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There are some ambiguities emerging in the US policy toward Syria.  On Sunday, US Ambassador to the UN indicated that the strike on Syria was part of the objective to remove Syrian President Assad from office; on the same day US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson indicated that the US is primarily interested in defeating Daesh (the Islamic State).  Then today, Press Secretary Sean Spicer indicated that one of the US “red lines” was the use of barrel bombs and not simply chemical weapons.  The  Syrian regime has used barrel bombs extensively in the civil war, so that red line has a much lower threshold than the use of chemical weapons.  These issues are important since they provide insight into what might happen next.  If the US restricts its bombing to only the use of chemical weapons, then it is highly likely that we will not see another military strike and nothing will have changed.  But if more strikes occur in the absence of a chemical attack, then the implication is that the US is going to be an active participant in the war.  That possibility is an absolute nightmare.  It is highly unlikely that either Russia or Iran will abandon Assad under pressure.

Jeanette Rankin was the first woman to serve in the Congress and she was sworn in one hundred years ago.  Since that time, women have steadily increased their representation in Congress and today woman comprise 19.4 percent of the members of Congress.  The world average is 23.3 percent, with the Nordic countries having the highest representation:  41.7 percent.  Interestingly, the US actually scores favorably with other countries in terms of the overall position of women in society according to the UN Gender Development Index.  The discrepancy between the over ranking and representation in the national legislature is worth investigation.

Almost 50% of federal arrests in the US in 2014 were for immigration-related offenses.  Since 2004 federal arrests for other offenses such as drugs or weapons have dropped sharply.  Those arrests are also concentrated with distinct geographic areas of the US.  According to the Pew Research Center:

“The geographic distribution of federal arrests also shows the growing emphasis on immigration offenses. In 2014, 61% of all federal arrests – or more than 100,000 – occurred in just five federal judicial districts along the U.S.-Mexico border. In 2004, those five districts – one each in Arizona, California and New Mexico, plus two in Texas – accounted for 40% of federal arrests.”

For a country whose demography has relied heavily on immigration, these statistics are provocative.

The Chinese press had an interesting take on the meeting between US President Trump and Chinese President Xi.  Perhaps the most telling insight came from a photograph published by Renmin Ribao.  The photo of a slouching Mr. Trump on the couch suggests a view of him as careless, lazy, and lackadaisical.  In contrast, President Xi looks authoritative and in control.  The meeting was overshadowed by the news of the US military strike in Syria, but the Chinese refused to accept the legitimacy of the US action.  On the difficult economic differences between the two states, both sides agreed on a 100-day “cooling off” period before any concrete actions are taken on trade and currency manipulations.  The meeting was notable for its lack of progress on any substantive matters. 

The US is sending the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier and its entire group to the Korean Peninsula.  The move follows the air strike in Syria which has set a tone of unpredictability to President Trump’s foreign policy.  The move is also a pre-emptive move that anticipates additional missile launches from North Korea.  The timing also corresponds to some significant events in North Korea.  As the Washington Post notes:

“North Korea is expected to hold a huge military parade on April 15 to celebrate the 105th birthday of its founding president, Kim Il Sung, and to mark the 85th anniversary of the creation of the Korean People’s Army on April 25 with similar fanfare.”

We do not know if Chinese President Xi was informed of this move.  The message to the South Koreans was that the Chinese were informed, but it is hard to tell exactly what was communicated.  If the Chinese were not fully briefed then the Chinese are undoubtedly quite concerned as well.  No matter what President Trump thinks about Nixon’s “Madman Theory”, unpredictability is not a virtue in foreign policy.

USS Carl Vinson Carrier Group

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is one of the natural wonders of the world and was declared a World Heritage Site in 1981.  In the last two years it has experienced an extraordinary bleaching due to climate change. According to the Washington Post:

“Coral bleaching occurs when unusually warm waters provide a stress to corals that in turn trigger a mass exodus of photosynthetic algae, called zooxanthellae, from their cells. The corals lose color and turn white, an outward indicator that their metabolism has been upended. The stronger the bleaching and the longer it goes on, the more likely corals are to die.

“The Great Barrier Reef, the largest structure of its kind, is about 1,400 miles long. Nine hundred miles of that length have now experienced severe bleaching at some point during the past two years.”

