Tag: North Korea
Harvey hits Houston hard
Storms are a test of political leadership. Snowstorms in the US often upend mayors and governors who appear unprepared. Hurricane Katrina undermined Bush 43. Hurricane Sandy showed President Obama off to good advantage.
The jury is still out on President Trump’s reaction to Harvey, which hit the Texas Gulf Coast yesterday morning and is now flooding Houston. He did a good job of appearing to be prepared on Friday: holding meetings, tweeting mightily, and touting the cooperation among the local, state and federal governments. Bluster is one of his favorite modes.
This morning there are less convincing signs. He has tweeted about subjects other than the storm (a disreputable friend’s book, Missouri politics, the border wall with Mexico), in an obvious effort to distract attention from the storm. Distraction is another one of his favorite modes.
He is also claiming the storm is unprecedented. That isn’t true. What is true is that he recently revoked Obama-imposed standards for flood protection, apparently because they were designed as a response to the climate change that Trump denies is happening (or denies is due to human activity, or denies is harmful, or…).
That was done so recently it won’t have any impact on the damage due to Harvey, but the sad fact is that the US is not well-prepared for storms. We allow building in areas that are likely to get flooded, even rebuilding in those areas after a devastating storm. Much of this is paid for by US government-sponsored flood insurance, or Federal Emergency Management Administration loans and grants. The criteria for building vary widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
Houston seems likely to get the brunt of Harvey, which is now stalled there and dumping feet of rain per day on the fourth largest city in the country, with 2.3 million inhabitants. Damage is likely to be catastrophic, particularly if the storm remains there and doesn’t move to the north or east as previously predicted. Deaths so far have been few (only 2), but look for that number to rise. The aftermath can be more deadly than the storm itself, as water drains slowly and people run out of supplies. Remember New Orleans?
Trump can be happy for one thing: the storm has obliterated news of North Korea’s missile tests Saturday morning. No one is noticing that so far Washington has not responded, despite threatening fire and fury and claiming to be locked and loaded. The sad fact is there is nothing much military we can do, because of Pyongyang’s threat to South Korea and Japan. The diplomatic track is opaque, but we can hope something is moving there.
It is hard not to notice when the Secretary of State, speaking of American values, refuses to defend the President and instead says he speaks for himself. Tillerson, heretofore largely an advocate of a values-free foreign policy, disowns the President of the United States because of values? I thought I’d never see the day. I can’t wait for Trump’s wack back at Tillerson, or will he be too busy claiming the response to Harvey is really good?
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Good luck
As of January 19, there were 1920 pardon and 11335 commutation petitions pending at the Justice Department. President Trump skipped over those in favor of pardoning a former sheriff who had defied a court order to stop racial profiling of Latinos. Sheriff Arpaio is 85 and still had an opportunity to appeal. He was in no danger of going to jail. What the President did was not a humanitarian gesture. He was sending, as he has repeatedly during his lifetime, a clear and unequivocal signal that he respects no law and adheres to the notion that whites are superior and deserve special treatment.
I trust the signal will not be lost on America’s rapidly growing Hispanic population, 29% of which voted for Trump despite his many anti-Latino statements: claiming Mexicans coming to the US were criminals and rapists, suggesting a judge born in Indiana could not be fair because his grandparents were Mexican, and promising to make Mexico pay for his border wall. The Republicans have long thought they needed to do something to recoup some socially conservative Latinos. Hard to see how that will happen now.
The White House also apparently fired Sebastian Gorka, the falsely credentialed “terrorism expert” on the White House staff. Gorka was more TV court jester than serious policy wonk, but Chief of Staff Kelly and others in the administration had had their fill of him. That is good. Among other things, he had a history of Hungarian ultra-nationalist and anti-Semitic activism. I suppose Jewish right-wingers, taken aback by Trump’s solicitude for neo-Nazis in the wake of their murder of a counter-protester in Charlottesville, pressured for Gorka’s removal.
