Tag: North Korea
The bigotry of low expectations
President Trump of course said nothing like what I had suggested yesterday in his speech to Congress last night. The tone was marginally less objectionable than his “grab pussy” speech, but as SAIS colleague Eliot Cohen put it:
POTUS clunky speech seemingly judged a success because he did not sound like an unhinged, belligerent maniac.
#Bigotryoflowexpectations.
Trump repeated virtually all of his worst domestic campaign promises: repeal Obamacare without specifying what should replace it, counter supposedly rising crime by blocking immigrants who don’t commit more crimes than natural born Americans, build an unneeded wall on parts of the border already difficult to cross, drop government regulations that protect Americans from ineffective or unsafe pharmaceuticals, build pipelines that don’t increase American energy security even though the economics no longer justify it….
The only domestic proposition I agreed with is his $1 trillion for infrastructure, but that’s pretty much what Obama wanted to do too. The Republicans in Congress wouldn’t let him.
The only real adjustments were a pledge of support to NATO (but not the European Union, which is arguably just as important to US interests) and a denunciation of hate crimes, which he should have made weeks ago. China went almost unmentioned, he skipped North Korea’s nuclear weapons and Russian interference in the American election, and forgot about climate change entirely. He offered no indication of how he is going to defeat ISIS.
The moment that struck me as most inappropriate was the exploitation of Ryan Owens’ widow (her husband was killed in a botched raid in Yemen that Trump personally approved), who was present in the gallery. I gather veterans shared my reaction:
But the Congress provided the desired long and loud applause.
The public display of a tearful grieving widow for political purposes grates the wrong way with me, but obviously I’m not with the program. Trump thought McCain wasn’t a hero because he was captured. By what logic does Trump think Owens is a hero because he is dead? Wouldn’t logic suggest that Trump prefers fighting men not only uncaptured but also alive?
The press is celebrating the more moderate tone of the speech, exemplified best in Trump’s refraining from criticizing the media. Some people are easy to please.
Throughout the speech, Trump was glued to his Teleprompter. No doubt within 48 hours he’ll be back to saying the things he really means in the acerbic tones that come naturally to his pouting mouth and short fingers.
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Trying to hem him in
The appointment of H.R. McMaster as National Security Adviser is one more step in trying to hem in President Trump on national security policy. He remains in charge of immigration, health care, trade and many other subjects, but the Washington establishment (aka “the blob”) is trying to reassert control of some important foreign policy issues:
- Vice President Pence has been in Europe reassuring the NATO allies of the Administration’s wholehearted commitment to the Alliance and openness to partnership with the European Union, despite the President’s often expressed skepticism of both.
- Defense Secretary Mattis has done likewise with NATO and also visited Baghdad, in part to reassure the Iraqis that we are not, as the President has suggested we would, going to “keep” their oil (whatever that means).
- H.R. is well-known for his book criticizing the generals for not objecting to escalation of the Vietnam War–he isn’t likely to stand by idly if Trump pursues courses of action that can’t be justified or sustained. Nor is he likely to ignore or denigrate the intelligence community.
- Secretary of State Tillerson has been reassuring Ukraine of America’s support, including on Crimea, and calling out the Russians for failure to implement the Minsk 2 agreement.
- Republican Senator McCain has trashed Trump’s affection for Vladimir Putin, with Senator Lindsey Graham and other Republicans cheering him on amidst growing pressure for serious investigations of the White House’s Russian connections.
With those holes plugged, the main thrust of White House thinking about foreign and national security policy still has two major outlets: Iran and North Korea.
The nuclear deal with Iran is safe because the Europeans have made it clear they will not reimpose sanctions if Trump undermines it and the Israelis have told Trump they prefer the current restraints to none at all. But Tehran’s support for Bashar al Assad in Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, and Shiite militias in Iraq gives people in Washington heartburn. Despite the nuclear deal, Tehran has few friends in DC because it has been far so aggressive in pursuing its regional interests.