What is happening off the coast of Australia is happening to virtually every coral reef in the world.  It is not clear that even adherence to the Paris Agreements can prevent future damage, and the possible extinction of these living organisms would be a crime against the planet.

North Korea has stated that the US strike on Syria confirms that its decision to develop nuclear weapons was correct.  North Korea withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003 after US President Bush placed it on the list of the “axis of evil” along with Iraq and Iran.  The US subsequent decision to invade Iraq in March 2003 was, for North Korea, vindication of its decision to develop a nuclear capability.  North Korea exploded its first nuclear bomb in 2006.  For North Korea, a nuclear weapon is the only effective deterrent against an American attack.  The North Koreans have justification for their fears.  According to NBC NewsUS National Security Council has presented President Trump with a number of options, the for dealing with North Korea, including reinserting US nuclear weapons into South Korea, assassinating Kim Jong-un, and sending US special operation troops into North Korea to commit acts of sabotage.  These options are the height of lunacy.

We will have to see whether the US strike on the air base in Syria actually does deter Syria from using chemical weapons in the future.  But it does seem to be clear that the air strike did nothing to degrade Syria’s capability to conduct air operations against its own citizens.  Indeed, Syrian planes took off today from the Shayrat air base that was attacked.  I continue to be amazed by how many consistently overestimate the efficacy of military action.  

The Venezuelan government has banned Henrique Capriles from public office in a move that further degrades the legitimacy of the state.  Large protests followed the announcement, but it seems that President Maduro is moving toward an outright dictatorship without any pretense of democracy even though elections are scheduled for 2018.  The political dysfunction has crippled the economy for years and there are widespread shortages of virtually every necessary item.  It is hard to imagine any outcome other than an outright revolution in Venezuela.

Protest in Caracas

We are getting more information about the US missile strike on a Syrian airbase and the commentary on the strike is confusing and conflicting.  All the commentary misses the central point of military action. Every military action should be guided by one single and overriding concern:  does this action bring us closer to bringing a war to an end?  The air strike does not meet this objective.  But it does meet another objective, which is justifiable but not related to the conflict itself.  If this strike had the single intent of sending a clear message to the Syrian regime–and to the world at large–that the use of banned chemical weapons will not increase the chances of victory, then it can be justified on those terms if it turns out that the Syrian government does not use such weapons again. We will see if that outcome is realized.

But in terms of the Syrian civil war, and its attendant international dimensions, the strike itself does not bring us closer to an end to the violence, and all the commentary I have read and heard seems to miss this point.  And some of the commentary distorts what actually happened.  The New York Times ran an article by Mark Landler entitled “On Syria Attack, Trump’s Heart Came First.”  I sincerely doubt that this headline is accurate.  If moral imperatives were the driving force, then the current administration would not be restricting refugees from Syria.

Moral considerations have been conspicuously absent in Mr. Trump’s statements about Syria and Iraq until his statement yesterday.  The current administration said nothing after 300 civilians were killed in Mosul, Iraq after a US airstrike.  I wish to be very clear:  I am not equating the chemical attack in Syria with the US strike in Mosul.  The Mosul attack appears to have been unintentional and was not conducted with banned weapons of war.  These distinctions are critically important to us, but they matter little to the innocents who were killed and their families.  We will wait for the US military to conduct its investigation of the Mosul attack, and I am fully confident in the US military’s willingness to issue a truthful report and to punish those involved if the attack occurred because of negligence.  But if morality were a primary concern of the current administration then I would have expected a sincere apology and a profound expression of remorse by the US after the Mosul attack.  An honest heart is not selective.

The attack also comes as the US is increasing its military commitment to overthrowing Assad (see this blog post of 31 March 2017).  That objective is not part of the so-called “war on terror”.  The attack in Syria was rather an expression of realpolitik and should be assessed in terms of whether the national interest of the US was advanced in Syria.  On this issue, the air strike makes very little sense.  The US is in Syria and Iraq to defeat Daesh (the Islamic State).  The states who share this same objective and are actively involved in fighting Daesh are the Syrian government, Russia, and Iran.  But these states have all condemned the sir strike.  In other words, the realpolitik allies of the US have been driven away by the US action.  Other states have praised the US action, but these states do not have armed forces on the ground fighting Daesh.  If one wishes to play realpolitik, then the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

