Tag: Russia
Peace picks September 18-22
- A Conversation With UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein | Monday, September 18 | 10:00 – 11:00 am | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | Register Here | Join the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace for the launch of the Morton and Sheppie Abramowitz Lecture featuring UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein. Carnegie President William J. Burns will join the high commissioner for a conversation on the global state of human rights.
- Weighing Bad Options: Past Diplomacy With North Korea and Alliance Options Today | Monday, September 18 | 2:00 – 3:30 pm | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | Register Here | The Trump administration and its allies are trying to apply maximum pressure on North Korea so that it will accept diplomatic talks predicated on its eventual denuclearization. It has been over a decade since such active hard and soft diplomatic measures have been applied to this policy challenge, even as regional circumstances have changed dramatically. Two veteran diplomats deeply involved with the last set of intense negotiations with North Korea will discuss their experiences and consider options in light of today’s dynamics and will be joined by both U.S. and Japanese experts. Carnegie’s Jim Schoff will moderate. Panelists include Christopher Hill of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at The University of Denver, Mitoji Yabunaka of Ritsumeikan University and Osaka University, Keiji Nakatsuji of Ritsumeikan University, and Douglas H. Paal and James L. Schoff of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. This event is co-sponsored by the U.S.-Japan Research Institute.
- The Roller Coaster of Turkey-Russia Relations | Tuesday, September 19 | 3:00 – 4:30 pm | Brookings Institution | Register Here | The history of Turkish-Russian relations is replete with sudden outbursts of anger and unexpected rapprochements. Even in just the past couple of years, Moscow and Ankara swung from conflict to reconciliation with startling speed. Fewer than six months after Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet near Syria in November 2015, the two countries concluded deals on a gas pipeline and a nuclear plant. Following the assassination of the Russian ambassador in Ankara in December 2016, they collaborated on a framework to stop the fighting in Syria. Moving forward, fluctuations will likely continue to characterize this ever-uncertain relationship. In the latest Turkey Project Policy Paper, “An ambiguous partnership: The serpentine trajectory of Turkish-Russian relations in the era of Erdoğan and Putin,” Pavel K. Baev and Kemal Kirişci explore the main areas of interaction between Ankara and Moscow. They discuss the implications of these shifting dynamics on Turkey’s relations with its trans-Atlantic allies, particularly the United States and the European Union. On September 19, 2017, the Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE) will host a panel discussion on the conclusions from this latest Turkey Project Policy Paper. The authors Baev and Kirişci will be joined by Evren Balta, Fulbright visiting scholar at New York University, and Naz Durakoğlu, senior policy advisor to Senator Jeanne Shaheen at the U.S. Senate. The discussion will be moderated by Torrey Taussig, post-doctoral research fellow at Brookings.
- Saudi Arabia Looks Forward: Vision 2030 and Mohammed Bin Salman | Wednesday, September 20 | 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm | Brookings Institution | Register Here | In a new paper titled “Saudi Arabia in Transition,” Karen Elliott House, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who has visited Saudi Arabia for nearly 40 years and a current senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, analyzes the progress the Saudis have made and the challenges they face in implementing Vision 2030 amidst the recent changes in leadership. On September 20, the Brookings Intelligence project will host Elliott House for a discussion on her findings, the Trump administration’s Saudi Arabia policy, and Iran’s activities in the region. Bruce Riedel, director of the Intelligence Project and a senior fellow, will moderate the discussion. Following their remarks, Elliott House and Riedel will take questions from the audience.
- Restoring Stability in a Turbulent Middle East: A Perspective from the League of Arab States | Friday, September 22 | 3:30 pm | Center on Foreign Relations | Register Here | Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit discusses the state of affairs in the Middle East, including the conflicts in Syria, Libya, and Yemen, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, countering the threat of terrorism in the region, the impact of the recent intra-gulf crisis, and how the Arab League operates within this complex climate.
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Bluster/distract/cave won’t work
Donald Trump’s much-vaunted negotiating skills have produced virtually nothing in the past eight months of his singularly unproductive presidency. What do we know about his approach to negotiating? How is it working?