The May 19 Iranian presidential election is already raising the political temperature in Tehran. The Revolutionary Guard is doing military exercises and shooting off missiles, though it is not clear whether any of them since General Flynn’s “notice” violate UN Security Council resolution 1929:
Iran is prohibited from undertaking any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons and States…
President Rouhani is feeling the heat, both from the Iranian right wing and from the Americans. Reformists have no one else to vote for, so he will likely to tilt towards the hawks in an effort to improve his prospects, which are good but by no means unassailable. He is also trying to improve relations with the Gulf Arabs, which would solidify his claim to restoring Iran’s influence and prestige in the region.
North Korea is the far easier and more worthy target. Let’s not even consider North Korea’s assassinations, human rights abuses against its own population, and oppression. Kim Jong-un is well on his way to getting missiles that can reach US bases in the Pacific and eventually the US West coast. The Chinese appear to be at their wits’ end with him. The problem is this: no one knows what, if anything, will bring the North Koreans to heel. If we were to try and fail, Pyongyang can retaliate with massive artillery barrages against Seoul. He could even use a few of his nuclear weapons.
If the establishment professionals succeed in their effort to hem Trump in with respect to Russia, Ukraine, NATO, and Iraq’s oil, he still has the opportunity to make a giant hash of things. The President is in charge. Getting Iran and North Korea right will not be easy, especially if the President decides he is better off listening to Steve Bannon than H.R. McMaster. Bad judgment is Trump’s consistent vice. He can get the United States into a lot of trouble.
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Good riddance, but problems persist
It’s hard not to celebrate the departure of General Flynn from the position of National Security Adviser. He was both pro-Russian and anti-Muslim beyond reason. A sworn enemy of the American intelligence establishment, he got caught by them talking sanctions relief with the Russian ambassador even before Donald Trump was sworn in. Then he allegedly lied to the Vice President about what was said. His comeuppance is well-merited.
Congressional Republicans are now pledging not to investigate him. Why would they do that? They are trying to contain the damage. Their reluctance suggests it is more than likely that Trump knew what Flynn was discussing with the Russians. Flynn’s testimony, or that of others cognizant of the contents of the phone calls, would call into question the President’s own behavior: did he authorize Flynn to discuss sanctions? Was he pleased that Flynn did so? Was this part of a broader scheme of accommodating Moscow’s interests?
The Congressional cover raises other questions: was it part of a deal to obtain Flynn’s resignation? Why wasn’t Flynn just fired? What are his non-disclosure arrangements with the Administration?
Whatever the answers, it is clear that Flynn’s resignation does not solve the basic problem, which is Trump’s unrestrained and so far unconditional desire for an improved relationship with Vladimir Putin. The President has never made it clear what he expects from this improved relationship, only that it would somehow magically make things better in the world. He also hasn’t specified what he would be prepared to give up in return: recognition of Russian annexation of Crimea? Southeastern Ukraine? Independence of Transnistria? Annexation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which are already nominally independent? NATO accession of Montenegro, now on the Senate’s agenda for ratification? Further NATO expansion in the Balkans? NATO expansion further into Scandinavia? An end to American support for rebels in Syria?
These questions persist even without Flynn. Secretary of Defense Mattis and Secretary of State Tillerson may restrain the White House from some particularly bad impulses, especially Trump’s inclination to ditch NATO altogether, but their leverage will be limited. If the President is prepared to pursue a rapprochement with Russia despite the failures recorded by his two immediate predecessors, he will no doubt pick a new National Security Adviser prepared to pursue his policy direction. I doubt that can be David Petraeus, who in any event is already tarred with the brush of security violations. But I trust there are lots of other people who will do the work if given the opportunity.
In the meanwhile, the resignation of the National Security Adviser (and according to the press his deputy) will throw a National Security Council already roiled by leaks into further turmoil. President Trump has already failed to respond with anything but a few thin words of support to Japan when North Korea tested a missile in violation of UN Security Council resolutions. He is looking unprepared for a crisis, which of course means that someone somewhere on earth is likely to think this is a good time to precipitate one. An already messy transition has unsettled America’s relationships across the globe and now seems likely to open the door to a serious security challenge.