But realpolitik will not solve the problem of the Syrian civil war.  The US is now at war with the Syrian state: an armed attack is a sufficient condition to initiate a state of war.  If the objective of US military action in Syria is regime change, then we need to know a lot more about how the US will define “peace” if Assad is removed.  Which of the various constituencies in Syria will be involved in this definition?  We know that overthrowing a government is possible, and the US has been involved in many of those operations in the past:  Mossadegh in Iran in 1953,  Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic in 1961, Diem in Vietnam in 1963, and Hussein in Iraq in 2003. In every single one of those cases, the failure of the US to anticipate the turmoil it unleashed led to even greater problems for American national interests.

The air attack also raises serious constitutional issues.  This war was decided upon by Mr. Trump and Mr. Trump alone.  It is not covered by the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) that was passed by the Congress after the 11 September 2001 attacks.  That resolution reads as follows:

“That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”

There is no evidence that the Syrian government was in any way involved in the 11 September attacks.  Congress was not consulted–it was merely informed.  The attack on Syria may  be covered by the War Powers Act, in which case Mr. Trump can conduct military operations for 60 days before the Constitution requires a Congressional declaration.  But the US ground troops in Syria have already been operating in Syria for over 60 days.  The clock did not start ticking with yesterday’s air attack.

Ending the suffering of the Syrian people is a legitimate interest of the US.  There is as of yet little evidence that the air strikes have moved us closer to that objective.  Indeed, I suspect that we may have moved further away.

US President Trump justified his attack on the Syrian air base yesterday on two grounds.  The first was a moral justification:

“On Tuesday, Syria launched a horrific chemical attack on innocent civilians. Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of hopeless men, women, and children.

It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of god should ever suffer such horror.”

The second was based on the American national interest:

“It was in the vital national security interest of the US to prevent and deter the use of deadly chemical weapons.

There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the chemical weapons convention and ignored the urging of the UN security council.”

Both justifications seem compelling, but we need to withhold judgment until we see how the matter unfolds. But there is a context to these statements that needs to be appreciated.

First, the Sarin attack in Idlib was clearly an atrocity and a global response to that atrocity was imperative.  The news is reporting that President Trump informed various allies and the Russians about the strike beforehand, but we do not know to what extent he received replies that indicated support for an attack.  The timing of the US response suggests that it was a unilateral act.  I suspect it would have been far better if US allies had had a chance to demonstrate solid support for that specific military attack, as opposed to having little alternative but to agree that the chemical attack demanded a response.

Second, the invocation of the position of the UN Security Council would have been far stronger if the Security Council had had a chance to vote to authorize the use of military force.  Unquestionably, the Russians and the Chinese would have vetoed such a resolution.  But in so doing, both states would have isolated themselves from global public opinion and international law in a way that would have diminished the force of the vetoes and in that sense legitimated a coordinated response by other countries.  I would also parenthetically note that invoking the UN after submitting a budget guideline that reduced US funding for the UN is hypocritical.

Third, identifying the Sarin attack as the single reason for a dramatic change in policy (see an earlier post from 5 April) is somewhat difficult to accept given that almost 300,000 people have already died in the conflict.  Admittedly, Sarin gas is a singularly vicious way to die. But it is problematic to understand the moral framework that allows the earlier inaction of the US to be justified when the deaths of around 60 civilians is so decisive.

Fourth, everything really depends on how the politics unfold.  If it turns out that this is a single strike that does not lead to an escalation of the war, then it is probably justifiable in terms of a message about the impermissible use of chemical weapons.  That message should be heeded by all states in the world.  But if the strike leads to a wider war, then more innocents will die.  The important thing to remember is that all wars are political disputes and that military action is only a way of expressing a calculation of the benefits of holding a particular position.  If defending innocents were the highest priority of states, then, in all likelihood, wars would never be fought.

