Tag: Iraq
Trump is history, Trumpism is not
Donald Trump has embarked on a massive campaign to monetize his presidency. It is not only the NFT playing cardsj. It is also Truth Social (his social media site that caters to right-wing white supremacy and other extremisms), the political funds he collects for challenging election results and supporting extemist candidates (but spends mostly on himself and his family), and the millions his Gulfie friends are loaning him and investing in his golf courses. Most of this will fail, like his much-vaunted steaks. But he’ll come out enriched, which is ultimately the only purpose he is serious about.
He needs the cash
He is going to need the money. His company has already been convicted of tax fraud. He faces more or less a dozen other investigations. Several of which seem close to bringing charges against him. Today the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on The Capitol will recommend that the Justice Department bring serious, unprecedented criminal charges against Trump. He is a cheapskate when it comes to hiring lawyers and stiffs many of them. But even two or three indictments will generate enormous legal bills. Not to mention the likelihood that his tax cheating will end with hundreds of millions in penalties.
No he won’t be president again
No, this man is not going to be President of the United States again. He has led his party into three losing elections: 2018, 2020, and 2022. What loyal GOPer would want to see a fourth? A large part of the Republican Party is already abandoning him, including Senate Minority Leader McConnell and lots of other members of Congress. Those who aren’t are mostly extremist flakes and committed thieves. Americans are looking for compromise, not further polarization. Serious money and media will steer clear. Florida Governor De Santis is already beating Trump in the polls. He won’t be the only serious contender.
But the alternatives are all tainted
But De Santis, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, former Vice President Mike Pence and others are all tainted with Trumpism. Of the top 10, the Washington Post lists only New Hampshire Governor Sununu as leaning hard against Trump. Whoever is nominated (it won’t be Sununu) will have to satisfy the Trump wing of the party. It will turn out for the primaries while many more moderate people stay home. The Trumpians want to block immigration, make voting more difficult, reduce constraints on police violence, cut taxes for the wealthy, ban abortion and gay marriage, challenge election results, and prevent the government from taking necessary public health measures.
American elections are not predictable
These are not positions the American public generally supports. But there is nevertheless no predicting the outcome of the 2024, any more than there was in 2022. There is a large part of the electorate that votes not on particular issues, but rather on the “direction” of the country. Concern about the future direction of American democracy gave the Democrats an edge this year, compared to what would normally be expected in a mid-term election with the economy in trouble, high inflation, and the President under 50% approval. Who knows how the economy and American democracy will be faring in 2024?
Some continuity in foreign policy
Does any of this make a difference to foreign policy, which after all is the main concern of peacefare.net? We don’t really know, though there are indications within the Republican Party that support for Ukraine, NATO, and especially the EU is soft, sympathy with Russia rampant, enthusiasm for Netanyahu’s Israel and Mohammed bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia higher than in the Biden Administration, and hostility to Xi Jinping’s China marginally stronger.
That said, there has been a good deal of continuity in foreign policy between Trump and Biden, on Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, and even China, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. It isn’t easy to pursue a pro-democracy foreign policy in the Middle East, or in China for that matter. Whether that signals a return to bipartisan foreign policy “at the water’s edge” is not yet clear. Trumpism will have to be thoroughly obliterated for that to happen. But it could happen.
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To JCPOA or not to JCPOA is the question
The Biden Administration in the runup to the November 8 election has hesitated to return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA aka Iran nuclear deal). This is understandable. In domestic US politics, return to the JCPOA carries no political advantage and considerable political risk.
The post-election dilemma
This hesitation sets up a post-election dilemma. During the past month, a serious protest movement has again emerged in Iran. The main focus has been rules on wearing the hijab, which is a highly visible symbol of the theological dictatorship. The protests have been widespread and growing. No doubt if the protesters succeed in overthrowing the Islamic Republic, the nuclear question would be seen in a different light.
But there is no telling whether that will happen within a relevant time frame. Iran has seen repeated episodes of public protest that the Islamic Republic has repressed brutally. Any one of the protest movements might have succeeded. They did not.
So immediately after the US election, President Biden will confront a choice. He can go ahead with a return to the JCPOA, or he can wait to see if the protest movement will succeed at displacing the Islamic Republic. If he proceeds with the JCPOA, that will give the Islamic Republic massive resources as well as sanctions relief and diplomatic prestige, thus enabling it to repress and buy off opposition. If he continues to hesitate, a vital opportunity could be lost to back Iran away from nuclear weapons.
Nuclear weapons or return to the JCPOA?
This is a serious dilemma. Nuclear weapons aren’t so useful in wartime, as their non-use the past 77 years demonstrates. But Iran can see from North Korea’s experience that they make other nuclear powers hesitate to destabilize a country. They also enable increased power projection in the region, which others will try to counterbalance. Iranian nuclear weapons would thus precipitate a regional arms race, with Turkey and Saudi Arabia the main contestants. The United States would not welcome that.
But return to the JCPOA will give the Islamic Republic a new lease on life as well as the resources it requires to remain in power. The gain in pushing Iran back from nuclear weapons would be a few months, not years. Once you know how to enrich uranium, the remaining technological obstacles are not great. Certainly the billions the US and others will need to return to Iran will be sufficient to ensure that nuclear weapons are only a few months in the future.