It is easy enough to say good riddance to Flynn. But there are real risks involved in a presidency committed to cooperation with Putin’s aggressive Russia and unprepared to meet even the challenge of a North Korean missile test.
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Hard to keep up
It really is: the novice President has set a blazing pace in destroying alliances, alienating friends, strengthening adversaries, and provoking enemies. To wit:
- Phone calls with the traditionally friendly President of Mexico and Prime Minister of Australia ended in acrimony, with the former over who would pay for the border wall and with the latter over whether the US would keep its commitment to take some refugees.
- Europeans are predictably objecting to the ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. Chancellor Merkel has scolded the White House. The Brits are going to debate in parliament whether to go through with their Prime Minister’s invitation to Trump for a state visit, which would likely generate record protests.
- The Islamic State (ISIS) is using the immigration ban for recruiting purposes, as it fits perfectly with its narrative that the United States is at war with Islam while doing absolutely nothing to reduce the likelihood of terrorist attacks.
- National Security Advisor Flynn and the President have explicitly put Iran “on notice” about its missile tests and its assistance to the Houthi side of Yemen’s civil war. Watch this space for more sanctions or military action, though it is also possible the Americans are bluffing or just satisfying their domestic constituencies. The Iranians are likely to continue both missile tests, which they say do not involve nuclear-capable vectors, as well as assistance to the Houthis.
- Trump approved a Special Forces operation in Yemen that largely failed (he announced that it succeeded) and killed civilians, including children, as well as one American.
Binyamin Applebaum, who writes for the New York Times, has helpfully prepared a map illustrating those Trump has angered since taking office (click on the legend to read it):
No doubt more is in the offing. And the domestic front has been no less hyperactive: nomination of a Supreme Court Justice whose high school years included leading a club called “Fascism Forever” (you really can’t make up stuff as good as this), preparation of an executive order on “religious freedom” that would create giant loopholes enabling discrimination, and approval in the Senate of an Attorney General with a compelling record of racism and (il)legal efforts to suppress voting by minorities.
This would all be comical but for the likelihood it will lead to tragedy. While offending friends and allies, Trump remains committed to his bromance with President Putin, who shows no sign of giving Washington anything of value in return for its affection. The war in Ukraine is heating up and the Russians have nixed Trump’s proposal for safe zones in Syria, which can’t be created unless Russia as well as its Iranian and Syrian allies sign on.
Iran is the most likely point of serious friction, not only because of Flynn’s warning but also because the new administration appears determined to teach lessons that Tehran doesn’t want to learn. But North Korea is another possible friction point, as Pyongyang has the same attitude. War with either would be a major enterprise rife with risk and gigantic expense that few allies would be willing to share with a president who has no appreciation for the long history of America’s relationships with them. Trump is a unilateralist who will incur the full costs of any intervention against Iran or North Korea. He will find it difficult even to get multilateral sanctions beefed up against the North Koreans, as he has already done a lot to offend China.
America First is America on its own.
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This isn’t likely to go well
While there are a lot of other candidates for first international crisis in the new administration, North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs are a likely one. Donald Trump tweeted yesterday, apparently in response to a remark by North Korean President Kim that his country would soon have an intercontinental ballistic missile:
North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It won’t happen!
He then added a bit later:
China has been taking out massive amounts of money & wealth from the U.S. in totally one-sided trade, but won’t help with North Korea. Nice!
If Trump intended that first tweet as a threat of unilateral US military action, he was not the first to propose it. More than ten years ago, current Defense Secretary Carter and former Democratic Defense Secretary Perry proposed the same thing. They wanted to destroy any North Korean missile capable of reaching the US on the launch pad.
But of course it is not clear what the tweet really means. Nor is it clear why Trump assumes that the ICBM in question would be capable of carrying a nuclear weapon to a US target. What he is doing here is what he often does: throwing ambiguous remarks into the public sphere with little or no concern for their factual basis or their impact on others.
That is also true for the second tweet about China. Trump wants Beijing to help with North Korea and to stop what he regards as unfair trade practices. Nothing wrong with that: presidents from Clinton onwards have wanted pretty much the same. But criticizing the Chinese publicly for the one is not likely to get you help on the other. And linking the two is disadvantageous for negotiating both. Trump has threatened to improve his negotiating leverage on trade by unilaterally imposing tariffs, a move that would precipitate Chinese retaliation. What would the odds be then for getting Beijing to move more firmly on North Korea?
