Tag: Trade
Landslide is the only solution
Bob Woodward’s confirmation that President Trump lied about the seriousness of Covid19 is no surprise. Anyone with a functioning brain knows that by now. But getting the admission on tape, along with the fact that the source of some of the information on contagiousness of the virus was Chinese President Xi, was a journalistic coup. It would have been even more so had Woodward published it earlier, but he claims he wanted to save it for his book because that afforded him the longer form to provide fuller context. It also of course helps him market his product.
In a rational world, Woodward’s revelation would end Trump’s ability to market himself. His “playing down” the virus cost more something like 150,000 lives, so far. Shutdowns, masks and social distancing earlier and more consistently would have saved about that many. People are still dying as a result of Trump’s neglect of the most important Presidential responsibility: to protect Americans. This appalling dereliction of duty has had real world consequences.
It is hard for me to imagine how anyone could vote for a President who did such a thing. His achievements are easy to list: appointing supposedly conservative but too often unqualified judges, a massive tax cut for the rich, and validation of white nationalism as a political force in the United States. His failures, in addition to his mendacious response to Covid19, take longer:
- Inability to cope with social justice protests in a productive way and encouragement of violence and threats of violence against peaceful protesters.
- A collapsed economy that even before the epidemic was growing no faster than in President Obama’s last three years.
- A ballooning budget deficit, again even before the epidemic hit.
- Unfounded attacks on the right to vote.
- Repeated efforts to deprive millions of Americans of the health insurance they obtained from Obamacare, without providing an alternative.
- Failure in the trade war with China, which has cost the US government many billions in agricultural and other subsidies to offset the export losses due to tariffs.
- Accelerated Iranian progress towards nuclear weapons, entirely due to Trump’s withdrawal of the US from the nuclear deal.
- North Korean refusal to give up their nuclear weapons, despite offers of massive economic assistance.
- Consolidation of President Maduro’s power in Venezuela.
Trump wants you to think that withdrawal of a few thousand troops from Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the Israel/UAE deal were big achievements. Far from it: the US still has more troops in the greater Middle East than before he took office. The UAE/Israel deal only contributes to peace between two countries who have never been at war and have precious little reason to fight. It makes an Israel/Palestine deal more difficult, not less.
Even before the latest headlines, Jeffrey Goldberg had assembled the evidence of Trump’s disdain for the American military. That, too, was well-known to anyone paying attention to Trump’s mythical bonespurs and his public denunciation of John McCain, but the things Trump has said in private about the troops being “losers” and “suckers” compounded what some might have hoped to dismiss as misdemeanors into felonies. Polling of America’s troops suggests that they will be voting against a Republican for the first time in a long while.
The right thing for Trump to do now is resign and allow Pence to take over, hoping that would improve Republican prospects in the November 3 election. He could then re-assume the office and would be hard to fault for doing so, as the voice of the people would have been heard. He won’t do that, because he can’t afford to lose this election or even leave office for a few months. Both his finances and his freedom are at risk, because the Russians won’t continue anteing up and state Attorneys General will be indicting him on felony charges. So instead he will stay on the ballot and try to de-legitimize the election results, especially if they show him winning on election night but losing due to mail-in ballots a couple of days later.
The only way of preventing that is a landslide in favor of Biden, starting on election night. Even then, Trump may try to prevent Biden from getting a majority in the Electoral College by convincing Republican governors to withhold communication of their electoral votes. But a clear and unequivocal electoral vote victory, in addition to Biden’s all but certain popular vote margin, would do a great deal to save America from a chaotic outcome.
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Stevenson’s army, August 17
– Speaker Pelosi is calling the House back from recess to vote to “save the Postal Service.” This is mostly for show, of course, because the House has already passed, in May, the HEROES Act, with $25 Billion more for USPS. The Senate has never taken up the House bill.
– SecDef Esper ordered DOD planners to cut $2.2 billion in defense health care costs.
– Joint Doctrine planners envision a future battlefield with no lines on the map.
– Planned trade review talks with China were cancelled.
– Putin is ready to help Belarus.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to 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, July 12
– NYT says China is signing deals with Iran for trade and military cooperation.
– Trump discloses covert cyber attack on Russia — see WaPo and NYT followup.
-Some minor but useful congressional reforms listed.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to 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, May 9
– The USTR has released its annual trade policy report, with lots of discussion of Chinese practices. Nothing comparable from Peter Navarro, who is supposed to be busy getting companies to produce medical supplies.
– The president himself doesn’t know whether to call his Chinese trade deal a success or failure.