Trump’s first stage is bluster: locked and loaded, fire and fury. He threatens the worst possible outcome for his opponent, ignoring the implications for himself and his country. He has done this not only with North Korea, but also with the repeal of Obamacare (watch out! it’s collapsing!) and the budget ceiling (I’ll close down the government unless I get my wall!). Not to mention the nuclear deal with Iran (the worst deal ever!). This bluster attracts a lot of media attention, but it ignores what is crucial in negotiation: your own alternative to a negotiated agreement.
Then Trump quickly tacks in a different direction, before it is apparent that bluster isn’t working. Anything else will do, so long as it distracts from the main item he has put on the agenda. A hurricane will serve the purpose, as will a campaign trip to North Dakota or some other domestic political distraction like the competence of Speaker Ryan or Senate majority leader McConnell. The more bizarre the distraction, the better, since its purpose is to make the original issue evaporate, a bit like the magician’s use of distraction to make a rabbit disappear.
Then Trump caves on the original issue. He did this yesterday at the UN Security Council, accepting a resolution that falls far short of his announced goal of ending trade with North Korea, but only after taking advantage of the distraction caused by Hurricane Irma.
He is getting ready to do something similar with the Iran nuclear deal: he may claim that Iran is not complying (bluster) and throw the issue to the Congress (distraction), but he won’t withdraw from the deal (that’s the caving) because he knows by now it is better than no deal (that’s what the Israelis and Saudis are telling him). Instead, he’ll do something I think is quite sensible: focus on Iranian (mis)behavior in the Middle East, which is a real and growing problem.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) got this treatment. Trump feinted about withdrawal, then allowed months of distractions and ended up with a renegotiation the Canadians and Mexicans were happy to engage in, because they’ve got complaints about the current decades-old agreement as well. He did not do this with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), from which he simply withdrew. But that story may not be over yet. I suspect the US will eventually find its way back in, if the countries of the region want to continue the process.
There are of course things Trump just doesn’t like, so the bluster is real. The climate change treaty is one of those, though the recent storms seem to be making some Republicans think maybe we need to do something to reduce their likelihood, even if they don’t agree on human causation. I won’t be surprised if Trump, who once supported action on climate change as a businessman, changes his mind as well.
How is bluster/distract/cave working? Well enough domestically for Trump to retain his core support. But internationally it is a disaster. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on you, is the general rule in international affairs. Watch the Russians, who are reacting vigorously against a president they once thought they owned. The Chinese aren’t likely to be friendly about it either. Trump is going to find himself where he did in the real estate business: a creditor only third tier institutions and individuals will do business with. It is no accident that he gets praise from people whose governance is notoriously corrupt.
Bluster/distract/cave won’t work on serious people, who learn quickly that all they really need to do is wait Trump out, so long as they have a decent alternative to a negotiated agreement.
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Peace picks September 11 – 15
- Sixteen Years After 9/11: Assessing the Terrorist Threat | Monday, September 11 | 12:15 pm – 1:45 pm | New America | Register Here | Sixteen years have passed since the attacks of 9/11, and three presidents have now wrestled with calibrating an effective American response to the threat of jihadist terrorism. Where does the terrorist threat stand today? How effective has the Trump administration been in confronting the threat? What will the threat look like tomorrow? To address these questions, New America welcomes Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and CEO of Valens Global, a private firm focused on the challenge posed by violent non-state actors; Joshua Geltzer, a fellow in New America’s International Security program, who served from 2015 to 2017 as senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council staff, having served previously as deputy legal advisor to the National Security Council and as counsel to the assistant attorney general for national security at the Department of Justice; and Nadia Oweidat, a Middle East fellow at New America, who holds a D.Phil. in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford, and who is currently working on a book on social media and positive change among Arabic speakers.
- Unclear Physics: Why Iraq and Libya Failed to Build Nuclear Weapons | Wednesday, September 13 | 3:30 – 5:00 pm | Wilson Center | Register Here | Many authoritarian leaders want nuclear weapons, but few manage to acquire them. Autocrats seeking nuclear weapons fail in different ways and to varying degrees—Iraq almost managed it; Libya did not come close. In this seminar, Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer compares the two failed nuclear weapons programs, arguing that state capacity played a crucial role in the trajectory and outcomes of both projects. This analysis is based on a rich set of new primary sources, collected during years of research in archives, fieldwork across the Middle East, and interviews with scientists and decision makers from both states. The analysis reveals contemporary perspectives from scientists and regime officials on the opportunities and challenges facing each project. Many of the findings challenge the conventional wisdom about clandestine weapons programs in closed authoritarian states, particularly the level of oversight and control by regime officials, and offers novel arguments about their prospects of success or failure.
