The New York Times ran a fascinating article today, written by two very reputable reporters, Michael Crowley and David Sanger. They assert that the Trump Administration is contemplating changing its objectives with regard to North Korea. For nearly two years the objective was defined as “the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization (CVID) of North Korea.” Now, according to the report, the objective may be a freeze of current capabilities. A freeze would enshrine North Korea’s status as a nuclear power with between 20 and 60 nuclear bombs and a an intercontinental ballistic missile.
That objective is far more realistic than denuclearization which was never possible and I would support the move as long as there are adequate safeguards to verify the freeze and as long as Japan and South Korea are comfortable with that situation. But we should not forget how we got to this point: backing down from an objective that was supported with threats of “fire and fury” is a strategy that corrodes the credibility of the US. That credibility was also challenged by the “truce” in the US-China trade war which included the US opening up its markets to Huawei, a company that had previously been blackballed by the US.
On the anniversary of the British handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China in 1997, protesters in Hong Kong rushed government buildings in protest over policies proposed by the Beijing government. The protests were extraordinary and finally suppressed by riot police using tear gas and rubber bullets. The Beijing government has two problems with the demonstrations. First, it does not wish to allow the protests to encourage similar behavior in other parts of China. Second, it does not wish to scare away those investors who have a crucial economic interest in protecting investments that are necessary for the capital needs of the country. Trying to balance these two objectives is very difficult, but at some point, to preserve order in the country, the state will have to prevent citizens from protesting in ways that challenge the authority of the Communist Party and the Chinese state.
Jeffrey Sachs has written a very thought-provoking essay on the interventionist nature of President Trump’s foreign policy. President Trump made it very clear that he is opposed to further military interventions, but that has not meant that he does not wish to use US power to achieve certain objectives. Sachs argues that Mr. Trump has substituted economic power for military power.
“While Trump has so far eschewed a new war, he has continued US regime-change efforts by other means. Trump is often called an isolationist, but he is as interventionist as his predecessors. His strategy, at least so far, has been to rely more heavily on US economic power than military might to coerce adversaries, which creates its own kind of cruelty and destabilization. And it constantly risks flaring into outright war, as occurred with Iran this month.
“The Trump administration currently is engaged in three attempts at comprehensive economic blockades, against North Korea, Venezuela, and Iran, as well as several lesser blockades against countries such as Cuba and Nicaragua, and an intensifying effort to cut off China’s access to technology. The blockade against North Korea is sanctioned, at least in part, by the UN Security Council. The blockade against Iran is in direct opposition to the Security Council. And the blockade against Venezuela is so far without Security Council engagement for or against. The US is attempting to isolate the three countries from almost all international trade, causing shortages of food, medicines, energy, and spare parts for basic infrastructure, including the water supply and power grid.”
The US made two concessions to the Chinese to persuade them to return to the bargaining table. First, the US will allow the Chinese company Huawei to purchase US technological products. The US had banned such sales because it believed that Huawei products compromised national security because of its close ties to the Chinese government. Second, the US decided to ease up on visa restrictions on Chinese students attending US universities. The truce does not resolve any of the major issues between the two states. We shall see if the future talks are productive.
Russian President Putin gave an interview at the G-20 meeting in which he asserted that liberalism had “outlived its purpose”. Implicitly, Putin was arguing that personal freedom was not a human right. According to Time:
“Putin told the Financial Times that liberal governments have ‘pursued a mindless multiculturalism’ by embracing sexual diversity, among other things. Echoing views expressed by other right-wing populists, such as Poland’s Law and Justice leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Putin said ‘[LGBTQ persons] must not be allowed to overshadow the culture, traditions and traditional family values of millions of people making up the core population.’
With regards to Russia’s own LGBTQ rights record, Putin told the newspaper that ‘we have no problem with LGBTQ persons. God forbid, let them live as they wish … But some things do appear excessive to us. They claim now that children can play five or six gender roles.’”
Putin’s description of LGBTQ rights does not correspond with the anti-gay legislation which has been passed during his tenure as Russian leader. Moreover, the attack on liberalism is more generally an endorsement of authoritarian rule, one consistent with the rise of ethnic and racial nationalism that is being revived in many parts of the world. For his part, US President Trump seems to have missed the point of Putin’s remarks.
“President Donald Trump joked with Russian President Vladimir Putin about meddling in the US elections.
