Tag: China
Things look different from here
I’m in China, which should go along way to explaining my failure to post on things like President Obama’s farewell address and President elect Trump’s press conference. I was going to just embed them under the title “Compare and contrast,” but I haven’t figured out how to embed on my iPhone or Kindle. Anyway it was just too easy to show what we all know: America has traded a high-minded thinker of impeccable propriety for a low-life four flusher.
So I’ll focus instead on my brief experience here: three days in Nanjing and only two in Beijing. Both astound.
I was expecting Third World. The centers of both are far from it. These places look more like Europe or America at their most orderly and cleanly, albeit too often shrouded in a thick layer of smog that has mostly disappeared there. Traffic is intense but fairly calm. Trains and train stations run like clockwork, some at a remarkably smooth 200 miles per hour. Except for the ubiquitous harassment by young women trying to entrap foreigners into buying them a ridiculously expensive coffee, people on the street are friendly and helpful, despite an almost universal dearth of English. GPS is the answer, if you’ve got free data. The Forbidden City, the palace complex of more or less six hundred years of Ming and Qing emperors, and the Nanjing Memorial to the city’s victims of a Japanese massacre in 1937/38, rent electronic guides in English.
Knowledgeable Chinese are frank and plainspoken in discussions of South China Sea (SCS) issues. They generally defend something like what they understand the government’s position to be, as most of their counterparts in Washington would, but not without citing mistakes and suggesting course corrections. Everyone here thinks the land features of SCS (low and high tide elevations, rocks, reefs or islands) belong to China, but at least some appear to think Beijing will eventually be prepared to negotiate practical compromises with the other claimants, as it has done with some of its land borders.
The Chinese understand American positions well, so they will be surprised and appalled that Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State suggested in Senate testimony today that Beijing be blocked from access to the nine facilities they have built on what they claim as sovereign Chinese territory in the SCS and that the US should back the sovereignty claims of others who had built many more facilities before the Chinese started doing so two years ago. Nominee Rex Tillerson apparently doesn’t know that Trump’s good friends on Taiwan make the same SCS claims as Beijing.
Washington until now has avoided taking sides on the sovereignty claims for decades, as the main US interest in the SCS is freedom of navigation. The Chinese are quick to point out that there is no risk from their side to commercial shipping, as 70-80% of that flows through the SCS to and from China itself. The core issue is freedom of navigation for military ships and planes, which the US pretty much wants to be able to go anywhere anytime. They don’t keep to well established sea lanes or air corridors. The Chinese don’t like that because they think US military craft are spying on them, which is surely true at times even if not always.
Of course there are bigger issues involved. China is a rising power. Some see a clash with the existing US regional hegemon as inevitable. People in both Beijing and Washington would like to avoid that, as it has the potential for catastrophe. That’s why our 15 SAIS masters students are here on a study trip: to think about ways of managing the issues peacefully. I hope Trump doesn’t make that impossible before we publish the findings April 15!
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This isn’t likely to go well
While there are a lot of other candidates for first international crisis in the new administration, North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs are a likely one. Donald Trump tweeted yesterday, apparently in response to a remark by North Korean President Kim that his country would soon have an intercontinental ballistic missile:
North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It won’t happen!
He then added a bit later:
China has been taking out massive amounts of money & wealth from the U.S. in totally one-sided trade, but won’t help with North Korea. Nice!
If Trump intended that first tweet as a threat of unilateral US military action, he was not the first to propose it. More than ten years ago, current Defense Secretary Carter and former Democratic Defense Secretary Perry proposed the same thing. They wanted to destroy any North Korean missile capable of reaching the US on the launch pad.
But of course it is not clear what the tweet really means. Nor is it clear why Trump assumes that the ICBM in question would be capable of carrying a nuclear weapon to a US target. What he is doing here is what he often does: throwing ambiguous remarks into the public sphere with little or no concern for their factual basis or their impact on others.
That is also true for the second tweet about China. Trump wants Beijing to help with North Korea and to stop what he regards as unfair trade practices. Nothing wrong with that: presidents from Clinton onwards have wanted pretty much the same. But criticizing the Chinese publicly for the one is not likely to get you help on the other. And linking the two is disadvantageous for negotiating both. Trump has threatened to improve his negotiating leverage on trade by unilaterally imposing tariffs, a move that would precipitate Chinese retaliation. What would the odds be then for getting Beijing to move more firmly on North Korea?
Trump is now in a world far more complex than the one he is used to. I’m willing to believe that his business deals are complicated, but they are basically questions of how much people will pay to use his name. There are few other, unrelated, issues between him and his business partners. In international affairs, there are a lot of linked issues between major powers, making it exceedingly difficult to predict the consequences of any particular move. In military parlance, these are “wickedly” complex problems.