- America’s Role in the World – Global Threats, Global Perspectives | Thursday, September 14 | 5:00 pm | Atlantic Council | Register Here | The day’s discussion will explore the results of Pew Research Center’s survey, which focused on global perspectives on the greatest risks facing the world today, from national security concerns to broader global issues such as climate change, and the economy, and included thirty-eight countries. Does the existential threat of ISIS affect people outside of the Middle East and Europe? Where are worries of the influence of the United States, Russia, or China most acute? Following a short presentation of the report, the panelists will evaluate the circumstances and tenuous relationships that may account for the findings. The conversation will feature Jacob Poushter of the Pew Research Center, Ellen Laipson of the Stimson Center, David Anderson of Zurich North America, and Mathew Burrows of the Atlantic Council. The panel will be moderated by Kate Brannen, the Deputy Managing Editor at Just Security.
- Pushback: Exposing and Countering Iran | Thursday, September 14 | 12:00 pm | Atlantic Council | Register Here | Much is said about Iran’s “destabilizing activities” throughout the Middle East, but often without fully describing the activities, tools, and methods Iran uses to wield influence in neighboring states. What do we really know about Iran’s activities in the region? What are the primary factors driving Iran’s foreign policy? These are the questions the Atlantic Council seeks to answer through a new project entitled Pushback: Exposing and Countering Iran. This series examines the drivers, prospects, and constraints underpinning Iran’s efforts to undermine US policy in the Middle East and restructure the regional order to its liking. Drawing on new digital forensic evidence and expert analysis, this effort offers strategic and policy recommendations to address the growing challenge Iran poses to stability in the Middle East. Center for Strategic and International Studies senior fellow and deputy director Melissa Dalton, Atlantic Council nonresident fellow Elisabeth Kendall, Conflict Armament Research’s Tim Michetti, and Shia militia group researcher Phillip Smyth will discuss Iran’s regional tactics, while Middle East Institute director and senior fellow Bilal Y. Saab, American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Ken Pollack, Johns Hopkins SAIS’s Mara Karlin, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Arabian Peninsula Affairs Susan Ziadeh, and New York Times Washington correspondent David Sanger, will discuss the United States’ strategic options for countering Iran’s influence.
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Incoherence is poison
The United States is objectively no less powerful than it was seven months ago. Its military forces, its economy, even its political system are virtually unchanged in that short period. Only the presidency has changed hands, with all that entails in terms of personnel and policy.
But American capacity to effect the changes Washington wants to see in the world are diminished: it is unable to rally support from China and Russia for strict sanctions on North Korea, it has made no progress in countering Russian aggression in Ukraine (not to mention Moldova and Georgia), the squabble among Gulf countries has limited its ability to push back against expanded Iranian presence and influence in the region, and neither Palestinians nor Israelis are inclined to pay the Americans much mind. Adversaries are defiant, allies are nervous, and those in between are hedging.
This weakness is largely the result of incoherence. It is a rare day that President Trump, Secretaries Mattis and Tillerson, National Security Adviser McMaster, and UN Ambassador Haley are even close to being tuned to the same wave length. Far more often they each go their own way, pushing or denying military options, pursuing or dropping diplomatic initiatives, befriending or criticizing dictators.
Why they say what they do is rarely clear, and when clear often illogical. Why refuse to certify that Iran is complying with a nuclear deal that everyone else in the world (including the professionals who staff the State and Defense Departments as well as the US intelligence agencies) says it is complying with? Is that because there is some unwritten “spirit” of the agreement? Or is it just to have an excuse to go to war? Or maybe it’s just a way of fulfilling an election campaign pledge but shedding responsibility for real action to the Congress, as with the elimination of DACA (Delayed Action for Childhood Arrivals)? No one knows.