Turkey has conducted autopsies on some of the dead from the chemical attack in Syria and has confirmed that the chemical used was Sarin.  According to the US Center for Disease Control (CDC), Sarin is an especially vicious weapon of war:

• Symptoms likely will appear within a few seconds after exposure to the vapor form of sarin and within a few minutes to hours after exposure to the liquid form.
• All nerve agents cause their toxic effects by preventing the proper operation of an enzyme that acts as the body’s “off switch” for glands and muscles. Without an “off switch,” the glands and muscles are constantly being stimulated. Exposed people may become tired and no longer be able to keep breathing.
• Sarin is the most volatile of the nerve agents. This means it can easily and quickly evaporate from a liquid into a vapor and spread into the environment. People can be exposed to the vapor even if they do not come in contact with the liquid form of sarin.
• Because it evaporates so quickly, sarin presents an immediate but short-lived threat.

Under a deal brokered with Russia, Syria was supposed to have turned over all its chemical weapons for destruction.  The revelation puts Russia in a very awkward situation, but only if the international community expresses its outrage not only over Syria’s use of the weapon but also for Russia’s failure to honor its commitment.

In what seems to be a dramatic change from his previous accommodating position, Philippines President Duterte has ordered military vessels to visit a part of the Spratly Islands claimed by China.  The international name for the island is Thitu, and it is part of the Spratly Islands complex.  An International Tribunal in the Hague has ruled in favor of the Philippines and against China in terms of territorial control, but the Chinese have disregarded that ruling.  It is hard to determine Duterte’s objective in sending the military mission, but it will undoubtedly provoke some response from China.

The Pew Research Center has released a study that indicates that Muslims are the fastest growing religious group in the world.  According to the study:

While the world’s population is projected to grow 32% in the coming decades, the number of Muslims is expected to increase by 70% – from 1.8 billion in 2015 to nearly 3 billion in 2060. In 2015, Muslims made up 24.1% of the global population. Forty-five years later, they are expected to make up more than three-in-ten of the world’s people (31.1%).

The explanation for the increase is simple: “In all major regions where there is a sizable Muslim population, Muslim fertility exceeds non-Muslim fertility.”

There are a variety of ways to interpret most diplomatic statements.  Generally speaking, diplomatic language strives to leave room for a variety of options, even if concrete policies lie behind them.  Such is not the case with the most recent statement by US Secretary of State Tillerson on the ballistic missile test by North Korea yesterday:  “North Korea launched yet another intermediate range ballistic missile. The United States has spoken enough about North Korea. We have no further comment.”  The statement is also more significant because the day before US President Trump is scheduled to meet Chinese President Xi.  What remains unclear is whether the US has a policy right now to back up Tillerson’s statement.  It sounds like an outright declaration of war if the North Koreans launch another missile.  We shall see.

Parsing the press conference at the White House with King Abdullah is difficult.  After yesterday’s blog post, I was of the mind that President Trump was going to stick with Syrian President Assad.  But today’s press conference confused me a great deal.  Here are the issues that seem strange.

• President Trump blamed former President Obama for doing nothing in Syria after the first reports of the use of chemical weapons by the government of Syria in August, 2013.  It is true that President Obama made a serious mistake by declaring that the use of such weapons was crossing a red line and then not really responding in any effective way to that war crime.  One should also remember, however, that the British Parliament voted not to use military force in Syria after Obama’s declaration, thereby depriving the US of an important ally.  The US Congress also refused to pass a resolution authorizing the use of military force in Syria.  Finally, President Trump himself was strongly against taking any action in Syria.

