Tag: Nuclear weapons
America last
The general reaction to yesterday’s Helsinki summit between Presidents Putin and Trump was even more dramatic than my own. Here’s a sampling:
- treasonous
- collusion in public
- nauseating
- most embarrassing performance by american president ever seen
- incredibly weak
- a personal and national embarrassment
- beyond disgraceful to dangerous
- most serious mistake of his presidency
- pathetic and weak display of American leadership
Many of those comments are from Republicans. Trump’s indication that he continues to believe Putin’s denials about interference in the 2016 campaign won the most disapproval, though that is something he has said repeatedly in the past. Saying it in front of Putin, and looking admiringly at the Russian president through several slams against the United States, got to people.
I can almost hear the tectonic plates of the world order shifting.
Putin is the big winner out of this summit, as he reasserted Russia’s claim to being a global power equal to the US. He came to the meeting well-prepared but late enough to show Trump who is boss. His people have declared that the summit exceeded all Russian expectations. Trump did nothing to take Putin down a peg or two: on Ukraine they agreed to disagree, on Syria Moscow is dominant, and on many other issues Putin asserted Russia’s claim to being America’s indispensable partner, even though the country has a GNP the size of Spain’s and the moral standing of those little figures you find at the bottom of a Hieronymous Bosch painting, roasting in hell.
The US in the past week has proven itself weak and unreliable as an ally. All Europeans should understand that when Trump says you are a foe, he means it and will try to do you serious harm, in particular on trade. Europe needs to stand up for itself, not only vis-a-vis Russia. The Americans are providing a fabulous opportunity to unify and strengthen the European Union, its military capabilities, and its soft power. Brexit will be a blow–the UK has been an important contributor to EU strength–but Europe will still be the largest economy in the world. Use the position wisely and the Americans will soon be begging for their alliance back.
The Chinese must be chortling. Putin is just an inconvenient and annoying neighbor to them, one that seems unable to produce all the natural gas it promises to export. But Putin has done Beijing a big favor by distracting Washington from the Asia Pacific, where the US should be doing far more to maintain its friends and allies. They are the first line of defense against a rising rival hegemon as well as against North Korea. But Washington is doing nothing to counter China’s South China Sea militarization, it has abandoned the Trans Pacific Partnership, and it has made a hash of the effort to get Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons. China’s claim to restoring its position as the “Middle” Kingdom, that is the central one, is now closer to being realized.
On the home front, Trump has embarrassed Republicans, but they aren’t going to do anything about it. Few are parroting the White House’s talking points about the Summit, and some have even directly criticized the President. But mostly they are staying mum or issuing mild critiques. The Democrats are having a field day, but that won’t matter to Trump. Only a serious rebellion within his own party could cause him to rethink, or maybe better to say think. That isn’t happening yet.
Mueller still has a month or so to indict Americans for their roles in the Russian election hacking. That is the next shoe to drop. Then he needs to hold back for the two months preceding the election, in accordance with Justice Department rules. Then the only effective antidote to Trump’s surrender of American interests to Putin is at the polls in November. We can hope that it is finally dawning on most Americans that this is a president who puts the United States last, not first. The rest of the world already knows.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Life ain’t fair
The Trump-Putin press conference after their meeting in Helsinki merits little comment. It wasn’t a lovefest, but they mostly avoided points of friction. The only obvious one was on Crimea, where Putin essentially said they had agreed to disagree on the legitimacy of Russia’s annexation. Trump said nothing.
On Syria, they are hoping for unspecified cooperation. The Syrian opposition, under bombardment by Russian warplanes, will be glad to hear that. Putin emphasized the importance of humanitarian assistance, but Russia essentially provides none (other than a bit of air transport). The US provides the lion’s share.
Both presidents want the summit to mark the beginning of a more normal relationship between the two powers. Putin was pleased to appear on an equal footing with Trump and emphasized nuclear weapons, as did Trump. No one mentioned that Russia is a declining regional power with an economy more or less the size of Spain’s.
Trump acknowledged that he had pushed American liquified natural gas as an alternative to Germany’s import of Russian gas through the Nordstream pipeline. Never mind that it would be far more costly. I think Chancellor Merkel might have noticed though.
The lies were fast and furious. Putin claimed the referendum on Crimea’s annexation was conducted according to international standards. Hardly. It didn’t even offer an option to keep Crimea’s autonomous status inside Ukraine, not to mention that it was conducted under Russian military occupation.