Worse: it has become unknowable. The President disdains logic as much as he does facts. What is the logic of threatening the free trade agreement with South Korea when he needs Seoul on board for whatever he wants to do about North Korea? He reacts, based on instinct, and often in different ways on different days, or even different hours. There is really nothing wrong with instinct, or to put it more accurately with heuristics, rules of thumb based on experience. We all use them, including the wisest among us, despite their well-documented distortions. The trouble is the President has no relevant experience. Nor has he read or studied enough to substitute for his inexperience.
This matters as much in politics as it does in foreign policy. Senator McConnell and Speaker Ryan have now been sandbagged (in governmentese that means being surprised by an unexpected and often gratuitous move) more than once by this President. Yesterday, he cut a deal with the Democrats on the budget and hurricane relief that the Republican leadership had publicly stated they would not accept. McConnell and Ryan have thus far not responded in kind. I wouldn’t expect that to last. What goes around comes around.
The one subject on which Washington has reached some limited degree of coherence is, ironically, Russia. Congress reacted to the President’s illogical and seemingly unmotivated affection for Vladimir Putin with sanctions that are coherent and difficult to remove. But that limited coherence of course amplifies the greater incoherence. We still have a president hankering for improved relations with Russia even as the State Department closes down its consulate in San Francisco and orders its diplomats out of the US, in retaliation for a draconian cut Putin ordered in staffing of the US embassy in Moscow.
We’ve also got a President who tells DACA kids how much he loves them and will do something ill-defined for them if Congress doesn’t, while he lets an Attorney General who openly advocates limiting immigration on racial and religious grounds announce that DACA is kaput. Not to mention the presidential pardon for a sheriff who physically abused immigrants, often without regard to whether they were documented or not.
America will be weaker still if Jeff Sessions gets his way and begins to deport those 800,000 productive non-citizens who have spent most of their lives, and careers, in the US. Incoherence is not just dissonance. It will sap America’s strength and render a country founded on admirable principles, but unable to implement them effectively, great only in retrospect. Incoherence is poison. We need to get it out of our system.
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Tweeter-in-chief meets defiance
Locked and loaded for fire and fury, President Trump now confronts a defiant Kim Jong-un, who has conducted a big (whether thermonuclear is not yet clear) nuclear test, following quickly on a successful missile launch over Japan. Trump had promised none of this would happen. Now that it has, what are his options?
- A conventional military attack, presumably targeting North Korea’s missile and nuclear facilities. It won’t destroy them all (they are increasingly mobile and hard to find), but it could do some serious damage. The trouble is Pyongyang is likely to respond with a devastating conventional military attack on Seoul. That could escalate quickly to a land war or nuclear exchange. That’s not where we should want to go.
- Tightening sanctions. Trump has talked of preventing all trade with North Korea. He hasn’t got anything like the Chinese, Russian and other backing required for that. Unilateral sanctions tightening is near the limit of what can be achieved.
- Cyber attacks. I’d be surprised if we haven’t already exhausted their potential. The North Koreans, adept at the cyber game, will retaliate. We’d better be sure we are not more vulnerable than they are. Escalation dominance is vital if you are going to escalate.
- More bluster, including UN Security Council denunciation. Trump settled for this last time around. He likely will again. It obviously makes little difference to the North Koreans, who argue they are within their rights, since they have withdrawn from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to develop nuclear weapons as well as missiles of any range they think necessary to defend themselves. The UNSC has no means to enforce its decisions to the contrary.
- Negotiation. Trump once upon a time suggested he would want to negotiate with Kim Jong-un, presumably offering a formal end to the Korean War (until now there has just been an armistice) and diplomatic relations as well as other guarantees that we would not seek an end the North Korean regime, in exchange for some sort of nuclear and missile restraint on Pyongyang’s part. But it is hard to see why Pyongyang would sign on to that rather than just continue its so far successful nuclear and missile programs until they can credibly threaten the US?
Where does that leave us? Nowhere good.
It essentially means we are going to need to learn to live with North Korea as a nuclear-armed power, one bent on decoupling the US from its allies in Northeast Asia by threatening nuclear attack on the American homeland. The North Korean long-range, potentially nuclear, missiles raise the difficult question of whether the US will risk Los Angeles to save Tokyo or Seoul.