Make lemonade?
Someone might ask, if you have lemons why not make lemonade? Why not insist that Iran stop the internal crackdown as part of the price of returning to the JCPOA? While I might want Washington to try, I doubt that gambit would succeed. The negotiations are already overloaded with lots of non-nuclear issues. These include American prisoners in Iran and Iranian prisoners in the US, Iranian power projection in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, and American encouragement of ethnic rebellion inside Iran. Getting back to the JCPOA will require ignoring most if not all of these. The main question is JCPOA or no JCPOA. And it isn’t an easy one to answer, even if like me you think Trump’s withdrawal was a stupid mistake.
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Stevenson’s army, September 16
– The question of “dues” to campaign committees came up in class. Punchbowl News has a story.-
– Biden signed an executive order on Chinese investments. NYT has more.
-House GOP announces its agenda.
– FT reports pressure on Turkey.
– FP says Iraq is on verge of shiite civil war.
-At Harvard they can’t read cursive.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Strategic failure has consequences
9/11 produces lots of reflections. Here are mine.
Tactical success, strategic failure
The Al Qaeda attacks using commercial aircraft were largely successful. Three of four hit their intended targets and killed lots of people. But that tactical success did not lead to strategic victory. The Americans and others have hunted Al Qaeda for 20 years, killing not only its two leaders and many foot soldiers but destroying much of its organizational capacity.
But that tactical success has also not led to strategic victory. Al Qaeda has splintered and metastasized, spinning off the Islamic State and other extremist jihadi insurgents fighting in many more countries than two decades ago. This includes not only the imploded Middle Eastern states of Syria and Yemen, but also the African states of Libya, Mali, Mozambique, and Somalia.
Thus the prospect of tactical success tempts those with the capacity for violence into enterprises that end in strategic failure. This happened to the US in both Iraq and Afghanistan. We invaded because we could. Tactical success however saddled us with burdens we did not want. It took 10 years to extract most US forces from Iraq, and 20 from Afghanistan. The failure of state-building in Afghanistan has vitiated most gains from the initial military success. In Iraq, the failure is not complete, but the costs have been high.
It’s Russia’s turn
The Russians are now facing their own consequences of strategic failure. Their initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014 was largely successful. They annexed Crimea and occupied most of Luhansk and Donetsk using proxies. But President Putin wanted more. This year he tried to take Kyiv, complete the conquest of Donbas, and expand Russian control in the south. The Ukrainians fought off the attack on their capital and are now pushing the Russians back rapidly in Kharkiv province as well as more slowly around Kherson.
The ultimate military outcome is still uncertain. The Ukrainians could over-extend themselves. The Russians could succeed in regrouping and stop the Ukrainian advances or even return to territory they have lost in the past week.
But the strategic failure is already apparent. The Russian army, air force, and navy are in tatters. A reinvigorated NATO is expanding to Finland and Sweden as well as the troop presence on Russia’s borders. Sanctions are sapping the Russian economy. Europe is weaning itself rapidly from Russian oil and gas. States on Russia’s periphery are looking for opportunities to expand ties with the West. Nationalists in Russia who advocated the Ukraine war are turning on Putin. The war is solidifying Ukrainian national identity, increasing support for President Zelensky and the Ukrainian state even among Russian speakers.
The lesson
What should we learn from these strategic defeats of great powers? Confident of their military superiority, they go to war for reasons they think worthy. But war is a political as well as a military enterprise. Tactical military superiority makes it difficult to consider the consequences of strategic failure. Strategic failure is however always a possibility even if you win a war, as the Americans did in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Russians did in 2014 in Ukraine. This failure to take into account the real possibility of strategic failure is a major source of the blunders that lead to war.
Apply it to Iran
A quick footnote on applying this lesson to Iran. Israeli and American military superiority is overwhelming. But Iran is a big country, more or less the size and population of Iraq and Afghanistan combined. No one should be thinking about an invasion. Even hawkish thinking is limited to attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities and supporting infrastructure. Tactical success in that enterprise is not certain, as the Iranians have put a lot of their enrichment facilities deep under ground.
But strategic failure is almost certain. An Iran that has suffered an attack on its nuclear facilities will surely redouble its efforts to get nuclear weapons, as that would make repeat of the attack unthinkable. Sure, the attack could be repeated ad infinitum, “mowing the grass” as the Israelis say. But sooner or later Tehran would succeed in getting nuclear weapons. What then? Tactical success guarantees nothing. Strategic failure has consequences.
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Stevenson’s army, September 1
– SAIS Prof Mark Cancian analyzes US aid to Ukraine.
– SAIS Prof Tom Mahnken discusses US-China tech competition.
– At Vox, Jonathan Guyer sees a possible Iraq civil war.
– Former SecDef Esper sees danger in extreme partisanship.
– Political scientists see more GOP use of unreliable information than Democrats.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, August 31
– Guardian says Taiwan for first time is shooting back at Chinese drones.
– WSJ says drones hitting US forces in Syria come from Iraqi territory.
– Defense News reports delays in shipments of arms bought by Taiwan.
– DefenseOne says DHS can’t recruit top cyber talent.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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