Trump tried to distract attention to a question about whether he believed the US intelligence community assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election by ranting about “where is Hillary Clinton’s server!” It’s with the FBI. He should ask there. Trump also said Putin forcefully denied the charge. That should settle it.
Putin referred to an implementation issue with the INF (Intermediate Nuclear Forces) treaty. Hardly. Russia is violating the treaty.
He also tried to suggest that he knew nothing about the Russian officials Mueller has indicted but that some of what the Americans are complaining about might be the handiwork of private Russian companies. Does anyone think Putin doesn’t know precisely what the GU (Russian military intelligence) is up to? Does anyone think private Russian companies don’t do the bidding of the Russian government?
Putin also generously offered cooperation with the Mueller investigation, on a reciprocal basis. We need only arrest Bill Browder, Putin’s nemesis and the originator of the Magnitsky Act. Then Mueller can participate in the interrogation of the indicted GU officials and Russian law enforcement will participate in the interrogation of Browder. Even Trump might not fall for that one.
Had a Democratic president appeared with Putin in this fashion a few days after the indictment of Russian officials for interfering in a US election and a few months after the Russians tried to kill a defector in Great Britain, the Republicans would be getting out the noose. The president wouldn’t even have to be black, just liberal. But this pair of white nationalist liars get to display their mendacity with impunity. Life ain’t fair.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Tighten your seatbelts
We are in that car crash moment: we can see the collision coming but can’t stop the vehicle or predict precisely the outcome. Only this time there is more than one crash coming:
- President Trump’s nomination of a Federalist Society-certified conservative to the Supreme Court pretty much guarantees that abortion will be a key issue in November’s Congressional election. To whose advantage that will be is not clear. But whether Judge Kavanaugh is approved before the poll, or especially if confirmation is delayed until afterwards, his apparent inclination to overturn Roe v. Wade will push women towards the Democrats and men towards the Republicans.
- In the foreign policy community, everyone is holding their breath for the NATO Summit in Brussels tomorrow and Thursday. Trump has been hyperventilating about Europe’s failure to spend more on defense, even as many of the allies have been raising their expenditures in order to meet the 2024 NATO target of 2% of GNP and to increase the Alliance’s odds against an increasingly aggressive Russia. If Trump repeats his dissing of the G7 last month in Canada, the Europeans will conclude the Alliance is dead.
- Next Monday Trump meets President Putin in Helsinki. Speculation is rife that he will hand Syria and perhaps also Crimea to Putin, in return for essentially nothing. If either happens, it will cause worldwide repercussions, the former because US withdrawal from Syria will strengthen Iran (Russian promises to restrain Tehran should be ignored entirely) and the latter because every would-be breakaway minority will be encouraged by US acceptance of Russia’s annexation.
- A bit further along on the time horizon is the escalating trade war with China, which is causing a lot of distress in the US, both because Trump’s tariffs raise prices to US producers and consumers of Chinese goods and because Chinese retaliation is hitting US exports hard. The tit-for-tat tariffs with Canada, Mexico, and Europe are also damaging, though the stock market isn’t yet feeling the pain. It will eventually, as the inflationary impact of the budget deficit, the tax cut, and the tariffs pushes the Fed to raise interest rates.
- The dialogue with North Korea about its nuclear program has degenerated into a diatribe, with Pyongyang accusing Secretary of State Pompeo of gangster-like behavior for insisting on quick denuclearization, rather than the long-term, phased (and likely never completed) process the North Koreans favor. No telling whether or when Trump will be back to threatening fire and fury, but it is already clear that his classic bait and switch tactic–he doesn’t seem to have mentioned quick denuclearization during the Singapore summit–won’t work with Kim Jong-un.
Trump will be in London Thursday evening and Friday, meeting with a Prime Minister teetering on the brink as she tries desperately to rescue the United Kingdom from the worst impacts of Brexit, which Trump supported. He’ll be flying everywhere, so as to avoid what are predicted to be massive protests.
Then he’ll spend the weekend in Scotland at one of his own golf clubs. We can hope he’ll spend some time with the briefing books, especially the ones that detail Russian interference in the US election and Moscow’s role in nerve agent murders in the UK. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Advantage North Korea
I’m old enough to remember when Donald Trump tweeted this:
Donald J. TrumpVerified account@realDonaldTrump
Many good conversations with North Korea-it is going well! In the meantime, no Rocket Launches or Nuclear Testing in 8 months. All of Asia is thrilled. Only the Opposition Party, which includes the Fake News, is complaining. If not for me, we would now be at War with North Korea!
