Tag: China
Failure is what he does best
I agree with Susan Rice. President Trump did the right thing to walk away from his talks with Kim Jong-un in Hanoi:
The problem is Trump shouldn’t have been in Hanoi at all. Kim got what he needed, the photo-op that shows his people he can deal with he President of the United States on an equal basis:
Trump claims Kim has promised to continue his moratorium on nuclear and missile testing, but development efforts will certainly continue without international inspections or even an inventory of materials and equipment. The US will keep the sanctions in place, but they have been fraying. Neither Russia nor China is likely to be maximally cooperative on sanctions against North Korea given their parlous relations with the US.
But the problems with the deal Trump is trying to cut go deeper. Trump has been dangling economic development based on foreign investment as bait for Kim to give up his nuclear program. Kim knows that foreign investment would require far-reaching judicial and economic reforms impossible in a totalitarian state. He is doing far better on his own by allowing the gradual evolution of private economic activity while maintaining the repressive apparatus that keeps him in power. Even small moves like allowing private gardens have had a dramatically positive impact on food supply.
Kim also returned home from Hanoi with a presidential reprieve for the murder of a US citizen:
Did Trump press Kim on holding someone responsible for Warmbier’s death? Not at all.
Trump is once again reduced to distracting us from failure: he claimed before leaving Hanoi that the US had somehow intervened to cool escalating tensions between India and Pakistan and that Jared Kushner’s phantom Middle East peace plan would emerge soon, because the US has cut off aid for the Palestinians. Neither claim is credible.
Yesterday was a bad day for Trump not only in Hanoi but in Washington, where his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen made all to clear who and what the President is: racist, conman, and cheat. Republicans are busily attacking Cohen’s credibility, as he has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress previously. But they are not discussing the merits of Cohen’s charges, which would require a defense of Trump that would be difficult to mount.
Trump will now try to cut a trade deal with China. The tariff war he triggered is causing real pain in rural America, where part of Trump’s base lives. He also needs Beijing’s help with Pyongyang. He will cave on the tariffs and claim victory, then try to distract attention, maybe with an effort to begin to build his unneeded but much wanted wall on the southern border, triggering a raft of lawsuits and screams from whichever department of government he takes the money from. That effort too will fail, but Trump will move on to something else. Failure is what he does best.
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Have the Taliban changed?
The Middle East Institute (MEI) hosted a discussion on February 21 about understanding what the Taliban wants, with former Ambassador Omar Samad, Nonresident Senior fFellow with the Atlantic Council. He was joined by William Maley, professor of diplomacy at the Asian-Pacific College of Diplomacy, Candance Rondeaux, professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University, and Ahmed Majidyar, Senior Fellow and Director of Iranobserved at MEI.
Samad gave an overview of the emergence of Taliban twenty-five years ago, emphasizing that it is not known how they evolved and gained support inside and outside Afghanistan. Nor is it known how much control Pakistan has over them, their agenda, and their connection with terrorism. Taliban leaders reside outside Afghanistan; some of them go back and forth. The group grew from madrasa system in Afghanistan and Pakistan, supported by foreign fighters from Central Asia and the Caucasus. While they have updated their beliefs on women rights, democracy and governance, the Taliban’s current intentions remain to be tested and verified. They are proclaiming victory, claiming to have won the war and thus wanting to have a say in any future political settlement in Afghanistan.
Maley thinks the US as a wrong approach to the Taliban based on a Western model of leadership. he Taliban wanted to negotiate directly with the US and other international interlocutors to delegitimate the Afghani government. But since the death of Mullah Omar, the Taliban no longer have a leader whose word will bind the rest of the group. Little is known about what is needed now to negotiate effectively with the Taliban.
Evolving in a network of networks, Rondeaux thinks the Taliban do have a strong command structure, as demonstrated during the recent ceasefire. They gave a pledge and kept it, which showed they have control over their groups. Their command and control has grown, with lines of communication stretching from Peshawar to the interior of Afghanistan as well as to Doha and Turkey. This is considerable progress compared to 2001 and 2012, when they were on their back foot and fleeing across the borders. Now they have military courts and a justice system. Because of their cohesiveness, they are having meetings with the UN, ICRC, and other stakeholders.