Both these decisions were announced on a Friday evening as a massive hurricane bore down on the Texas Gulf Coast, with likely devastating consequences. No doubt someone thought the news of Arpaio’s pardoning, and maybe also Gorka’s firing, could be inundated along with Houston. Asked about what he had to say to people in the path of the hurricane, Trump was flippant: “good luck to everybody” he chimed.
Bearing down on Trump is an investigation of Russian meddling in the US election and hot ruble financing of Trump and Kushner real estate. The Congressional committees are not letting up and Special Counsel Mueller is issuing subpoenas, for which he needs to get grand jury approval. The Mueller team isn’t leaking at all (in contrast to a White House that can’t keep anything secret), so it is hard to know precisely what they are pursuing. But they have hired a lot of financial crime experts. So I am inclined to treat Mr. Trump to his own words: “good luck.” He is going to need it, though of course the Arpaio pardon signals clearly he will pardon himself and his family members if need be.
So are we. The North Koreans again launched missiles this morning, apparently in protest of an impending US-led military exercise. Pyongyang aimed its relatively short-range missiles in a non-threatening direction, but still. Trump’s bluster about stopping their missile development is proving just that: bluster. How will he react to North Korean defiance? Yes, we’ll need good luck, and wise heads, too.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
It keeps getting worse
The problem today is not Charlottesville. The problem is the White House, starting at the top. The President can’t bring himself to denounce white supremacists, or even to say that Nazi flags have no legitimate role in American politics, even if the constitution protects their display. His acolytes likewise willfully ignore white supremacists who have killed many more Americans since 9/11 than Islamist extremists have.
If you put America first and want to protect its citizens, you would deal with the violent protesters in Charlottesville first and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria later. Or at least you would pay some attention to denouncing the thugs who think you are their leader–they gleefully shout “Heil Trump”–and skip the bromides about unspecified violence and vague “unity.”
You would also want to maintain America’s international credibility. Trump has spent the week shredding it. After threatening North Korea with “fire and fury” and claiming we are “locked and loaded,” it appears virtually none of the necessary preparations for military action against Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear programs have been taken. Forces have not been deployed, civilians have not been evacuated, and the Pentagon is denying that the use of force–notably not yet authorized by Congress–is imminent.
To top it off, Trump threatened military action also against Venezuela, where we would almost surely be better off to let nature take its course in ending President Maduro’s shambolic governance.
Trump’s threats are not credible, which means it will be far more difficult to mount a credible threat in the future. We are already at the point that many in the US government are ignoring the president: the Pentagon is not implementing his ban on transgender people, Secretary of State Tillerson is trying to stifle talk of war with North Korea, Republicans in Congress are heading towards a compromise on maintaining Obamacare. Other governments are laughing at Trump’s obsession with undoing whatever his predecessor did. If Trump fails to follow through on his threat against North Korea, and the North Koreans continue to test missiles and nuclear weapons, how much credibility will the United States have in the future?
Of course it is possible Trump will follow this week’s bluster with a cruise missile attack on North Korea, hoping to reproduce the applause he got after the attack on a Syrian air base in April and distract attention from the investigation of Russian interference in the election. But that attack was a one-off that has had little impact. Assad has continued to use small quantities of chemical weapons and to prioritize attacks against the relatively moderate opposition in Syria. A similar one-off against North Korea would predictably have no serious impact on its well-dispersed and hidden missile and nuclear programs.
Nor will many applaud. North Korea might strike back, most likely against Guam, but possibly also against Seoul or even Tokyo. How long do we think America’s friends and allies will remain friends and allies if Washington is seen as having started a war from which they will suffer the most? What are the odds that NATO could be held together once the Europeans conclude the President is rash, unreliable, and likely to provoke adversaries?
The Europeans can be sure of one thing, however: the adversary Trump will never provoke is Vladimir Putin. The reason is increasingly apparent: Russian money sustains Trump’s real estate empire, which was likely used to launder ill-gotten gains of Putin’s best friends. Trump can never turn on Putin, lest Putin pull the plug on Russian financing. This is blackmail, not collusion. We needn’t worry too much about Trump intentionally coming to blows with Moscow, which is using its leverage over the President to gain advantages in Syria.