We were supposed to believe his Singapore meeting with Kim Jong-un last month had changed everything: North Korea was tamed and America was safer.
Now Secretary of State Pompeo is claiming progress in the talks with North Korea, while Pyongyang is describing the US attitude as “regrettable.” That should not be surprising. Trump is simply lying. No one but him ever threatened war with North Korea, which would be catastrophic for our South Korean allies and possibly also for the US. And no one ever suggested the North Koreans had bought into complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization except his Administration, which will eventually have to accept that it is not going to happen. The flim-flam president is at it again, pushing lies and planning to bait and switch.
The contrast with the Iran nuclear deal couldn’t be greater. President Obama’s team negotiated a detailed, comprehensive agreement with Tehran, one that the Iranians have assiduously implemented, as confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Trump nevertheless withdrew from it. So why, pray tell, would the North Koreans ever want to fall into that trap? Nor is the Trump Administration, which can’t even keep track of the immigrant children it detains, capable of mounting the kind of expertise required to negotiate a serious technical agreement. Is there a single presidential appointee with any advanced level of scientific or engineering knowledge? Are the climate deniers and creationists going to be able to deal with North Korea’s nuclear and missile experts?
Of course there are lots of capable career experts in the government bureaucracy, but tell me one area in which this Administration has relied on them for help. Experts are in fact leaving the government in droves, because they see no point in sitting around while Trump dismantles policies on climate change, nuclear nonproliferation, biomedicine, pandemic diseases, and other important technical issues. The experts who helped Presidents Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama wrestle with these issues over the past three decades aren’t going to sit around waiting for Trump to see the light.
Trump is used to bargaining with people–many of them small contractors who worked on his building projects–whom he can stiff at will. There is always someone else who can put up dry wall. There is no alternative to negotiating with the North Koreans, who clearly understand the Americans better than we understand them. Kim snookered Trump in Singapore into granting him an appearance on a par with the American president, in return for nothing. It is clear the North Koreans have not tested missiles or nuclear weapons because they had come to the end of their protocols. When and if they need to test again, they will surely do so, claiming that Trump has not lived up to his promises of relaxing sanctions.
It’s not quite game/set/match. But it is definitely ad out. North Korea is several steps ahead of Donald Trump’s America.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
This is not a loyal American
President Trump, noting that Putin is KGB, says he’s fine:
I might even end up having a good relationship [with Mr Putin], but they’re going ‘well, president Trump, be prepared, president Putin is KGB’, this and that…Do you know what? Putin’s fine, he’s fine, we’re all fine, we’re people. Will I be prepared? Totally prepared – I have been preparing for this stuff my whole life, they don’t say that.
Even the conservative Heritage Foundation, one of the organizations that helped assemble the list of his possible Supreme Court nominees, is warning that Trump is wrong:
Things to remember before
@realDonaldTrump travels to Europe: -Russia is the aggressor—Ukraine is the victim -Crimea belongs to Ukraine -NATO & US troops in Europe serve our national interests -Europeans must spend more on defense -Putin’s track record shows he can’t be trusted
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Pompeo is in Pyongyang, trying to turn a vague one-page statement from the Singapore summit into a serious plan for denuclearization of North Korea. That would require first an inventory of their nuclear and missile programs as well as years if not decades to dismantle them. There isn’t much chance it is really going to happen. Kim Jong-un is continuing to expand his missile and nuclear capacities, even as Trump was announcing that the danger has passed. There is no record of the North Koreans telling the truth about their strategic weapons, which they regard as guaranteeing the survival of their regime.
As if that were not enough, the US kicked off its trade war with China today, provoking the anticipated (and permitted under international rules) retaliation. So US exports to China now face more serious barriers, while the price of imports from China to American consumers will rise. Both moves hurt core Trump constituencies: agriculture and manufacturing. The trade war also means that China will not maintain strong sanctions on North Korea.
On the home front, the Administration will fail to meet a court-ordered deadline to reunite migrant children with their parents, as it appears to have no idea which children belong with which parents. Even when it succeeds, it hopes to hold even asylum-seeking parents and children together in prison, not free them pending court hearings (for which most asylum-seekers in fact do appear). To boot, EPA Administrator Pruitt has finally resigned. He faced 15 or so ethics investigations, most due to his use of public office for private gain. That is the textbook definition of corruption, though no doubt he’ll drag out the proceedings and eventually be pardoned.