It will be vital in that scenario to maintain as close an alliance as possible with South Korea and Japan, which need to be confident of US support if they are to continue to refrain from developing nuclear weapons of their own. Certainly Trump’s tweeted threat to withdraw from the US/South Korea free trade agreement is the worst possible kind of thing to contemplate, as it would undermine South Korean (and Japanese) confidence in the US as a reliable ally and give them real reasons to think about arming themselves with nuclear weapons.
Trump during his campaign suggested he would be all right with that. He should by now understand how damaging to US interests a nuclear arms race in Northeast Asia could be. He should also be having second thoughts about tearing up the Iran nuclear deal, which has so far prevented a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
But second thoughts, or even first thoughts, are not his strong point. His bluster has already contributed to Kim Jong-un’s successful defiance. How many more stupid tweets before Trump precipitates a crisis that irreversibly damages US interests?
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Trump’s Moscow tower
This was the big deal Trump was pursuing, right up to his becoming a serious candidate for president. His staff thought it would help him get elected. But the deal didn’t go through, and Putin supported Trump’s election anyway.
How do we square that circle?
First, as Julia Ioffe repeatedly notes, it is clear that Putin and Co. did not look favorably on Trump doing business in Russia. Trump tried repeatedly over many years, without success. My guess is that the Russians, who did deals with inside Russia with lots of major international hotel chains, viewed Trump as a two-bit player. They, after all, knew how shaky his finances were, because Russian investors had been propping him up for the better part of two decades. The Russians had no reason to treat a small timer like Trump who likely laundered money for them in the same league with Ritz-Carlton.
So when his minions went to Moscow offering Trump Tower, Putin and Co. had no reason to buy the idea, least of all after oil prices dropped in 2014. But the other part of the deal was attractive: help Trump in the election campaign, make a laughing-stock of the US, and shake peoples’ confidence in the democratic system worldwide. It worked far better than anyone in Moscow likely imagined, but luck is always an important part of diplomacy and politics.
Trump meanwhile could not say anything bad about Putin, even though his Moscow tower deal was scuppered, because doing so would endanger the hot Russian money flowing into his real estate projects. That is true to this day. Even now that he has been caught prevaricating about his company’s and campaign’s relationships with the Russians, and even as president, Trump doesn’t dare put at risk his business empire. The Russians can do without him. He still can’t do without the Russians.
This is a sad and sordid tale. Some Republicans, and some in his own Administration, have indicated their doubts about Trump: whether he represents or even understands American values, whether he knows how to be president, and whether he is able and willing to separate his personal interests from those of the US government. But those are still isolated, even if weighty, voices. The polling, if it can be trusted, suggests Trump’s 30-40% base is sticking with him, they say no matter what. He is unpopular by historical standards, even within the Republican party, but it hasn’t really mattered, yet.
We’ll see what happens when the Congress returns from its non-recess. Will Senator McConnell pretend he didn’t hear Trump’s resounding criticism? Will Senator McCain continue to blast Trump but do nothing more than his one vote against repeal of Obamacare? How about Senator Flake? Will he buckle? Will Congressman Ryan continue his nascent campaign for the 2020 presidential nomination? Unless the Republican leadership starts to organize against Trump, the odds are he’ll make it to the 2018 election and continue on past because the electoral map is so unfavorable to Democrats.
We can therefore be grateful that Bannon and Gorka are back at the Breitbart zoo and the Trump triumvirate (Generals Kelley, Mattis and McMaster) are starting to steer the ship of state, at least on foreign policy (Tillerson much less so, especially after he threw the President under the bus with his doubts about whether Trump spoke for American values). Far be it from me to approve of a soft military coup, but the Afghanistan decision was at least properly staffed out and analyzed. With North Korea firing missiles over Japan, the generals know as well as anyone the horrifying consequences of war with Pyongyang. They will insist on a deliberative process. The same applies to the Iran nuclear deal.
But Trump, left to his own devices, would not be the first American president to take the country to war in part to extract himself from domestic political difficulties. His loud mouth has already threatened fire and fury from locked and loaded weapons. Bluster is only the first stage of Trump’s approach to foreign policy. Distraction is the next phase.
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