were legion. The most egregious surround his claim of credit for the reasonably good state of the US economy. In fact, average monthly job growth has declined slightly from President Obama’s second term. Ditto his claim of credit for the increase in US oil and gas production, which started under Obama. He even boasted that there are more women in Congress than ever before but failed to note that they are mostly Democrats. The number of Republican women in Congress has actually declined.
For me, perhaps the iconic mendacity of this State of the Union is contained in this sentence:
If I had not been elected president of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea.
There is of course no way of knowing how Hillary Clinton might have handled Pyongyang, but we do know that the only President who has loudly threatened war against North Korea is Donald Trump. And we also know that there is no sign whatsoever that Kim is giving up either his nuclear weapons or his intercontinental ballistic missiles, despite the blandishments Trump is offering. Trump failed to get anything substantial from Kim at, and since, their first meeting. So what is he doing? Scheduling another meeting late this month. Trump is a great flim flam salesman but a truly terrible negotiator.
Forty per cent of the American public is still fooled, even if the insincerity and mendacity are obvious.
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The disgrace
A presidency that has known few happy days is at a nadir, though it may well go lower. Russia and Iran are celebrating the American withdrawal from Syria, which President Trump decided to please Turkey. Ankara will now attack the Kurds who allied themselves with the US to fight ISIS successfully. The President has consequently lost a universally respected Defense Secretary as well as a capable lead for the diplomatic campaign against ISIS.
The economy is shaky. The stock market is correcting and the Fed is raising rates. Recession before the 2020 election is increasingly likely. The trade wars with China and Europe continue with no end in sight, devastating American agriculture and some American manufacturing. The budget deficit is exploding due to an ill-conceived tax cut for the very wealthy. Trump hasn’t spent already appropriated funds for border security, but he is demanding more for an unnecessary and extraordinarily expensive wall on the Mexican border, partly closing down the government through Christmas.
This is a record of unparalleled chaos and failure, even without mentioning the new North Korean missile sites and the Iranian refusal to discuss either their missiles or Tehran’s regional power projection until Trump reverses his decision to exit the Iran nuclear deal. Pyongyang and Tehran represent serious threats to US interests that Trump has no strategy to counter.
Nor has he been any more effective in changing Russian behavior, which the Congress and his Administration continue to sanction without any admission by the President of Moscow’s wrongdoing. The “deal of the century” Trump promised on Palestine his negotiators have botched completely. America’s diplomacy and international reputation have rarely known worse, more incoherent and less effective, moments.
What can be done?
Little is the serious answer. Even when the Democrats take control of the House little more than a week from now, they will have no ability to fix 90% of what ails the country. Their main role will be oversight: making clear to the public what the real situation is through hearings and reports. Beyond that, they can refuse to sign on to stupidities like the border wall, but no legislation can pass the Senate without a good bit of Republican support, especially if overriding a veto will be necessary. The Democrats cannot force the US back into the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate change agreement, or the Trans Pacific Partnership, all of which held substantial advantages for the US.
Meanwhile, Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation has produced indictments, guilty pleas, and convictions of high-ranking Trump campaign and administration officials as well as Russian intelligence operatives. There is no longer even a slight doubt that Moscow campaigned in 2016 in favor of Donald Trump, likely tipping the balance in his favor in key Midwest states and Pennsylvania. Trump is obsessed with legitimacy, as well he should be. He is not a fairly elected president, even if we accept the inequities of the Electoral College. He is the product of blatant, widespread, and illegal foreign assistance. We need barely mention Trump’s own illegal campaign contributions as well as his criminal use of Trump Foundation resources.
I doubt though that we have reached bottom. Still to come are revelations about massive Russian and Saudi financing for Trump real estate, as well as indictments of his co-conspirators in stealing and publishing emails. Trump really hasn’t hidden these things, but a report from Mueller that details them will be more than interesting. It will raise questions about whether a felon should be sleeping and watching TV in the White House, where he does little else except brood. If his former National Security Adviser can go to prison for years, why can’t the President be indicted and tried?
The short answer is that the toadies he picks as Attorney General won’t allow it, claiming that Justice Department regulations they could change prohibit it. Trump can no longer, with a Democratic majority in the House, avoid impeachment, if the Mueller report suggests it. But in the Senate he still has not only a majority, but one that hesitates to criticize, never mind convict. Trump has humiliated Mitch McConnell and his cohort repeatedly, but the Senate Republicans remain steadfastly loyal. It is hard to picture how conviction would gain a 2/3 majority it needs in the upper chamber.