Majidyar claims that after the US intervention in Afghanistan the Taliban military structure has become more decentralized and shifted from a disorganized insurgent movement to an organized shadow government. Having their leadership inside Pakistan, the Taliban counts on a cabinet that includes a Ministry of Education, a Ministry of Religious Affairs, and a Ministry of War, among others. They have also set up shadow governors and different committees running the day-to- day affairs. Along with the help of NGOs and the UN, they attend to the needs of the population in terms of health, education, and other sectors. Taliban recruitment comes from refugees inside Pakistan, madrasas, and the local community. Their area of influence has expanded from the south and east all across Afghanistan. With growing legitimacy, the Taliban had deepened ties with Russia, China, and the Gulf States.
According to Majidyar, the Taliban have not changed their connection with national and international terrorist groups. Despite the pledges given to the US, they still maintain ties with Al Qaeda active in the region. While pledging to respect human rights and international law once in power, the Taliban’s views on women’s and other human rights have not changed.
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Distracting and caving
President Trump is getting ready to cave: having scheduled a Summit with Kim Jong-un for next Wednesday and Thursday in Hanoi he is now talking about another with Xi Jingping next month. Both Summits are intended to distract from judicial investigations and portend deals: with Kim on North Korea’s nuclear weapons and with Xi on trade.
Get ready, America. Your pocket is going to be picked.
No doubt there will be a flashy announcement or two. Kim might agree to destroy some nuclear facilities and sign a peace agreement formally ending the Korean war, which is something he, his father, and grandfather have assiduously sought. President Trump will tout it as a great victory. With new tariffs postponed until the summit, Xi can easily agree to buy more US soybeans, another great victory. But that is the penny ante stuff.
Real concessions would have to include Kim accounting for all his fissionable material, agreeing to dismantle and surrender his nuclear weapons, and allowing International Atomic Energy Agency inspections permanently. Xi would have to end Chinese insistence on technology transfer from US companies and cyber theft of intellectual property. There is no sign that these US goals will be achieved. They may even be unachievable.
In Venezuela, too, Trump is losing, at least for now. His effort to weaponize US aid by assembling it on the borders and daring President Maduro to prevent it from entering ended Saturday in violent confrontation. Despite the defection of dozens of Venezuelan troops, only two trucks managed to get into the country. The Venezuelan security forces are so far remaining mostly loyal.
The Americans are threatening Maduro with consequences, but at least for now his hold on power seems tight. Trump has pretty good support from across the political spectrum for his effort to unseat Maduro, but any move towards military intervention would quickly shatter the consensus. Trump may not cave to Maduro, but it is unclear whether he can somehow get the Venezuelan President to step aside without a serious rift over war powers in the US Congress.
Trump’s effort to distract attention from various judicial investigations with international summits is not likely to work. Special Counsel Mueller, despite the rumors, is not yet finished. He needs to do something about Donald Jr. and likely Jared Kushner before folding his tent. Mueller continues to hide his hand on the Russia investigation: all the pertinent material was redacted last Friday from the sentencing memo he submitted concerning former campaign chair Paul Manafort, whose connections to Moscow are manifold.
So what we’ve got is an Administration trying hard with Venezuela, North Korea, and China to distract attention, even if that means far from satisfactory negotiating outcomes with Pyongyang and Beijing as well as a perilous game of chicken with Caracas.
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Keeping rigor in a shallow environment
The Middle East Institute hosted a discussion on Thursday 30 about the role of think tanks in shaping Middle East policy, with Randa Slim, Senior Fellow and Director of Conflict Resolution at MEI. She was Joined by Brian Katulis, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, Paul Salem, President of Middle East Institute, Steven Kenney, Principal of Foresight Vector LLC, and Sami Atallah, Director of the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies.