Trump can of course learn. He learned that he couldn’t make money running casinos, got out of that business, and started to sell his brand instead. But he doesn’t readily learn from the experience of others. He may listen attentively to Al Gore, but then nominated an Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency who doesn’t believe in human contributions to global warming. He pretended to listen to Mitt Romney, who has named Russia as the greatest strategic threat to the US, but he passed him over for Secretary of State.
A possible exception: his position on torture appears to have shifted after talking with his Defense Department nominee, General Mattis. But that is a rare exception. He has stubbornly persisted on many other issues where the weight of evidence is against his policy prescriptions: the wall with Mexico, repeal of Obamacare, making nice with Vladimir Putin, moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, blocking Muslims from entering the US and registering them once they are here….
We’ve got a president-elect who listens mainly to himself (and has even said as much publicly). The odds of that going well, especially when it comes to North Korea and China, are piddling.
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Russia’s Trump dossier
I take it as true that Russia interfered in the US election in favor of Donald Trump, even if I don’t go so far as to say that is the reason Hillary Clinton lost the election. Those who don’t agree needn’t read further. I wish you well in your parallel universe.
The overt response President Obama announced yesterday was classic diplomacy: expel diplomats, close official facilities, add key institutions and decision-makers to the list of specially designated individuals subject to sanctions. We don’t know what else might be going on. I won’t be surprised to see publication of news about high-ranking Russians stashing ill-gotten gains abroad. Or, as one of my ambassadors used to put it, pictures of Putin with a goat.
Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov announced the classic response: a symmetrical expulsion of diplomats and closure of facilities. But President Putin one-upped him quickly, saying Moscow would not respond in kind. He is leaving the door open to a decision by President Trump on January 20 to rescind Obama’s moves. The choreography is impressive. It conveys clearly that Putin is in charge and suggests that he is magnanimous, not vindictive.
This maneuver puts President-elect Trump in a bind. If he backs off Obama’s moves, he will displease prominent Republican senators whose votes are needed to confirm his Russophilic nominee for Secretary of State, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson. He will also dig an even deeper hole than he is already in with the intelligence community, whose briefings he is skipping and whose assessments he has rejected. If he maintains the expulsions and other measures, he risks ending before it even began his promised reset and partnership with Russia.
I’m thinking he’ll choose the former: he’ll back off at least the expulsions, if not the rest. Why? Because his commitment to befriending Putin’s Russia is the one constant in Trump’s many random statements on foreign policy. America has elected a new president profoundly and consistently committed to partnering with Russia, against the collective wisdom of what he insists on continuing to call “the swamp,” the Washington establishment. Rather than draining it, Trump is installing his own alligators, who will be far friendlier to Russia and far more hostile to China and Iran.
I won’t be surprised if Trump also gives Putin other things he really wants: official acceptance of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and a deal on Luhansk and Donestk (in Ukraine’s Donbas) that allows them to be virtually independent of Kiev. This in turn will trigger further Russian irredentist moves in Moldova, Georgia, and the Baltics as well as heightened efforts at partition in the Balkans (Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia). If Ukraine can be de facto partitioned, why not all these other places? If you are an ethnic nationalist and not a liberal democrat, keeping people together from different ethnicities makes no sense.
Barack Obama needs to do his best to block this drift of American foreign policy away from its traditional support for liberal democracy and towards an alliance with ethnic nationalists. I’m hoping he’ll use the covert retaliation against Russia for its interference in the American election to make public whatever we know not only about the Russian elite’s finances but also about its relationship to Trump. As better Russia experts than me have said, Putin unquestionably has a dossier on the President-elect, possibly one that explains his consistent Russophilia. Getting that out in the open would go a long way to clarifying why Trump leans over backwards to accommodate Moscow and to blocking him from continuing to do it.
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Rein him in!
Let’s count the potential international crises the President-elect has signaled he is prepared to initiate:
- Conflict with China over the South China Sea and/or Taiwan.
- Across-the-board tariffs that would cause a trade war with China.
- A nuclear arms race with his putative pal, Russia.
- Encouraging South Korea and Japan to get nuclear weapons.
- Movement of the US embassy to Israel to Jerusalem, precipitating an Arab and Palestinian reaction.
- Conflict with Russia and Iran by initiation of a no-fly zone in Syria.
