What has God got to do with it?
I gave a much shortened version of this talk on the role of religion in the Israeli/Arab conflict this afternoon at DACOR Bacon House, a club for retired US Foreign Service and military officers: What Has God Got To Do With It? Comments/suggestions would be much appreciated.
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A mistake we may not survive
….to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius….and a very stable genius at that!
When you need to claim stability and intelligence in reaction to criticism, you are neither stable nor intelligent. President Trump has obviously lent credibility to Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury. His petulant and egotistical reactions to the book’s criticism demonstrate that he is unable and unwilling to do the hard work of controlling his impulses and gaining the understanding a president requires. No one should be surprised: this has been obvious for some time.
White House aide Stephen Miller offered a determined defense of Trump against Steve Bannon’s allegations in the Wolff book this morning on CNN:
Notable is that Miller never denies explicitly that one or more of the Russians met with Trump, which is the question asked at the start. That is far more important than the controversy that has erupted about how Jake Tapper ended the interview. It seems the President’s number one surrogate was told to stick with the claim that the whole book is made up, rather than explicitly rebut one of the most inflammatory suggestions in it. If Trump did in fact meet with the Russians, that would end any credibility his claim of “no collusion” still has.
While the Washington commentariat has written off the Wolff book as not likely to affect Trump’s base or cause the Republican majority in both Houses of Congress to back off their loyalty to him, I think Trump is fatally compromised. A candidate for president who was unable to constrain his campaign officials and his son from meeting with Russian intelligence agents offering help during the campaign, and who may himself have met with them, should not be sitting in the Oval Office, quite apart from his unsuitable temperament. We should, of course, not forget that candidate Trump appealed publicly for Russian help with Hillary Clinton’s emails, so in that sense collusion is obvious.
Our very stable genius has gotten himself into a deep hole. I don’t really see how he will climb out. But the American political system is for the moment unable to do what is necessary: forcing him to step aside or be replaced, either via impeachment or the 25th Amendment. As long as he lasts, he will be doing damage to America’s standing in the world. His domestic weakness will be reflected one way or another in foreign policy, and his unpredictability, which UN Ambassador Nikki Haley has been lauding, will cause both adversaries and friends to hedge.
Only an unstable dummy would not change course. But that’s what we’ve got. America has survived many mistakes. It may not survive this one.
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The odds are bad
A colleague asked me yesterday what I thought about the Iran protests. I am naturally inclined to support Iranians who want to end what Bret Stephens calls the kleptotheocracy in Iran. But I do so with eyes open to the bad odds. Here is why I don’t anticipate success:
- The demonstrations lack mass. While it is difficult to judge from abroad, all reports suggest that the numbers of protesters are relatively small. The literature suggests that something like 10% of the population needs to be mobilized in order to achieve success. That would be 8 million people in Iran. It is doubtful we are anywhere near that threshold.
- Nonviolent discipline is lacking. Many of the daytime protests are nonviolent, but after dark some turn into riots, including attacks on property and security officials. You cannot expect restraint from the security forces if you are shooting at them, or even threatening them or attacking private and public assets. Nor can you expect to reach 10% mobilization. Successful civil rebellions require a determined commitment to nonviolence.
- The allegation of foreign conspiracy is credible, even if not true. The loud statements of support for the demonstrations from the Trump Administration, which has ignored human rights issues elsewhere (Egypt, Turkey, the Philippines, Russia) and blocked Iranians from coming to the US, has made it easy for the Islamic Republic to tar the protests as not only non-Iranian in origin but also originated by Iran’s enemies.
I do not regard the following as important factors in determining success:
- Lack of unified leadership. Mass nonviolent rebellions can be successful without unified leadership, which can even become a vulnerability. Pick off the leaders and the rebellion may deflate.
- Few demonstrations in Tehran. Successful rebellions often start outside the capital, where the security forces are often stronger and more loyal than in the provinces. They bend easier there, refusing to use force, than in the capital.