The only remedy for this shambolic and bozotic presidency is likely at the polls, less than two years hence. There are no guarantees, but Trump’s path to re-election is narrowing, especially if recession happens. The disgrace is in the White House, not in the country.
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Midterms and foreign policy
I gave a talk this morning at the Italian International Affairs Institute (IAI) on “The 2018 American Midterm Elections: What Do They Signify for the US and for Europe?” Here are my notes for the occasion, which I pretty much used as written:
- It is a pleasure to be back at IAI, which has been kind enough to host my talks many times over the 25 years since I left Rome as Charge’ d’affaires ad interim of the American Embassy.
- Let me start with some basics: the elections are “midterm” because they fall in the middle of a Presidential mandate. They are multiple, that is elections rather than election, because more than one institution is contested: all of the House of Representatives, about one-third of the Senate, and many governorships, state legislatures, and local positions.
- They are also multiple in another sense: even elections for Federal offices in the US are run by the 50 states, not by the Federal government. While all the states elect members of the House from single-member districts with approximately the same population as well as two Senators (no matter what the population of the state), the rules governing who is eligible to vote, design of the ballot, polling procedures, opening times, counting, tabulating, and ultimately deciding the outcome vary quite a bit from state to state and even from county to county.
- Quite a few of our states have trouble getting it all done, especially when the margins are narrow. There are still a few seats undecided.
- Nevertheless, the general shape of the outcome is clear: Democrats have won control of the House of Representatives; Republicans have maintained control of the Senate, widening their margin by a couple of seats.
- What does this mean for the future, especially for American foreign policy and relations with Europe, including Italy?
- First thing to understand is that the election was not about foreign policy. The two biggest issues were health insurance for Democrats and immigration for Republicans. Trade, national security, nuclear nonproliferation, arms control, the Middle East, Iran, China, Russia and all the other issues IAI and I care about were virtually absent from the pre-electoral discourse.
- It was vigorous and led to a high turnout by American standards: about 50% of registered voters. That will sound very low to you, but it is not low in the US, where about 60% turn out for presidential elections and midterms generally draw about 40%.
- There are many reasons for this. Americans move frequently and die pretty much at the rate of everyone else. There is no national procedure for updating registration lists, and virtually no one unregisters when they move out of a community to another one. So some of the low turnout is a statistical artefact.
- The resulting anomalies have led to Republican claims that there is a great deal of fraudulent Democratic voting in US elections. There is no evidence for that. To the contrary, the evidence demonstrates concerted efforts by Republicans in many states to suppress voting by their opponents with ID requirements, closing polling places, and other tricks of the trade.
- The higher turnout this time around occurred among both Democrats and Republicans, but the Democrats have more to gain because their relatively young voter population normally turns out much less than the older Republican voter population.
- What looked like a modest shift the day after the election turned into a considerable Blue Wave as more results are finalized. The shifts from the last midterms in 2014 are notable:
under 30, +11D to +35D
women, +4 to +19
Latinos, +26 to +40
Asians, -1 to +54
college grads, -3 to +20
independents, -12 to +12
single, +13 to +24
not white evangelical, +12 to +34
- Rural areas voted heavily for Republicans. Suburbs, which have generally leaned Republican, turned bluer this time, mainly because of the votes of college-educated women.
- In short: Americans are divided, perhaps more than they have been since World War II.
- On one side, we have a modest, but bigger than normal for midterms, recovery of the Obama coalition, despite a House of Representatives gerrymandered in favor of Republicans and a Senate “map” that incidentally favored Republicans.
- Some high-profile progressives like Beto O’Rourke—a challenger for Ted Cruz’s Senate seat in Texas—and Andrew Gillum—the black Democrat who ran for governor of Florida—lost, but their showings were respectable enough to make them serious future candidates.
- On the other side, we’ve got a Trump-dominated Republican party, which will be more radical than in his first two years. Many of the relative moderates are not returning to Congress. The Republicans there will be whiter, more male, and more rural than before.