After the two leaders met on the sidelines of the G20 summit on Friday, a reporter shouted a question at Trump about whether he’d warned Putin not to interfere in US democracy.
The US president replied, ‘Yes, of course I will.’ He then turned to Putin, with a slight smirk, and told him: ‘Don’t meddle in the election, President.’ He then pointed toward the Russian delegation and repeated, ‘Don’t meddle in the election.’”
The attempt at humor indicated that President Trump still does not believe that Russia interfered in the 2016 election even though his intelligence services and Special Counsel Mueller’s report proved widespread meddling. Given that there is evidence that Russia intends to intrude in the 2020 election, one can only conclude that President Trump does not take the threat seriously and that he does not care.
But the second exchange was more jaw-dropping. Both leaders joked about the problem of “fake” news in their respective countries.
“And in addition to his comedic riff about election meddling, Trump joked with Putin about the threat of ‘fake news.’
“Bloomberg News reported that Trump commiserated with Putin about journalists, telling him: ‘Get rid of them.’
“’Fake news is a great term, isn’t it? You don’t have this problem in Russia, but we do.’
“Putin laughed and replied that, yes, Russia does actually have that problem.
I find it incomprehensible that President Trump would miss the opportunity to compare freedom of the press with the leader of a country that has seen many journalists killed. Since 1992, when Putin begin his tenure as the leader of the country, 58 journalists have been killed. I am not sure President Trump knows anything about the country he leads, and I cannot shake the feeling that Putin has something on Trump that explains his indifference or complicity.
A heat wave has enveloped parts of Europe and temperatures have reached 40 degrees Celsius (104 F), levels rarely seen on the continent. The temperatures are reminiscent of the heat wave in 2003: “the 2003 heat episode was the deadliest natural disaster in Europe in the last 50 years, with a death toll exceeding 30,000.” A French meteorologist named Ruben Hallali compared the map of heat in Europe to the painting by Edvard Munch, “The Scream”. It is impossible to make a direct connection between the heat wave and climate change, but “…a climatology institute in Potsdam, Germany, says Europe’s five hottest summers since 1500 have all been in the 21st Century.”
Alida R. Haworth, Scott D. Sagan and Benjamin A. Valentino have published the results of a very interesting poll they conducted on the attitudes of American citizens about the use of nuclear weapons against North Korea. The authors constructed several different scenarios posing different probabilities of success in the use of conventional or nuclear weapons against different North Korean conventional and nuclear capabilities. Parsing through the scenarios requires close reading but the effort is worthwhile. The results offer some encouragement in that most Americans do not favor a preventive war against North Korea. But some of the results suggest that there is a sizable minority of Americans who do favor the use of nuclear weapons and that most Americans have an overly optimistic view of the efficacy of US missile defense systems against a North Korean nuclear attack.
“The first piece of disconcerting news, however, is that a large hawkish minority lurks within the US public; over a third of respondents approve of a US preventive strike across the scenarios and appear insensitive to informational cues that most security experts would expect to reduce such levels of support.
“Second, preference for the strike does not significantly decrease when the story says that the United States would use nuclear weapons in its attack; 33 percent preferred a preventive nuclear first-strike. Even more disturbing: There is no significant change in the percentage who would prefer or approve of a US nuclear strike when the number of estimated North Korean fatalities increases from 15,000 to 1.1 million, including 1 million civilians. As we have previously found, the US public exhibits only limited aversion to nuclear weapons use and a shocking willingness to support the killing of enemy civilians (Sagan and Valentino 2017 Sagan, S. D., and B. A. Valentino. 2017. “Revisiting Hiroshima in Iran: What Americans Really Think about Nuclear Weapons and Killing Noncombatants.” International Security 41 (1): 41–79.”
The authors also looked at how political preferences affected the attitudes of Americans.
“Across all scenarios, Republicans expressed greater preference for the use of military force than Democrats. This trend becomes even more stark when we tease out those who support President Trump specifically. A majority of Trump supporters prefer the US strike in every scenario, except when confidence in the effectiveness of the US conventional strike is 50 percent. Still, it is important to note that preference for the strike even in this scenario remains at 44 percent among Trump supporters, compared to only 8 percent among non-Trump supporters.”
One of the more depressing results of the poll is that it seems clear that the majority of Americans are deeply misinformed about the nature of nuclear weapons. There are a number of illusions–most notably concerning the effectiveness of missile defense systems–that make relying on public opinion in making nuclear decisions a highly problematic tactic.