• President Trump indicated that his view of President Assad had changed because of the chemical attack that was reported yesterday.  Indeed, Mr. Trump said: “It crossed a lot of lines for me.  When you kill innocent children, innocent babies, little babies with a chemical gas that is so lethal that people were shocked to hear what gas it was, that crosses many lines beyond the red line. Many, many lines.” Presumably, the change in view should have some corresponding change in policy, but Mr. Trump did not indicate how the US position might change.  So we are left to speculate about what changes are possible or likely.
• First, any change in policy would require a degree of opposition to President Assad, so the language of Secretary of State Tillerson that the “longer-term status of President [Bashar] Assad will be decided by the Syrian people.”  Does the US now support the overthrow of the Assad regime?  The US has precious little leverage over the regime itself–it has had virtually no relations with Syria since the CIA and Britain’s MI6 tried to overthrow the government of Shukri al-Quwatli in 1957.  So if regime change is now the objective, then the US must work through the two main supporters of Assad:  Russia and Iran.
• Second, President Assad could not survive without the strong support of Russia.  But President Trump did not mention Russia once in the press conference.  Russian interests in Syria are two-fold.  First, it wants a military presence, both ground and naval, in Syria.  Second, it wants whatever government exists in Syria to continue to oppose the natural gas pipeline from Qatar and Saudi Arabia that would bring natural gas to Europe, undermining Russian control of the natural gas market there.  It is conceivable, within the world of realpolitik, that Russia’s interests could be satisfied in ways that do not require Assad to be in charge.  It remains to be seen if President Trump can make a deal with Putin on these issues.
• Third, Assad could also not survive without Iranian support.  Iran supports Assad because he is amenable to Shia Muslim interests, even though the Syrian population is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim.   In recent years, Iran has seen its influence grow substantially since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.  Iraq’s population is 60% Shia Muslim and the new government is sympathetic to Iranian interests.  Iran also has strong influence in Lebanon and, now, in Yemen.  The US has virtually no leverage over Iran.  Indeed, the US and Iran have the same objective of defeating Daesh (the Islamic State) in both Iraq and Syria.  The Iranian Revolutionary Guard has been an effective ground force in Iraq and it is unlikely that the military progress against Daesh in Iraq would have been possible without Iranian troops.  The US needs Iran in Iraq if it does not wish to send in its own ground troops.   It is doubtful that the US could persuade Iran to abandon Assad.
• Fourth, overthrowing Assad without the cooperation or at least tacit approval of both Russia and Iran would be the height of stupidity, even though we all want him to leave.  Overthrowing Saddam Hussein without having a plan to replace him is the source of most of the issues we currently face in the Middle East.  As much as everyone wants Assad to go, one should not forget that the country is in the middle of a savage civil war.  Losing the central government in Syria would simply unleash even more atrocities in the areas that the government currently controls.
• Finally, everyone seems to have ignored King Abdullah in the press conference.  The King emphasized the centrality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the current violence in the Middle East.  The Ammon Times of Jordan summarized the King’s comments:

“Turning to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, His Majesty said it is essentially the core conflict in the region. ‘The President’s early engagement as beginning in bringing the Palestinians and Israelis together has been a very encouraging sign for all of us,’ King Abdullah indicated, adding: ‘It was that initiative that allowed us at the Arab Summit last week to extend through the Arab Peace Initiative the message of peace to Israel, which we all hopefully will work together to make that come about.” He pointed out that all Arab countries launched the Arab Peace Initiative last week, which offers a historic reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as all member states of the Arab League. The King stressed that the Arab Peace Initiative remains the most comprehensive framework for lasting peace and it ensures statehood for the Palestinians, but also security, acceptance and normal ties for Israel with all Arab countries and hopefully all Islamic countries.'”

The King’s insights should not be ignored.

Thus, it is not clear what the US can do on its own.  However, mobilizing global opinion against Assad and indicting him for crimes against humanity would isolate the Russians and Iranians and that objective is essential if the US wishes to take any sort of military action.  At this stage, I suspect that President Trump cannot back up his own words.

Less than a week after US Secretary of State Tillerson indicated that the US was willing to see Syrian President Assad stay in power, the Syrian government has unleashed a toxic gas attack against Syrian civilians.  Tillerson’s statement was essentially a grant of immunity to the Syrian government since it reversed the long-standing US position that Assad had to be removed from office for crimes against humanity.  On 20 August 2012, US President Obama made the following statement about the use of chemical weapons in Syria:

“We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.  That would change my calculus.  That would change my equation.”

Unfortunately, Mr. Obama never followed through on this statement.  It remains to be seen whether the Trump Administration will take a similar line against the use of these weapons.  According to the Huffington Post, Trump’s Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, made the following comment:

It is not clear how Mr. Spicer’s statement squares with the earlier statement by Mr. Tillerson.  Nor is it clear how it squares with Russian support for the Assad regime.  Opposition to chemical weapons and unflinching support for the immunity of civilians in warfare is not a Democratic or Republican principle.  The people of Syria have suffered horribly because of the unwillingness of the international community to defend these humanitarian norms.