While Trump addresses adoring crowds that cheer his bravado, the United States is declining rapidly in the world’s estimation, especially among America’s friends. Our European allies are girding themselves for the upcoming NATO summit, where Trump is expected to make it clear he has little regard for them (as he did at the recent G7 meeting). They in turn will do everything they can to maintain the nuclear deal with Iran, straining the Alliance further. Trump has abandoned America’s friends in southern Syria, putting Israel and Jordan at risk. His move of the US embassy to Jerusalem has effectively killed any hope of progress with the Palestinians for the foreseeable future.
Relative American power was bound to decline as other countries prosper and acquire more advanced technology. Trump is accelerating that process by abandoning allies, cozying up to adversaries, weakening America’s moral standing, and damaging America’s exporters as well raising prices for its consumers. The President has visited golf clubs more than 100 times while in office but has not once visited US troops in a war zone. What more evidence do we need that he is not a loyal American?
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Peace picks July 2 – 15
1. Mexican Ambassador Discusses the Evolving U.S.-Mexico Relationship | Tuesday, July 3, 2018 | 11:30 am – 12:30 pm | Hudson Institute | Register Here
On July 3rd, Hudson Institute will host Gerónimo Gutiérrez Fernández, Ambassador of Mexico to the United States, for a discussion about the current state of U.S.-Mexico relations. The conversation will be moderated by Hudson Distinguished Fellow Walter Russell Mead.
The U.S.-Mexico relationship has recently faced new challenges. Immigration enforcement has intensified along the shared border; NAFTA renegotiations have progressed slowly, leading some in the Trump Administration to consider bilateral trade deals as an alternative approach with its North American partners; and new tariffs imposed on Mexican steel and aluminum have triggered retaliatory measures. Yet Mexico has long served as a strong regional trade ally and critical partner in efforts to combat narcotics trafficking. Voters in Mexico’s presidential elections on July 1st will likely be influenced by the rapidly evolving relationship between these two countries.
Gerónimo Gutiérrez Fernandez was named Ambassador of Mexico to the United States on January 13, 2017 by President Enrique Peña Nieto. During a more than 15-year career as a public servant, Ambassador Fernandez has served under four Mexican presidents. Prior to his most recent appointment, he was the Managing Director of the North American Development Bank (NADB).
Speaker:
His Excellency Gerónimo Gutiérrez Fernández, Ambassador of Mexico to the United States
Moderator:
Walter Russell Mead, Distinguished Fellow, Hudson Institute
2. Stabilizing Sino-Indian Security Relations: Managing Strategic Rivalry After Doklam | Tuesday, July 10, 2018 | 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM | Carnegie Institute for International Peace | Register Here
The Doklam standoff between Indian and Chinese troops in the summer of 2017 coincided with an ongoing deterioration in bilateral relations, and accelerated pre-existing military competition. Frank O’Donnell provides a detailed analysis of Indian and Chinese nuclear and conventional ground force posturing, and illustrates darkening rival perceptions of these actions and their underlying strategic intentions. Join Carnegie for a discussion with O’Donnell on his new paper, Stabilizing Sino-Indian Security Relations, which proposes new measures to limit the recurrence of future Doklam-like episodes and their inherent risk of escalation. Copies of the paper will be available.
Speakers:
Sameer Lalwani: senior associate and co-director of the South Asia program at the Stimson Center.
Tanvi Madan: director of the India Project and fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution.
Frank O’Donnell: Stanton junior faculty fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, and a nonresident fellow in the South Asia program at the Stimson Center.
George Perkovich: Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini chair and vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
3. Senator Jeff Merkley on Violence and Humanitarian Response in Africa | Wednesday, July 11, 2018 | 9:00 am – 10:00 am | US Institute of Peace | Register Here
Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) recently returned from a five-country visit to Somalia, South Sudan, Djibouti, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to assess the region’s humanitarian crises while seeking to better understand their root causes. He held over 35 meetings with civil society, refugees living in camps, aid workers, government officials, and U.N. peacekeepers. During his visit, it became clear to Senator Merkley that U.S. diplomatic leadership, development aid, and humanitarian response are critical to addressing the root causes of conflict, climate change and corruption.