Can Ukraine be far behind? My guess is that the Administration is busily trying to cut a deal on Ukraine, one that it could argue should lead to lifting of the sanctions on Russia. Fortunately, sharp eyes in Congress will examine any such proposition. It will be difficult for Trump to sell the Ukrainians short, the way he did the Syrian opposition.
The United States matters to friends, allies, and enemies less today than at any time during my lifetime, which corresponds to the entire post-World War II period. The damage to our web of alliances, our international credibility, and our position of leadership in the past seven months is gigantic. Generals Mattis, Kelly, and McMaster are proving incapable of blocking the President from his worst instincts. The only relief will come when Trump is gone. But none of us can tell when that might be. It keeps getting worse.
PS: It got worse within minutes of my publishing this piece. Trump said, in response to a car plowing into peaceful counterprotesters: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides. On many sides.”
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
North Korea has the upper hand
I won’t have time this morning to write about President Trump’s foolish “fire and fury” threat against North Korea, which provoked a specific Pyongyang threat against the US territory of Guam. In any event, I wouldn’t do better than Robert Litwak, who had intelligent things to say about the issue this morning on NPR:
Secretary of State Tillerson is wandering around the world saying the US wants to talk with North Korea, while the President blusters. That isn’t a good way to get the diplomacy going, because the North Koreans have a better alternative to a negotiated solution (BATNA) than we do: they need only continue their nuclear and missile programs and be prepared to launch a conventional artillery attach on Seoul if we start to act. In the game Trump is playing–military threat–North Korea has the upper hand.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
A flicker of bipartisanship
The House has reached bipartisan agreement on a sanctions bill that will make it harder for President Trump undo sanctions on Russia (as well as North Korea and Iran), unless he can present evidence that Moscow’s behavior has changed. That’s extraordinary: it has been a long time since Congress has reached a bipartisan agreement on anything important, much less something on which Trump disagrees.
There are still pitfalls. The House version of the bill will be voted on this week and then needs to be reconciled with the Senate’s version, which did not include North Korea. The Administration will do everything possible to water it down, threatening to veto it if it passes in its current form. But if the bill makes it through to approval in both Houses with veto-proof majorities (more than two-thirds), the White House will hesitate to undermine its already weakened president by vetoing and risking an override.
If and when the legislation passes, the US will have something resembling a tough-minded policy on Russian misbehavior, including its election hacking, its annexation of Crimea, and its invasion of eastern Ukraine (but not Syria). The legislation would also toughen policies on North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs as well as Iran’s missile program and regional interventions.
None of this however should be expected to have an immediate impact. Unilateral sanctions, even “secondary” ones that punish other countries’ companies for doing business with Russia, Iran, and North Korea, are rarely effective in the short-term. Their impact is felt when you negotiate relief from them, not when you impose them. And the fact that the legislation makes it hard to provide relief will be a disincentive to Trump to use the authority the legislation provides, in particular on Russia.
We should of course expect retaliation from the countries sanctioned. Russia will of course maintain the prohibition on adoptions that the Trump campaign and Administration have repeatedly discussed with Moscow’s various representatives. Putin may expel some American spies and diplomats or prohibit American imports. North Korea will likely launch more missiles. Iran will too. Tehran can also target Americans in Iraq or Syria, though doing so risks an American military reaction.
Sanctions would be more effective if multilateral, in particular if the Europeans would join in imposing and implementing their own, comparable measures. That isn’t likely with respect to Iran, where the Europeans are doing good business since the nuclear deal. They may be more likely to act against Russia, though the Italians and others are already chafing at existing sanctions. North Korea is easy for the Europeans, though they are unlikely to join in secondary sanctions against Chinese banks and other companies.