A conference on Middle East peace began today in Bahrain and it was hosted by Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law. The plan represents two years of work by Mr. Kushner, but very few Israelis or Palestinians were present. It is a two part plan. Today was the unveiling of the economic part of the plan, labeled “Peace Through Prosperity” which calls for $50 billion investments (for the Palestinians, Jordanians, and Egyptians) over ten years. The source of the funds was not identified. The second part of the plan is political, but apparently a Palestinian state is not part of that plan.
The proposals are ridiculous and it is insulting to think that anyone would consider them seriously. To comprehend fully how unlikely the success of the plans is one need only read the op-ed written by the Israeli Ambassador to the US, Danny Danon. It is entitled “What’s Wrong With Palestinian Surrender?” Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of world politics would know that there are some things that money cannot buy.
The war of words between Iran and the US reached depths that have rarely been seen in diplomatic history. The Associated Press reports:
“Iran warned Tuesday that new U.S. sanctions targeting its supreme leader and other top officials meant ‘closing the doors of diplomacy’ between Tehran and Washington amid heightened tensions, even as President Hassan Rouhani derided the White House as being ‘afflicted by mental retardation.’
“President Donald Trump called that a ‘very ignorant and insulting statement,’ tweeting that an Iranian attack on any U.S. interest will be met with ‘great and overwhelming force … overwhelming will mean obliteration.’ His secretary of state said the Iranian statement was ‘immature.’”
Winston Churchill once defined diplomacy this way: “Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip.” The current situation between Iran and the US hardly fits with that definition, but the US naively believes that there is a diplomatic course of action. The US National Security Adviser, John Bolton, made this comment: “The president has held the door open to real negotiations to completely and verifiably eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons program, its pursuit of ballistic missile delivery systems, its support for international terrorism and other malign behavior worldwide,” Bolton said in Jerusalem. “All that Iran needs to do is to walk through that open door.”
I cannot even begin to measure Bolton’s chutzpah. After all, Iran maintained strict adherence to the JCPOA, but the US violated the agreement by pulling out. Why would Iran even think that the US would keep its end of a new agreement, particularly one that would demand that Iran abandon its allies, Hamas and Hezbollah, and unilaterally disarm by ending its missile program even though there has not been any lessening of the threats to Iran by the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel?
Iran’s only strategy is to remind the world–particularly France, Great Britain, Germany, China, and Russia, the other partners to the JCPOA–that a US-Iranian conflict would completely destabilize the global oil market and consequently the global economy. These other states would therefore have to decide whether they think the US reasons for going to war justify that horrific outcome. Given that the JCPOA was preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, it is highly likely that they would decide that going to war with Iran is a far less desirable method for obtaining that objective.
In reality, the US is negotiating from a very weak position, despite its overwhelming military superiority. Its objectives are actually limited, even though Iran would never agree to them. American allies in the region–Israel and Saudi Arabia–, however, have more ambitious objectives–the overthrow of the Iranian regime–which can only be attained with US military power. Whether they can persuade President Trump to do their dirty work remains to be seen. And whether the rest of the world can persuade Trump to back off from the threat of war.
In a stunning defeat for the AK Party of President Erdogan of Turkey, the opposition candidate, Ekrem Imamoglu, won a decisive victory in the election for the Mayor of Istanbul. Imamoglu narrowly won the election in March, but the government decided to hold another election because the margin of victory was alleged to have been too narrow. The results of yesterday’s election was decisive, with Imamoglu winning 54% of the votes. The results as seen as a challenge to the increasingly authoritarian conduct of President Erdogan and it is difficult to anticipate what his reaction will be. The Turkish economy is weakening and Turkey’s relationship to NATO and the US has been frayed over the situation in Syria and the Turkish purchase of an advanced air-defense system from Russia.
The White House released the economic part of its peace plan for the Middle East, labeling it the “Peace Through Prosperity” plan. The plan will be discussed in the coming week at a conference in Bahrain where a number of states will be involved but not, crucially, representatives from the Palestinians. They have decided to boycott the meeting since they do not believe that the US is an unbiased party. Several of the Sunni Arab Gulf states, notably Saudi Arabia, will attend the conference, where it is expected that they will indicate whether they will contribute substantially to the proposal which is expected to cost about $50 billion over ten years. According to Politico:
“Funds for the international effort would be dispensed by a multinational development bank and controlled by an appointed board of governors, according to details of the plan shared by the White House. The $50 billion would come from a mix of grants, subsidized loans and private investments, and would be put toward infrastructure projects as well as initiatives involving telecommunications, tourism and healthcare.”