- Withdrawal from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), negotiation of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), and/or the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Let’s not count withdrawal from NATO, as he has already reneged on that promise, or withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, as even Prime Minister Netanyahu no longer favors that but rather prefers its strict implementation. Let’s also forget about the wall on the Mexican border, as the Mexicans won’t pay for it and Congress is likely to balk as well, and other immigration restrictions, which are inevitable now but will hurt the US more than any other single country. Let’s however add, because it is probably unavoidable:
8. A North Korean demonstration of nuclear and/or missile technology that threatens the US.
This is a spectacular list of things likely to provoke dramatic international reactions. It is also a list too long for any US government, even one led by experienced statespeople, to manage all at once. The neophytes of the Trump administration–including the President-elect himself, his Secretary of State nominee Tillerson, National Security Advisor Flynn, and his trade czar Peter Navarro–are guaranteed to make a hash of it if Trump tries to do even two or three of these things at the same time, never mind all of them.
Trump is blithely unaware of the challenges. He continues to use Twitter as his main means of communication, not only for his personal vendettas but also for what would be major policy shifts, provided he is serious. His defenders have been reduced to claiming that obviously he doesn’t mean exactly what he says on Twitter, as the issues deserve fuller treatment. Let’s not take him too literally, only seriously, they suggest, espousing something closer to a reasonable position on the issues Trump has tweeted wildly about.
This ambiguity about what Trump really intends is an added peril. Our adversaries no longer know what to think and are therefore compelled to prepare for what they regard as the worst. Minor confrontations are inevitable, as is escalation, given Trump’s irascibility. While the US was definitely under a greater external threat during the Cold War (because of the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons) than it is today, the likelihood of major confrontation is now much higher, due to the uncertainty Trump has perpetrated.
Some are hoping for our institutions to compensate. But Congress and the courts can do little to reign Trump in. The confirmation process for some of his cabinet nominees may give a few in the Senate opportunities to signal their concerns, but there is little that can be done if Trump does not take the signals seriously. The courts rarely intervene on international issues, and then only after years of due process and appeals.
Two other possible brakes on Trump are likewise handicapped. The states can intervene effectively on domestic policy but are able to do little to affect foreign policy. American civil society–its citizens organized in nonprofit groups–will likely focus on domestic policy. The first big demonstration of the new era is likely to be the January 21 Women’s March on Washington. Preserving the benefits of Obamacare is likely to be a major domestic policy concern for civil society in coming months, along with exposure of Trump’s colossal conflicts of interest.
Ironically, it could be the business world that eventually reins in the businessman elect. The kinds of crises Trump is likely to precipitate are not good for US business, which knows how to get its voice heard in Washington. The US Chamber of Commerce was on the outs with Trump even before the election, over trade issues. But a South China Sea crisis or one of the others might be equally devastating to US business interests. Any international crisis will take a toll on economic growth, which is moving along at a decent pace even seven years into the recovery. Trump, whose personal business interests are paltry by big business standards, is going to come under a lot of pressure not to upset the apple cart.
Trump needs to be reined in. Whoever does it will merit the gratitude of the nation.
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Trump’s future crises
My recommended reading for today is Eric Chenoweth’s Let Hamilton Speak, which is the best argument I’ve seen to date for the Electoral Colleges meeting today in state capitals to fulfill the founders’ intent by rejecting Donald Trump and electing Hillary Clinton, who beat him in the popular vote by close to 3 million votes. Virtually none of those votes has been officially questioned.
But Trump is going to win in the Electoral College. Nate Cohn has an admirably short explanation for how that happened:
Mr. Trump had an advantage in the traditional battlegrounds because most are whiter and less educated than he country as a whole.
The electors, who are basically chosen for their party loyalty, are not going to desert Trump en masse, even if a few may be tempted to bolt. The situation Hamilton anticipated and believed the Electoral College designed to prevent is about to happen. We will elect a prevaricating demagogue spectacularly ill-suited to wield the powers of the American presidency, one who is demonstrating daily by means of ill-considered tweets and soundbites that he has none of the good judgment and restraint required.
It is anyone’s guess how this will end. Some hope Trump will moderate, despite ample evidence to the contrary, in particular in his radical cabinet appointments. Others hope the Congress and courts will block his less judicious moves. But Congressional Republicans are lining up to salute and restraint by the courts is always delayed and rarely applicable to foreign policy. As Trump is astoundingly concerned with his image, public opinion might have an impact. But he has been remarkably successful at making any publicity into good publicity. There is no sign yet that any of these forces will be sufficient to block Trump’s worst instincts.
My own guess is that we are headed for an early international crisis.
Trump has already provoked China twice, once by accepting the Taiwan president’s phone call and once by a harsh remark about Chinese military activity in the South China Sea. Beijing reacted mildly to the first, suggesting it was Taiwan’s fault, and more harshly to the second, seizing an American underwater drone. Much worse could lurk in the future, as Trump has promised a trade war with China that would cause Beijing to retaliate and devastate American exports.