– To avoid border wall fights, Senate Appropriations will delay DHS, Veterans and MilCon bills until the expected big political fight in the fall — but will go ahead with other spending bills.
– Maybe South Korea declared victory too early.
– As most of you know, I have high regard for my former boss, Joe Biden. But I was appalled to read of the campaign’s amateurish efforts to produce a virtual rally.
– And if you want to contrast the smart Trump juggernaut with the oh too 20th century Biden approach, read this.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to 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, March 19
-Senators are working to craft a huge $1-2 Trillion package of individual and company relief. Republicans are willing to give cash to people; Democrats are willing to give companies money, though with strings. An unnamed GOP Senator suggested calling the money “freedom payments” rather than “bailouts.” The administration’s $1 trillion plan is only the starting point.
– There is infighting, however, including trade hawk Peter Navarro’s ideas for using the crisis to reduce reliance on foreign medical suppliers.
– There’s also confusion in the coronavirus fight because Jared Kushner is running a “shadow task force” on the problem.
–Mitre Corp. has a good paper listing how to respond to the pandemic.
– 3 doctors forecast a roller coaster of peaks and troughs of extreme social distancing for another 18 months or more.
– Should the US military do more? SAIS prof Mark Cancian suggests ways. Charlie Dunlap [MGEN, USAF , retired] says no.
-Kurt Campbell says China is moving into global leadership as a result of the pandemic. [NYT has a similar article.]
– Former GOP official Bob Zoellick blames Trump tariffs for some medical shortages. And USTR made some limited cutbacks there.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, 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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Retreat from Afghanistan
The United States has decided to retreat from Afghanistan, promising a complete withdrawal within 14 months if the Taliban keep their commitments, including to not allowing international terrorists to operate from territory they control. The agreement was signed Saturday in Doha.
This is a necessary, even if less than glorious, end to US participation in a war that has gone on far too long. Eighteen years after toppling the Taliban regime in the aftermath of 9/11, the diminishing returns are insufficient to keep the US committed, especially in an election year. America and its NATO allies are leaving the field to the Afghan government and its opponents, which will now be expected to negotiate a political settlement, after a major prisoner exchange.
Everything now depends on the intra-Afghan political settlement. Negotiations on this agreement are supposed to start on March 10. Will it protect the human rights many Afghans have come to enjoy? Will women be forced out of politics and girls out of school? Will minorities suffer as they did under the previous Taliban regime? Will the margins of freedom of speech and religion shrink? Will politics continue in the semi-democratic direction they have taken for two decades, or will a religious autocracy be restored, especially in the countryside from which it has never entirely disappeared.
There can be no doubting President Ashraf Ghani’s commitment to maintaining what he can of liberal, modern Afghanistan. But he will need to compromise with a potent insurgency that backs Taliban political demands. Few think the Taliban can overrun or seize Kabul, but they can certainly displace the Afghan security forces in many provinces and bring enormous pressure to bear on the capital once the Americans are gone. After the Soviets left, their guy lasted three years in power, but he eventually ended up tortured and hung from a “traffic control box.” I imagine Ghani, who literally wrote the book (or at least a very good book) on statebuilding, will not wait around for that to happen.
Are all the Americans really leaving? I doubt it. I suspect Washington has insisted on some remaining, covert presence for counter-terrorism forces. The Taliban, though religious extremists like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, unlike them do not have ambitions beyond Afghanistan. All three jihadist forces compete for the same political space inside Afghanistan, so it is not completely unreasonable to think the Taliban might secretly welcome the Americans doing their dirty work for them by killing their jihadi competitors.
Only time will tell whether the peace agreement with the Taliban will hold and some sort of political settlement among the Afghans will emerge. The Taliban have good reason to keep the peace during the American withdrawal, which is supposed to slow if they don’t. But they have little incentive to compromise with Ghani once the Americans are gone, unless the Afghan security forces do much better in fighting them than has so far been the case. US and UN sanctions on the Taliban are supposed to come off early in the process.
With this agreement, President Trump gets some bragging rights on foreign policy that he has lacked. Nothing else he has tried has worked: there is no nuclear or missile agreement with North Korea, Iran is not returning to the negotiating table despite “maximum pressure,” Venezuela is still in the hands of President Maduro, only Israel has welcomed the Middle East “deal of the century,” and the trade war with China has failed to produce progress on the main issues, even if a mutual but partial stand-down of tariffs has attenuated some of its worst impacts on Trump’s farming supporters. Trump needs this Afghanistan agreement more than the Taliban and gave up a lot to get it.
For the sake of the Afghans, let’s hope it holds.
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