Tag: North Korea
Tweeter-in-chief meets defiance
Locked and loaded for fire and fury, President Trump now confronts a defiant Kim Jong-un, who has conducted a big (whether thermonuclear is not yet clear) nuclear test, following quickly on a successful missile launch over Japan. Trump had promised none of this would happen. Now that it has, what are his options?
- A conventional military attack, presumably targeting North Korea’s missile and nuclear facilities. It won’t destroy them all (they are increasingly mobile and hard to find), but it could do some serious damage. The trouble is Pyongyang is likely to respond with a devastating conventional military attack on Seoul. That could escalate quickly to a land war or nuclear exchange. That’s not where we should want to go.
- Tightening sanctions. Trump has talked of preventing all trade with North Korea. He hasn’t got anything like the Chinese, Russian and other backing required for that. Unilateral sanctions tightening is near the limit of what can be achieved.
- Cyber attacks. I’d be surprised if we haven’t already exhausted their potential. The North Koreans, adept at the cyber game, will retaliate. We’d better be sure we are not more vulnerable than they are. Escalation dominance is vital if you are going to escalate.
- More bluster, including UN Security Council denunciation. Trump settled for this last time around. He likely will again. It obviously makes little difference to the North Koreans, who argue they are within their rights, since they have withdrawn from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to develop nuclear weapons as well as missiles of any range they think necessary to defend themselves. The UNSC has no means to enforce its decisions to the contrary.
- Negotiation. Trump once upon a time suggested he would want to negotiate with Kim Jong-un, presumably offering a formal end to the Korean War (until now there has just been an armistice) and diplomatic relations as well as other guarantees that we would not seek an end the North Korean regime, in exchange for some sort of nuclear and missile restraint on Pyongyang’s part. But it is hard to see why Pyongyang would sign on to that rather than just continue its so far successful nuclear and missile programs until they can credibly threaten the US?
Where does that leave us? Nowhere good.
It essentially means we are going to need to learn to live with North Korea as a nuclear-armed power, one bent on decoupling the US from its allies in Northeast Asia by threatening nuclear attack on the American homeland. The North Korean long-range, potentially nuclear, missiles raise the difficult question of whether the US will risk Los Angeles to save Tokyo or Seoul.
It will be vital in that scenario to maintain as close an alliance as possible with South Korea and Japan, which need to be confident of US support if they are to continue to refrain from developing nuclear weapons of their own. Certainly Trump’s tweeted threat to withdraw from the US/South Korea free trade agreement is the worst possible kind of thing to contemplate, as it would undermine South Korean (and Japanese) confidence in the US as a reliable ally and give them real reasons to think about arming themselves with nuclear weapons.
Trump during his campaign suggested he would be all right with that. He should by now understand how damaging to US interests a nuclear arms race in Northeast Asia could be. He should also be having second thoughts about tearing up the Iran nuclear deal, which has so far prevented a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
But second thoughts, or even first thoughts, are not his strong point. His bluster has already contributed to Kim Jong-un’s successful defiance. How many more stupid tweets before Trump precipitates a crisis that irreversibly damages US interests?
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Trump’s Moscow tower
This was the big deal Trump was pursuing, right up to his becoming a serious candidate for president. His staff thought it would help him get elected. But the deal didn’t go through, and Putin supported Trump’s election anyway.
How do we square that circle?
First, as Julia Ioffe repeatedly notes, it is clear that Putin and Co. did not look favorably on Trump doing business in Russia. Trump tried repeatedly over many years, without success. My guess is that the Russians, who did deals with inside Russia with lots of major international hotel chains, viewed Trump as a two-bit player. They, after all, knew how shaky his finances were, because Russian investors had been propping him up for the better part of two decades. The Russians had no reason to treat a small timer like Trump who likely laundered money for them in the same league with Ritz-Carlton.
So when his minions went to Moscow offering Trump Tower, Putin and Co. had no reason to buy the idea, least of all after oil prices dropped in 2014. But the other part of the deal was attractive: help Trump in the election campaign, make a laughing-stock of the US, and shake peoples’ confidence in the democratic system worldwide. It worked far better than anyone in Moscow likely imagined, but luck is always an important part of diplomacy and politics.
Trump meanwhile could not say anything bad about Putin, even though his Moscow tower deal was scuppered, because doing so would endanger the hot Russian money flowing into his real estate projects. That is true to this day. Even now that he has been caught prevaricating about his company’s and campaign’s relationships with the Russians, and even as president, Trump doesn’t dare put at risk his business empire. The Russians can do without him. He still can’t do without the Russians.
This is a sad and sordid tale. Some Republicans, and some in his own Administration, have indicated their doubts about Trump: whether he represents or even understands American values, whether he knows how to be president, and whether he is able and willing to separate his personal interests from those of the US government. But those are still isolated, even if weighty, voices. The polling, if it can be trusted, suggests Trump’s 30-40% base is sticking with him, they say no matter what. He is unpopular by historical standards, even within the Republican party, but it hasn’t really mattered, yet.
We’ll see what happens when the Congress returns from its non-recess. Will Senator McConnell pretend he didn’t hear Trump’s resounding criticism? Will Senator McCain continue to blast Trump but do nothing more than his one vote against repeal of Obamacare? How about Senator Flake? Will he buckle? Will Congressman Ryan continue his nascent campaign for the 2020 presidential nomination? Unless the Republican leadership starts to organize against Trump, the odds are he’ll make it to the 2018 election and continue on past because the electoral map is so unfavorable to Democrats.
We can therefore be grateful that Bannon and Gorka are back at the Breitbart zoo and the Trump triumvirate (Generals Kelley, Mattis and McMaster) are starting to steer the ship of state, at least on foreign policy (Tillerson much less so, especially after he threw the President under the bus with his doubts about whether Trump spoke for American values). Far be it from me to approve of a soft military coup, but the Afghanistan decision was at least properly staffed out and analyzed. With North Korea firing missiles over Japan, the generals know as well as anyone the horrifying consequences of war with Pyongyang. They will insist on a deliberative process. The same applies to the Iran nuclear deal.
But Trump, left to his own devices, would not be the first American president to take the country to war in part to extract himself from domestic political difficulties. His loud mouth has already threatened fire and fury from locked and loaded weapons. Bluster is only the first stage of Trump’s approach to foreign policy. Distraction is the next phase.
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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?
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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