Katulis stated that Thinks Tanks are in an existential crisis; the weak and incoherent policy planning process inside the US government has affected the analysis they are doing. There is also a growing tendency towards advocacy as opposed to analysis, reflecting Trump’s disruptive style of politics and decision-making. This approach has created an incentive for many think tanks just to react to the latest decisions without examining more holistically what is going on. Katulis claims the sectarianism and tribalism that exist in the Middle East are also echoed in DC in the sense that think tanks tend not to bring together people with different views. Worse, the media has affected the way policy and politics are conducted, making scholars too reactive to events and statements coming out of the current Administration.
Slim mentioned that there is too much Track I dialogue and not enough emphasis on Track II. She stated that Track II diplomacy had become a growing field of study, to which MEI has devoted particular attention. The work done by Herbert Kelman on the Arab -Israeli conflict has fertilized this field in the Middle East. The Taif agreement for Lebanon was negotiated in a three-year Track II process that started before the official negotiations, subsequently producing an outcome that translated into Track I official negotiations. When there is no working policy process as in the current US administration, or when there are no relations between the antagonists in a conflict such as the Saudi-Iranian conflict, there is no Track I to hook to.
Reflecting on the role of thank tanks in the Middle East, Salem gave an overview of how the civil society organizations fuel of these research centers. They have had a significant impact in producing policy ideas and creating young leaders who are empowered, informed and moving into public space. Think tanks were part of the awakening and empowerment that led up to the Arab Spring. For Salem, that impact had two effects; it empowered civil society, but at the same time it drew government antagonism. In the US, it is challenging to impact the government due to the lack of a political process that is real, meaningful, and coherent. The same thing can be said about the resurgent authoritarian regimes in the Middle East inspired by China and Russia and encouraged by the current illiberal president Donald Trump.
Atallah described the political environment thinks tanks are operating in as not inclusive or transparent, leaving little chance for them to influence decisions. There is also a problem of financial sustainability. Think tanks need a long-term income stream to hire senior staff to deal with emerging issues. According to Atallah, through research, advocacy and conferences think tanks have been able to introduce key ideas and influence decision-making in Lebanon.
Kenney spoke about the few mainstream think tanks tjat are employing the methods of foresight in a concerted way, alongside the other research and analysis they have traditionally done. For Kenney, the rigor, comprehensiveness and objectivity of think tanks and the methodology behind them do not often get recognized. The misconception many have is that think tanks are the equivalent of looking into a crystal ball and trying to predict the future. Kenny clarified that think tanks explain why things are the way they are today and extrapolate forward from that.
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Insincerity and mendacity
President Trump’s State of the Union address, delivered last night, was the opening salvo in his re-election campaign, as Mara Liasson put it on NPR this morning:
Trying to appear calm and “presidential,” Trump appealed for unity while doubling down on some of the most divisive issues in American politics: his proposed extension of the wall on the Mexican border, his appeal to the Democrats not to investigate his campaign and administration, and his attempt at rapprochement with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. The calm delivery from the Teleprompter won’t last past his next tweet.
Some of what he said was downright scary: he suggested the US could have peace only if the investigations stop. The logic is all too clear: if the Democrats and Special Counsel pursue wrongdoing, the President might respond by taking the country to war. Is this what he intended? Impossible to tell, since he is anything but logical. But lots of leaders do go to war to distract from domestic difficulties, and Trump is a master of distraction. He also often says what others never vocalize. Was he threatening war as a response to domestic political challenges?
Trump doubled down on some other bad ideas: he vowed to stick with the tariff war against China, he pledged to outspend Russia in developing intermediate range nuclear forces, and he announced 3750 more troops will be sent to the southern border to meet a non-existent flood of illegal immigrants. The tariff war is clearly a violation of America’s World Trade Organization commitments, a nuclear arms race with Russia is not where America needs to go, and the use of the US Army to roll out barbed wire (it is prohibited from law enforcement functions) is one of the most expensive and useless ways to protect the border, apart from the border wall. There is no sign whatsoever that Trump has moderated his radical and unfounded approaches to trade, defense, and immigration.