While provocative towards China, Trump is accommodating towards Russia. He has indicated he will end US support to the Syrian revolution (even while promising safe areas that cannot be created due to Russian air defenses) and try to make common cause with Russia against the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Kerry has been trying to pull off that partnership for months, without success because the Russians are unwilling to target extremists. They prefer to help Assad retake territory, most recently Aleppo, without regard to civilian casualties. This will strengthen extremism, even as it benefits Russia and Iran. Trump will no doubt be tempted to strike out at Iran, not Russia, but doing so would propel the world into another major Middle East crisis.
That may not, however, be the first Middle East crisis Trump precipitates. He and his nominated ambassador to Israel, who is a strong supporter of West Bank settlements and an opponent of a two-state solution, have pledged to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, a promise other presidents-elect have made but never fulfilled. The reason is clear: it is a final status issue that needs to be part of the negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis. Jumping the gun will make it even more difficult than it is today for the US to enlist Arab support for American goals, as will abandonment of the Syrian revolution.
There are other possible crises in the offing. Trump’s promised renunciation of the Iran nuclear deal would certainly precipitate a sharp break with Europe and make it likely that the US would need to use force to block Tehran from nuclear weapons. Conceding Crimea’s annexation to Russia would create serious doubts inside NATO about US willingness to fulfill its alliance obligations. Withdrawal from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the negotiations for the Trans Pacific Partnership will cast a pall over trade worldwide and raise serious questions about whether China rather than the US will lead in setting the pace of trade liberalization.
All these possible crises can be brought on more or less unilaterally by the new president quickly and easily. I’ll be in Beijing on Inauguration Day. It will be an interesting perch from which to see what happens.
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Big trouble brewing
President-elect Trump’s cabinet appointments were not moderates from the first. With the exception of Defense and Homeland Security, he has appointed people who oppose the missions of the departments they have been named to lead. Rick Perry famously couldn’t even remember that Energy was one of the departments he said as a candidate he wanted to abolish. Ryan Zinke, named to Interior, opposes the conservation that department is entrusted with.
On domestic issues, we can anticipate that Congress will present a roadblock to some of the more outrageous proposals from the new administration. Abolishing Obamacare without providing an alternative isn’t going to happen, for precisely the reason Republicans opposed it in the first place: there are a lot of people enjoying its benefits. Depriving 20 million people of health insurance is not a winning political maneuver. The Energy Department isn’t going away, if only because it makes our nuclear weapons and manages nuclear waste. I’ll bet the national parks will still be the national parks four years from now, even if they will be open to more commercial activity than today.
On foreign policy, there are fewer constraints. The beneficiaries are not so well defined and presidential powers are dominant. Trump shook the One China policy with a single phone call, precipitating bellicose rhetoric from Beijing about the South China Sea. He has named as ambassador to Israel an advocate of Jewish settlements on the West Bank who opposes the two-state solution and looks forward to moving the embassy to Jerusalem. His bromance with Putin is already shaking allied confidence in NATO. Trump is a master at upsetting apple carts with small gestures.
His nominee for Secretary of State, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, is not at first sight the same type. By all reports, he has been a capable, maybe even an outstanding, manager of a gigantic energy company, which under his guidance even accepted that global warming is real and caused in part by human activity. But he too has been willing to defy expectations and do business not only with Russian President Putin but also a non-sovereign state like Iraqi Kurdistan as well as with petty dictators in weak states who need Exxon to exploit their resources so they can steal the revenue and keep themselves in power. It is hard to picture Tillerson supporting democratic reforms after a career of ignoring regime abuses, as Rachel Maddow ably made clear last night in an interview with Steve Coll:
Perhaps the most important foreign policy nomination has not yet been made: the US Trade Representative is presumably the person who will need to fulfill Trump’s campaign promises by renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), withdrawing from the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations, and ending the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). If he follows through, these moves will make Europe, Asia and Latin America doubt America’s longstanding commitment to free trade and investment, present the Chinese and Russians with opportunities to fill giant gaps, and undermine the World Trade Organization.
That however is not my biggest concern. Trump is an ethnic nationalist with an extreme ethnic nationalist, Steve Bannon, as his chief strategist. They will be sympathetic to ethnic nationalist reasoning, which is what Russian President Putin is offering as an explanation for his aggression in Crimea, Donbas, Transnistria, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia. “Just trying to protect ethnic Russians,” Putin says. How many of these places will Trump be willing to concede to Russia in order to consummate his bromance with Putin? The Trump administration may also be more sympathetic than Obama has been to Iraqi Kurdistan’s independence ambitions, setting off a series of partitions in the Middle East (Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, even Turkey and Iran are potential candidates).
Four years is a long time. I don’t think it will be more than a month before some of Trump’s international moves brew the United States big trouble.
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