Trump is now in a world far more complex than the one he is used to. I’m willing to believe that his business deals are complicated, but they are basically questions of how much people will pay to use his name. There are few other, unrelated, issues between him and his business partners. In international affairs, there are a lot of linked issues between major powers, making it exceedingly difficult to predict the consequences of any particular move. In military parlance, these are “wickedly” complex problems.
Trump can of course learn. He learned that he couldn’t make money running casinos, got out of that business, and started to sell his brand instead. But he doesn’t readily learn from the experience of others. He may listen attentively to Al Gore, but then nominated an Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency who doesn’t believe in human contributions to global warming. He pretended to listen to Mitt Romney, who has named Russia as the greatest strategic threat to the US, but he passed him over for Secretary of State.
A possible exception: his position on torture appears to have shifted after talking with his Defense Department nominee, General Mattis. But that is a rare exception. He has stubbornly persisted on many other issues where the weight of evidence is against his policy prescriptions: the wall with Mexico, repeal of Obamacare, making nice with Vladimir Putin, moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, blocking Muslims from entering the US and registering them once they are here….
We’ve got a president-elect who listens mainly to himself (and has even said as much publicly). The odds of that going well, especially when it comes to North Korea and China, are piddling.
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2016 sucked, but the world really doesn’t
John Oliver has already said it:
For me, 2016 was a lousy year on many fronts:
- Russian and Iranian intervention reversed the tide of war in Syria and chased many more innocent civilians from their homes and their country.
- North Korea has continued its increasingly capable missile and nuclear weapons programs.
- Major terrorist attacks have succeeded in Paris, Nice, Brussels, Berlin, Orlando, Lahore, Istanbul as well as on board a Paris/Cairo Egyptair flight.
- Britain voted in a referendum to leave the EU.
- Donald Trump won the American presidential election, despite a notable lack of qualifications, reasonable policy proposals, and a majority of the popular vote.
Sure some nice things happened too, like the Paris climate change agreement, but global warming continued apace. The Islamic State lost a lot of territory in Syria and Iraq, but many innocent people got killed in the process. The Cubs won the World Series, but Cleveland lost.
Really unalloyed good news has been rare. Or at least not enough to counter the sense of an inexorable slide into more instability, less equity, and more confusion.
Most concerning is that liberal democracy–based on individual rights and rule of law–is losing ground. It’s not just Putin and Russia, but also Xi Jinping and China, Sisi and Egypt, Netanyahu and Israel, Erdogan and Turkey, Duterte and the Philippines, Khamenei and Iran, Kabila and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, even Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma. Leaders and countries are turning in illiberal if not outright autocratic directions. Hopes for liberalizing politics and economics are limited to places like Tunisia and Taiwan, important in their own right but peripheral to the center of gravity in their regions.
2017 is likely to be worse rather than better. There is no visible barrier to deterioration in the Middle East. The North Korean regime is increasingly consolidated. China is exploiting Trump’s provocations to ratchet up its own defiance, the movement of the US embassy to Jerusalem is likely to provoke dramatic Arab reactions, Angela Merkel is in peril, Marine Le Pen has a chance to win the French presidential election, Italian banks may fail, Khamenei, Erdogan, Duterte, and Kabila are determined to hold on to power.
But despair is no more a policy than hope. What counts more than anything else is not the pace of change. That might be very fast under Trump. But it is the direction that really matters. We need to find ways to make the world safer, more stable, more prosperous and more free. Even small steps in the right direction will eventually get you where you want to go. Let’s keep that in mind as we approach the end and the beginning.
Here’s the proof the pudding, but you have to take the long view to see it:
The next four years is unlikely to reverse any of these fabulously positive developments.
Or watch this via Zack Beauchamp (which dates from 2015 and therefore does not include the uptick in war deaths of the past couple of years, which still leaves the numbers low in historic terms):
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