Senator Merkley will speak about Congress’ priorities on humanitarian- and conflict-related issues in Africa.
Speaker:
Senator Jeff Merkley, US Senator from Oregon, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Multilateral International Development, Multilateral Institutions, and International Economic, Energy, and Environmental Policy.
Moderator:
Nancy Lindborg, President, U.S. Institute of Peace.
4. Rethinking globalization: How do we rebuild support? | Wednesday, July 11, 2018 | 10:00 am – 11:30 am | American Enterprise Institute | Register Here
The Trump administration’s America First approach to economic policy has brought into stark relief the declining support among a growing number of Americans for what has come to be called “globalization.” But anti-globalization sentiment in the United States has broader support than the Trump base alone and reflects deeper social and economic drivers that policymakers have failed to address over time. Increasingly, Americans wonder what is in “globalization” for them. In today’s hyper-divisive environment, how can policymakers cut through the fractious political discourse and improve our understanding of the impact of an increasingly interconnected world on the American people?
Join AEI and the Brookings Institution for the launch of “Reconceptualizing Globalization,” a joint project to address globalization, anti-globalization, and the importance of engagement for all Americans.
Agenda:
9:45 am – Registration
10:00 am – Discussion
Participants:
Jared Bernstein, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Daniel W. Drezner, Tufts University
Stephen J. Hadley, RiceHadleyGates
Merit Janow, Columbia University
Moderators:
Joshua Meltzer, Brookings Institution
Neena Shenai, AEI
11:10 am – Q&A
11:30 am – Adjournment
5. War or Deal? The Impact of Trade on the East Asian Economies | Thursday, July 12, 2018 | 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm | Stimson Center | Register Here
Whether a trade war or trade deal, U.S.-China trade disputes are guaranteed to have a spillover effect on the East Asian regional economies. The Trump administration’s recent escalation of tariffs on Chinese goods – with immediate reciprocation from Beijing – is already rippling through the global economy, but U.S. allies and partners in East Asia could be among the hardest hit. Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea have significant exposure to Chinese production, both as importers and exporters in the regional value chain. How does the ongoing trade war – or potential deals in the future – impact the interests of Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea? Join us for a panel discussion with Dr. Liu Shih-Chung, Vice Chairman at the Taiwan External Trade Development Council, Troy Stangarone, Senior Director at the Korea Economic Institute of America, Matthew Goodman, Senior Vice President at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (invited), and Yun Sun, Co-Director of the East Asia Program at Stimson (moderator). A light lunch will be served.
6. Beheading Dragons: Streamlining China’s Environmental Governance | Thursday, July 12, 2018 | 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm | The Wilson Center | Register Here
In March, China’s National People’s Congress passed sweeping reforms to streamline environmental governance in order to more rapidly mitigate China’s crushing air, water, and soil pollution. Natural resource and pollution regulation have long been fragmented and managed by overlapping bureaucracies in China, leading to infighting and buck passing. The Chinese idiom “nine dragons rule the waters” (jiu long zhi shui) aptly captures how nine different government agencies have competed to regulate water. Under today’s reforms, China’s lead environmental watchdog—newly renamed Ministry of Ecological Environment (MEE)—will share water regulation with the Ministry of Water Resources, decreasing nine dragons to two. Another major dragon-slaying reform was to grant most regulatory power over climate change to MEE, a move that will require this newly reconfigured agency to become significantly more powerful than its earlier incarnation.
On July 12, CEF has invited three speakers to unpack the drivers and impacts of this major reform in China. Liu Zhuoshi (Environmental Law Institute) will detail how legal and regulatory authorities around pollution and climate issues are changing. He will also reflect on hurdles Chinese government faces to expand these reforms at the subnational level. Hu Tao (WWF – U.S.) will explore how the new MEE could act more holistically to manage complex pollution issues, like a better coordination on the joint management of air pollution and carbon emission regulations. Liu Shuang (Energy Foundation China) will reflect on the implication of China’s recent governance reforms on efforts to create a national carbon emissions trading systems and what other policies and institutional changes are needed to make it succeed.
Speakers:
Zhuoshi Liu, Staff Attorney at Environmental Law Institute.
Tao Hu, Director of the China program at World Wildlife Fund – US.
Shuang Liu, Director of the Low Carbon Economic Growth Program at Energy Foundation China.
Moderator:
Jennifer L. Turner, Director, China Environment Forum & Manager, Global Choke Point Initiative.
RSS - Posts