The second part of the peace plan, which involves a political settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, is expected to be released later on in the fall. The Palestinians believe that the economic cart is being put before the political horse. The Palestinian Authority (PA) has very little control over its finances and is incredibly dependent on foreign donors for revenues as well as Israel, which collects certain taxes on behalf of the PA. Unfortunately, Israel and the foreign donors often withhold the payments in response to decisions made by the PA:
” While the PA has relied more and more on taxes to fund its budget, what should be a straightforward matter of state finances has been anything but.
“The PA directly collects domestic taxes from its citizens, amounting to $764m in 2017 out of a total domestic revenue of $1.15bn.
“But under the Paris Protocol signed in 1994 as part of the Oslo Accords, Israel collects taxes on Palestinian imports and exports as well as VAT on behalf of the PA.
“In 2017, customs revenue transferred by Israel to the PA – also known as clearance revenues – amounted to $2.49bn.
“On average, Israel collects around $175m each month in taxes on Palestinian imports and exports on behalf of the PA.
“Like the rest of the Oslo agreements, what was intended to be a temporary arrangement pending the creation of a fully fledged Palestinian state remains until this day, shackling the Palestinian economy to a stalled peace process, US pressure and years of occupation that restrict the movement of goods and people, vital elements for any economy to grow….
“Moreover, Israel has yielded the Paris Protocol as a punitive tool against Palestinians, using the customs fees and taxes it collects on behalf of the PA as a means of pressure on the Ramallah-based government.
“The most recent case was in February, when Israel withheld $138m in tax transfers to the PA as retaliation over payments made by Palestinian institutions to Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, as well as to the families of Palestinians killed by Israelis.”
Middle East peace plans have a miserable record and there is little reason to think that this plan will be successful. The Sunni Arab Gulf states will likely support the plan in order to secure US support in containing Iran, but some of those states–like Saudi Arabia–are unsavory allies in any effort.
The Washington Blog has compiled an extraordinary list of “false flag” incidents that states have created in order to justify going to war. The list is well-documented although there are some incidents that I would probably dispute. But the list is an invaluable resource for those who believe that citizens are often manipulated into supporting wars that the ruling elites wish to conduct for their own purposes. The list is a sorry statement on how widespread the practice actually is, even as we often resist believing that we are being misled.
US President Trump ordered a military strike against Iran but called it off at the last moment, ostensibly because there would be many casualties. I am happy that he made that decision, but my relief is tempered by my certain knowledge that this crisis was entirely the result of President Trump’s decision to pull out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
I am not certain about what Mr. Trump was trying to accomplish by pulling out the JCPOA. He made the argument that he thought that the JCPOA did nothing about Iran’s support for Hamas and Hezbollah or the Iranian missile program, neither of which were covered by the JCPOA. But it did halt Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon for at least ten years. It now appears as if Iran will restart its enrichment program, although I am not convinced that it wishes to develop a nuclear bomb. And I am certain that Ian will continue to support its allies and continue with its missile program, no matter how severe US sanctions might become. I am also certain, moreover, that if the US did attack Iran, then Iran would have little choice but to develop a nuclear bomb. In other words, Mr. Trump has changed nothing for the better and has likely weakened the US position tremendously.
The Iranian strategy has been evolving since the US decision to leave the JCPOA. Iran actually waited an entire year under serious sanctions before it decided to act. Its objective now is to reproduce the pain it has endured onto the rest of the world by making the export of oil through the Persian Gulf very expensive or impossible. What it learned from President Trump’s decision to cancel the military strike is that it can succeed in this mission as long as no one is killed. Thus, the tankers were attacked above the water line and no sailors were killed. And Iran attacked the drone and not the manned airplane accompanying it.
Obviously, the Iranian strategy is dangerous because it will alienate the rest of the world by raising oil prices. But the Iranians will try to persuade the world that the price for stopping the chokehold on the export of oil is for the rest of the world to no longer allow the US to enforce its extra-territorial sanction strategy. But if the world believes that the US will not use its military power to open up the Strait of Hormuz, then the cost of alienating the US is less than the cost of supporting the US sanctions.
The Iranian strategy is an intelligent response of a weaker power to a superior power that does not understand the dynamics of power. I think that President Trump proved the point today.
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