- The protesters are working class. Middle class mobilization can be much more difficult, because the regime will have co-opted many with jobs and perks. The economy has rebounded since the Iran nuclear deal lifted some sanctions, but the benefits haven’t trickled all the way down. It is disappointed economic hopes and joblessness outside the capital, not poverty levels, that are driving forces.
- Pro-regime demonstrations. These may smooth the egos of the Supreme Leader and the President, but they won’t have much impact on popular opinion, especially as they are likely bought rather than spontaneous. If your boss orders you to get out in the street, doing so is not a reflection of popular will.
- Failure so far of the IRGC to intervene. The regime is allowing President Rouhani to try to weather the protests and re-establish order without the kind of repression used in 2009, which is smart. If he fails, the hardliners will be happy to see him weakened. No one should doubt that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) will do its job to protect the regime if necessary.
Despite the laudable commitment of the protesters to criticism of the regime’s corruption, impatience with its theological excess, and opposition to its foreign adventurism, I am not sanguine. The Islamic Republic still has the political will, popular support, and brute force to protect itself and survive. The best that is likely to come of these protests is a broader political debate in Iran about how the Republic spends its resources.
That would be a very good thing. But it will only happen if the protesters are wise enough to cut back on the violence and avoid an IRGC crackdown.
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Iran options
There are now some ideas out there about how the US should respond to the protests in Iran. Dubowitz and Shapiro, Michael Singh and Eli Lake have chimed in. Here’s my compilation of their and other proposals. I don’t mean to suggest I support these, only that they are options. I’ll clarify my own views in a later post.
Two things should be clear from the outset: any US effort will be far more effective if it has broad bipartisan and international support, and only Iranians can determine how this episode ends.
- Consistent bipartisan public and diplomatic support, including at the highest level. This is what the Trump Administration is doing, with tweets by both the President and the Vice President. Congress might chime in with a resolution. President Obama could contribute his charisma and organizing skills. The US government’s broadcast networks will join in. The idea is to encourage protest against a regime the US finds oppressive, corrupt, and aggressive, in the hope that it will either modify its behavior or fall to the popular will. This public support could focus on revealing corrupt practices and documenting unjustifiable arrests by the Islamic Republic’s security forces, including objecting to them in diplomatic contacts. Public and diplomatic shaming of this sort will be more effective if some countries relatively friendly to Iran can be convinced to join in. Today’s meeting of the UN Security Council provides an opportunity for that.
- Sanctions against human rights abusers, corrupt officials and enablers. The Global Magnitsky Act and other US legislataion makes this pretty easy: the President needs only to name names to block their financial resources and travel. Treasury has started with entities linked to Iran’s ballistic missile program. While there aren’t a lot of Iranian officials putting their savings in US banks or visiting the Washington Monument, listing them gives other countries pause as well. If the Europeans join in such designations of individuals, that would greatly amplify the impact. Likewise high officials of the regime who have been welcome in the West and its media could be given the cold shoulder until the repression stops. The US could also levy sanctions against companies that supply Iran with repressive apparatus or help Tehran to block internet communications, and encourage the Europeans to join in.
- Encouragement to tech companies to keep its channels to Iranians open. I’m a bit perplexed what this means in practice, but Karim Sadjadpour is pushing it so it must be a good idea. If there are ways for the tech companies to circumvent or reduce the impact of the Islamic Republic’s efforts to block internet and social media communications, there is obvious virtue in encouraging the companies to do whatever is possible. That should include not taking at face value Tehran’s blackballing of individuals to remove them from social media, and blocking any censorship efforts beyond the confines of Iran.
- Heightened visibility and costs of Iranian activities in the region. One aspect of the protests is criticism of the Islamic Republic for spending the nation’s resources in Syria and Yemen rather than benefiting Iranians at home. This complaint could be encouraged by greater attention in the international press to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ sponsorship of Hizbollah, Shia militias, Hamas, the Houthis and its other proxies, as well as more effective efforts to counter them on the battlefield.