David Wood has written a rather long article entitled “This is How the Next World War Starts.”  I thought long and hard about whether I should post my thoughts about the essay.  One of the strangest developments in recent years is how emphasizing the threats from Russia has become a gambit for attacking President Trump.  That purported link is a dangerous confluence of domestic and foreign politics, in much the same way that attacking Muslims in the US has become a way of addressing the threat of “radical Islamic terrorism.”  My concern is that we amplify the genuine issues raised by Russian behavior and by terrorists beyond legitimate concerns.  We need to assess those issues without the inflammatory rhetoric of domestic political objectives.  Ultimately, I decided to link the article by Wood because it does conatin very useful information.

Russian authorities have identified Akbarzhon Jalilov as the person who launched the bomb attack in the St. Petersburg metro.  Jalilov was born in the ex-Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan and he had an interest in Wahabbism, a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam.  But no links have yet turned up to any jihadist groups and there is little known about his motives.  The lack of any obvious motives in this case reflects a growing trend in the use of political violence:  profound disaffection does not seem to need an organized focus to pose serious threats to civil society.  If that analysis is even somewhat accurate, then addressing these acts of violence is incredibly difficult, if not impossible.

One hundred years ago, the US entered World War I.  On 2 April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked the Congress for a Declaration of War, and on 4 April 1917 the Congress passed the declaration.  Wilson had campaigned on a promise to keep the US out of the war in 1916, but the announcement by the Germans that they would be conducting “unrestricted” submarine attacks in January and the interception of the Zimmerman Telegram on 16 January 1917 changed his position.  The Zimmerman telegram was an offer by the Germans to help Mexico regain the territories lost to the US in the war of 1845 if Mexico were to open up a front on the southern border of the US.  The entry into the war was a dramatic change in US foreign policy, but a change which was reversed after the war was over as the US retreated back into isolationism.

South Africa’s credit rating was cut to junk status as political turmoil deepened in the country.  President Jacob Zuma, the leader of the African National Congress, sacked his finance minister Pravin Gordhan, andd many in the country see the dismissal as a sign that the country is becoming increasingly fiscally responsible.  The South African economy has slowed significantly and its currency has depreciated sharply in recent days.  The African National Congress is quite divided on whether Zuma is becoming a serious liability, and it appears as if the power of the ANC will be diminished as a result of what seems to be growing incompetence and corruption.

An explosion occurred at a metro station in St. Petersburg, Russia, and a second bomb was disarmed at a second stop.  Right now, there has been no claim of responsibility and authorities have yet to apprehend a suspect.  Russia is no stranger to such attacks:  Chechnyan rebels have launched such attacks in the past as they fight for independence from Russia.  I suspect that the attack will have the initial effect of bolstering support for President Putin, but the long-term consequences are hard to predict.

President Trump gave an interview with the Financial Times (FT has a very strict paywall–my apologies to readers who do not have access to computers that can sign in) in which he stated: “Well if China is not going to solve North Korea, we will. That is all I am telling you.”  The interview was, in some sense, a foreshadowing of the upcoming meeting with Chinese President Xi, scheduled for this weekend.  The rhetoric was quite tough and it was designed to put pressure on China before the summit.  China would certainly like the North Korean nuclear capabilities addressed, but Trump is profoundly mistaken if he thinks that China has a great deal of slack in its North Korean policy. The Chinese will not do anything that even remotely suggests or regime change in North Korea–they fear a collapse of North Korea more than they fear a nuclear North Korea.  After all, Chinese is already threatened by North Korean nuclear weapons; Trump is trying to preempt a North Korean nuclear threat to the US.

There is a potentially inflammatory consequence of Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU):  the status of Gibraltar.  The peninsula was taken by an Anglo-Dutch force in the War of Spanish Succession in 1704 and ceded completely to Great Britain in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.  Since that time it has been ruled as part of Great Britain even though the peninsula is completely dependent on trade with Spain.  In the guidelines issued by the EU to govern Britain’s exit, there is a clause that says: “no agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom may apply to the territory of Gibraltar without agreement between the Kingdom of Spain and the United Kingdom.”  The clause was undoubtedly inserted at the behest of the Spanish Government even though the residents of Gibraltar voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU.  The British have not reacted kindly to the clause, and a former Tory leader, Michael Howard, stated that Britain would “go to war” to preserve Gibraltar’s status.

The two year schedule for the British Exit from the EU.  This chart will be useful over the next two years.  It shows very nicely the complicated set of European politics that will accomapny the negotiations for Brexit.