The Trump Administration lacks the rapport with Europe (and most of the rest of the world) to get the kind of multilateral cooperation required to make sanctions bite against Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The President may have enjoyed Bastille Day in France with newly elected President Macron, but he has stiff-armed German Chancellor Merkel, who has the real clout. His pal British Prime Minister May is preoccupied now with Brexit, hasn’t been able to form a new government after suffering serious election losses, and in any event carries little weight any longer with the rest of Europe.
So, yes, this flicker of bipartisanship is good news, as it is a counterweight to some of President Trump’s worst instincts, in particular towards Russia. But it does not change international equation. Defiance will continue, as Trump has weakened the United States by offending its allies.
PS: While I was working on this piece, my colleague at SAIS Mike Haltzel published similar but more far-reaching views: A Ray of Hope on our Russia Policy | HuffPost
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Debacle
The Trump Administration is failing, both domestically and internationally.
On the domestic front, last night’s collapse of Republican support for the repeal and replacement of Obama’s health care legislation ends any reasonable prospect of legislative action on this front. Republican Senate leader McConnell says he will bring simple repeal to a vote, which is what President Trump says he now wants.
Were it to pass, the US health care system would be thrown into chaos, with damaging economic consequences. More likely, it will never come to a vote. Instead, the President and his virulently anti-Obamacare Secretary of Health and Human Services will instead try to weaken Obamacare through executive action. That will also cause enormous economic uncertainty and risk stalling an aging economic recovery.
Even if somehow the healthcare debacle is resolved, the Administration needs to raise the debt ceiling by the end of September, in order to avoid a US Government default. There is no agreement yet among Republicans (the Democrats count for little as they are in the minority) on when and how to do this. Since it is a “must-pass” measure, members will try to hang lots of other things onto it, likely delaying passage until the last conceivable moment.
On the international front, it is now clear that not only the President himself but also his son, Don Jr., welcomed and encouraged Russian help during the election campaign, along with the campaign manager and the President’s son-in-law. Special Counsel Mueller will now have to determine whether their behavior violated the legal prohibition on soliciting or accepting foreign assistance.
Judicial standards of proof are much higher than journalistic ones, so we’ll just have to wait and see what Mueller concludes, but in the meanwhile the White House has been reduced to arguing that nothing they did could possibly be illegal, even if it involved active collusion with Moscow. No one should be surprised if Trump welcomes gives Moscow back its spy facilities and the personnel that Obama expelled in retaliation for interference in the US election.
On other issues, the news is no better:
- North Korea: The Administration failed to prevent Pyongyang from testing intercontinental ballistic missiles, as the President promised he would do. His efforts to convince China to get tough with Kim Jong-un have likewise failed. Instead, Seoul is breaking with the US hard line and seeking talks with the North. Trump’s bluster and bullying has gotten him no result at all on the Korean Peninsula.
- Qatar crisis: While the President was encouraging Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to go after Qatar about terrorist financing, his Secretaries of State and Defense have been trying to smooth things over, fearing that Qatar might lean farther towards Iran due to the blockade Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have levied. Mediation efforts (mainly by Kuwait) have so far failed. The Gulf Cooperation Council remains split and weakened, while someone in Washington yesterday leaked intelligence saying the Emirates intentionally provoked the crisis by hacking into Qatari broadcasts with false information about statements the Qatari Emir never made. This is the umpteenth time the Trump Administration has suffered leaks, which of course it denounces but then does nothing about.
- The Islamic State: The military operations to liberate Mosul and Raqqa from ISIS are proceeding, but it is increasingly clear that there are no viable plans for stabilization, reconstruction and governance thereafter. In Mosul, ISIS resistance continues, despite the victory celebration led by Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi. In Raqqa, the Kurdish-led forces taking the city are likely to face Turkish, Syrian government and Iranian resistance once they succeed.
None of these issues is even close to being resolved. All are likely to get more challenging in the future. I confess to Schadenfreude: this Administration and Congress are proving as incoherent and incompetent as predicted. But it is not fun to watch your country paralyzed and weakened. There is no quick way out of the debacle we are in.
RSS - Posts