- Reduced diplomatic ties. The US can’t do this, because it only has a interests section in the Swiss Embassy that handles minimal essential services as well as diplomatic communications. But it could encourage the Europeans and others to lower the level of their representation.
- An end to the visa ban on Iranians. This move by the Trump Administration lends credence to the Iranian regime’s claim that the US is prejudiced not only against the regime but also against Iranians. Vetting of Iranians for US visas is already vigorous. The ban could be lifted to signal support for Iranians while opposing the regime.
None of these moves would do more than marginally increase pressure on Tehran. All would require US diplomacy to enlist the support of many other countries, something President Trump’s egregious behavior towards many of them has made far more difficult.
As Karim Sadjadpour puts it, “change will not come easily, or peacefully, or soon.”
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Great temperament
I hope the relevance of this more than two-year-old video is clear enough a day or two after President Trump threatened nuclear war against North Korea and went ballistic over the comments of a former White House adviser whom he fired. We needn’t mention his constant threats against the media, Hillary Clinton and her staff, and the Justice Department, the FBI, and even his own Attorney General. The man loses his cool faster, less appropriately, and more publicly than any president I can recall (that’s back to Truman).
Does it matter? I am told that President Obama, smooth and calm to a fault in public, in fact lost his temper and frothed at aides in private. I witnessed Vice President George H. W. Bush lose his temper over trivia on a visit to Brasilia, while I was waiting to brief him on the far more important issue of Brazil’s nuclear program. Nixon was acerbic, anti-Semitic, and vengeful in private and not much better in public. Truman wrote a scathing letter to a critic who savaged his daughter’s singing. I’m pretty sure Bill Clinton and George W. had their moments too.
Trump is different. He is angry much of the time and likes the effect his volatility has on others, so he flaunts it. He figures it helps him get his way. He thinks his berating of Iran for its crackdown on demonstrations will help the protesters. He has attributed North Korea’s willingness to talk with South Korea to his angry outbursts against Kim Jong-un. He imagines his criticism of China for failing to do more to restrain Kim will get Beijing to do more.
This tactical use of anger may work with Trump’s underlings, but it won’t with his international peers. “Insane,” the word foreigners are using to describe the President, is not a compliment in diplomacy. Nor does it necessarily mean he is crazy. What it is meant to convey is that he is not logical, rational, or reliable. His conclusions don’t follow from the premises, he reacts emotionally, and what he will do is unpredictable. On top of that, he is vain, conceited, and egotistical. He treasures compliments, overestimates his own influence, and resents slights.
One day Trump calls Pakistan his good friend, a few weeks later he is proposing to cut off hundreds of millions in assistance to Islamabad. Never mind that the US needs Pakistan’s cooperation to supply American forces in Afghanistan. He avoids any greater involvement in Syria than Obama but one day decides to react to Bashar al Assad’s use of chemical weapons with a massive cruise missile attack. Months later the chemical weapons are still being used without any US response. Where are all those critics who though Obama did not follow through sufficiently?
Trump may well stumble into war. Bullies have an inclination to escalate. But he has done zilch to prepare the United States for war with North Korea or Iran: no PR or Congressional campaign, no removal of US civilians from harm’s way, no argument in the National Security Strategy for the use of force, no nothing really. If he were to initiate hostilities with Iran or North Korea, I imagine he would have a hard time with both the public and the Congress, which simply are not ready for it, and of course much of the country would see the move as an effort to distract from the Russia investigation.
That of course is well understood in Tehran, Pyongyang, Beijing, and elsewhere. Trump’s intemperate threats are by now so empty of serious content that no one takes him seriously. He has few friends around the world. With the exception of Israel and Saudi Arabia, America’s allies wouldn’t support a military move against either Iran or North Korea at this point. Neither the ayatollahs nor Kim Jong-un seem much concerned, though both enjoy using a hostile Trump to encourage anti-American patriotism. China is meanwhile enjoying the fruits of Trump’s mistakes: the withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and his quiescence in the South China Sea.
Temperament matters. Like his America, this President’s is not great.
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Rouhani’s moment of truth
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