- The big winners in this election were those who want America divided and immobilized. That includes Presidents Putin and Xi. America will be consumed for most of the next two years with the 2020 presidential election. The Mueller investigation and oversight hearings will increase the noise and divisiveness, perhaps even to the point of impeachment.
- The Democrats, who are mostly moderates, have limited powers to influence foreign policy. Their main lever of power will be oversight: the power to convene House hearings and subpoena witnesses. The Senate will continue to rubber stamp Trump’s nomination of judges and ambassadors.
- That said there has been considerable agreement in the current Congress between Democrats and Republicans on maintaining the foreign affairs budget and toughening up against China, Russia, and North Korea. There are disagreements on the Iran nuclear deal, which Democrats favor, and on the defense budget, which Republicans traditionally favor.
- In the Middle East, we are likely to see a continued US effort in eastern Syria, some effort at rapprochement with Turkey, and Congressional pressure to stop the war in Yemen as well as sanction Saudi Arabia for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The Administration will resist that pressure but may give in on Yemen, which would bring Washington into closer alignment with most Europeans.
- It remains to be seen whether the consensus in favor of funding defense, development and diplomacy that existed in Congress since 2016 will be maintained. The Administration itself has signaled an intention to cut defense. Many newly elected Republicans will want to cut development and diplomacy. Democrats will defend both, but compromises should be expected. There is nothing popular about the foreign affairs budget in the US, though most Americans do favor continuing commitments abroad.
- On NATO and the EU, I don’t think much will change. Trump has made it clear he thinks little of NATO and less of the EU. The Congress and the American people are more favorable to both and will try to insist on maintenance of the Alliance. Trump’s hostility to the EU will, however, find some resonance among protectionist Democrats and Republicans. The steel and aluminum tariffs seem destined to stay, at least for now.
- Macron and Merkel notwithstanding, there are of course many in Europe who are sympathetic to their own version of Trump’s nationalism: make Italy, Hungary, Poland, or Denmark great again by blocking immigration, protecting domestic industries, rallying anti-minority sentiment, and undermining the rule of law. Berlusconi after all was an Italian invention.
- I’m afraid the only thing that will sober some of Trump’s American supporters will be a major economic downturn, and even then they may prefer to blame it on someone other than the incumbent, most likely minorities, immigrants, Europeans, and terrorists.
- That said, I think we have passed the moment I would call “peak Trump.” Even without a recession, most Americans—3 million more of whom voted for Hillary in 2016 and haven’t approved of Trump since—are now fed up. Unlike 2016, that majority has spread into red suburbs and states and mobilized more effectively. Democrats won the popular vote for Congress by about 7%. That could be a landslide in a presidential election.
- Trump has a difficult road ahead. But that should be little comfort. If I had to guess, his fall might be at least as painful as his rise. He will resist accountability and transparency to the last.
- Europe has a tremendously important role to play during the next two years. Merkel and Macron have already done great work in maintaining the vision of a united and liberal Europe. So long as Germany and France remain on that line, I can hope the rest of Europe and the US will eventually find their way back from ethnic nationalism.
- But they and those of you who agree with that vision are going to have to do much more. Here are a few concrete suggestions:
• The NATO allies really do need to meet the 2% goal by 2024. Failing to keep on the tracks plays directly into Trump’s malicious hands. If they do so by joining together to form Macron’s European army, I have no objection.
• A negotiated resolution of the trade dispute is highly desirable. Even better would be returning to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which offered big economic benefits.
• The US and Europe need to hang together on Russia and China or hang separately as Ben Franklin said to his fellow revolutionaries. US gas supplies should help on the Russian front.
• On Iran, I see no hope of a US/EU accommodation so long as the US stays out of the nuclear deal. But I don’t really see how it can re-enter under this president. Some issues will have to wait for 2021, when discussing a follow-on deal will be needed anyway.
• On Syria, prospects are better. The US and Europe seem to be on the same wavelength in withholding reconstruction aid until there is a credible and irreversible political transition under way. That is the way to succeed, but pressures on Europe will be great.
• On Libya, the Americans are hoping Italy and France will work together to end the civil war and put the country back on a sustainable path.
- There are lots of other issues, but the overall strategy should be this: hang together where possible, help each other out, and hope to get to 2021 in good enough shape to return to the trajectory most of us would prefer: a Euro-Atlantic community whole and free, though wiser and better, from Vancouver to Vladivostok.
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