Syria and Afghanistan, America’s two biggest wars at present, got short shrift. Trump reiterated his commitment to bringing the troops home from Syria without however any idea of what will happen after they leave. In Afghanistan, he referenced the negotiations with the Taliban but also gave little idea of the strategy for what happens after withdrawal. Trump is in effect declaring victory and getting out of both wars–the uproar such an approach would have caused were a Democratic president pursuing it would be deafening. The Senate has objected on a bipartisan basis to these announced withdrawals, but there is little indication Trump is listening.
The misstatements and abuses of facts were legion. The most egregious surround his claim of credit for the reasonably good state of the US economy. In fact, average monthly job growth has declined slightly from President Obama’s second term. Ditto his claim of credit for the increase in US oil and gas production, which started under Obama. He even boasted that there are more women in Congress than ever before but failed to note that they are mostly Democrats. The number of Republican women in Congress has actually declined.
For me, perhaps the iconic mendacity of this State of the Union is contained in this sentence:
If I had not been elected president of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea.
There is of course no way of knowing how Hillary Clinton might have handled Pyongyang, but we do know that the only President who has loudly threatened war against North Korea is Donald Trump. And we also know that there is no sign whatsoever that Kim is giving up either his nuclear weapons or his intercontinental ballistic missiles, despite the blandishments Trump is offering. Trump failed to get anything substantial from Kim at, and since, their first meeting. So what is he doing? Scheduling another meeting late this month. Trump is a great flim flam salesman but a truly terrible negotiator.
Forty per cent of the American public is still fooled, even if the insincerity and mendacity are obvious.
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My State of the Union
My fellow Americans,
The state of our union is confused and uncertain. Our economic recovery is aging and shaky. The rich are getting a lot richer while American workers struggle. Government revenue is insufficient. Medicare and Social Security are at risk. The national debt is growing by leaps and bounds. Our future is mortgaged to the hilt.
We no longer have a clear idea of what we stand for or how to deal with the poverty, drug abuse, obesity, gender bias, and racism that infects much of our population. One of our major political parties has committed itself to voter suppression, sharply curtailing immigration, and courting white supremacists. A $25 billion wall on the Mexican border is their totem, despite its predictable ineffectiveness in blocking undocumented entries and drug trafficking.
Our institutions are not functioning well. The Justice Department and FBI are struggling to maintain their professionalism. The State Department has been eviscerated and marginalized. The courts are being politicized. Big parts of the Federal Government–Interior, EPA, HUD, Education, Commerce–are headed by people who oppose the missions Congress has given them. The Congress itself is polarized and only occasionally able to pass legislation on a bipartisan basis.
Abroad we have surrendered our leadership role. Withdrawals from the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate change agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty have signaled disdain for our friends, weakness to our enemies, and lack of confidence in our ability to cooperate with others to mutual advantage. It will be very difficult to convince anyone to enter into a future agreement with the United States, as we have proven unreliable and unpredictable. Our only friends abroad are the would-be autocrats of the world: Xi, Putin, Kim, Duterte, various Crown Princes, and Netanyahu.
We continue to rely excessively on military instruments to try to shape the world to our liking. Unwise threats of military intervention in Venezuela and an ill-considered declaration that we would use the American troops remaining in Iraq to counter Iran have cast long shadows on otherwise reasonable propositions. Precipitous withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan announced without laying the required diplomatic basis threaten to end in debacle. We are unable to calibrate the use of our superb military so that it serves the national interest.
Current American weakness comes at a moment of revived, if still far from existential, threat. Russia is challenging US hegemony in Europe and the Middle East. China is challenging US hegemony in the Asia Pacific and in global markets. We are unwilling, though perhaps not unable, to counter Moscow’s roguish behavior. Our response to China has precipitated a tariff war that is as harmful to the US economy as it is to the Chinese.
My fellow Americans, the pace and direction of our Union are speeding us to where we should not want to go. We need to stop the downward spiral before it becomes irreversible. We need to point ourselves in the direction of restoring American ideals. We need to once again show leadership on the international stage and willingness to sacrifice for the common good.
The sooner we do it, the better. The longer we wait, the harder it gets.
The state of our Union is bad. Let’s make it better.
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