Tag: Ukraine
You get what you vote for
Washington is in a tizzy today because President-elect Trump is naming Exxon Chief Executive Rex Tillerson to be Secretary of State. Former Secretary of State Baker and former Defense Secretary Gates are reputed to be among his advocates. He has a good reputation at Exxon, where he spearheaded negotiations with Russia and resisted sanctions imposed on Moscow after its annexation of Crimea and invasion of southeast Ukraine (Donbas). Much is being made of his supposedly good personal relationship with President Putin, which was presumably a prerequisite of the multi-billion dollar business Tillerson did with state-controlled companies in Russia.
The whining from the Republican side of aisle is loud: Senator McCain and others regard Putin as a butcher because of what he has done in Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere. Democrats are no less exercised. The Russians are currently bombing civilians in Aleppo to smithereens. They have also failed to implement the Minsk 2 agreement in Ukraine, which would require a ceasefire and withdrawal of heavy weapons, as well as eventual reintegration of the region into Ukraine.
Dramatic as the situations in Syria and Ukraine are, the alleged Russian intervention in the US election is overshadowing them for the moment. President-elect Trump not only refuses to take his daily intelligence briefing but also doubts the CIA’s reported conclusion that Moscow’s cyberhacking was intended to get him elected.
Throwing Tillerson into this maelstrom is precisely the kind of provocative and daring move that Trump is famous for and promised during the electoral campaign. While unpredictable on many issues, Trump is absolutely consistent on Russia: no matter what Moscow is doing at home and abroad, the President-elect wants to befriend Putin and make him, if not an ally, at least a partner in key issue around the globe. The irony of course is that this is precisely what Hillary Clinton attempted as Secretary of State. Her reset with Moscow failed.
Trump and Tillerson seem far more willing to meet Putin three-quarters of the way. Trump has indicated he is prepared unilaterally to abandon support for the Syrian opposition, which President Obama has kept at lukewarm even as the Russians and Iranians up the ante by intervening directly on behalf of Bashar al Assad. My guess is Trump would also be willing to accept Russian annexation of Crimea. He hasn’t really said anything on that subject, except to claim it wouldn’t have been permitted on his watch. But the Russian ethnonationalist claim to Crimea will resonate with the Steve Bannon faction surrounding Trump.
The arguments against surrendering Crimea to Russia are based on international norms that Trump has shown little or no interest in. Tillerson won’t be much interested either. Unlike General Mattis, who as Defense Secretary can be expected to put the brakes on Trump’s worst instincts, Tillerson at State will more likely press Trump to meet the expectations his campaign created for closer relations with Putin’s Russia, including dropping sanctions.
The implications are vast. The NATO allies already doubt that Trump will fulfill America’s obligations. Acceptance of the annexation of Crimea would pull the rug out from under the Article 5 collective defense guarantee, even though it does not of course apply to Ukraine. Unraveling NATO will lead quickly and inexorably to a world in which the norm against taking territory by force is trashed.
Americans may not have realized it, but this is what they voted for. Tillerson may have been a fine Exxon CEO, but his confirmation hearings should do a deep dive into his views on Crimea, Donbas, Syria, and Putin.
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Trump’s bromance
Of Trump’s many vices, his bromance with Putin is arguably the worst, at least from a foreign policy perspective. Putin has not only restored autocracy to Russia, he has invaded Ukraine, annexed Crimea, and intervened ferociously against the non-extremist opposition in Syria, not to mention his sponsorship of a foiled coup in Montenegro, his threats to Baltic and Scandinavian states, and his continued occupation of Transnistria, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia. Let’s not forget his exploitation of Wikileaks to intervene in the US election on Trump’s behalf.
Trump’s response so far has been to propose we make common cause with Putin, in particular against ISIS in Syria. The President-elect refuses to acknowledge Russian hacking, despite what the firm consensus of American intelligence agencies, whose briefings he has been refusing to listen to. He now seems intent on appointing as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon and one of Putin’s favorite Americans. He will unquestionably want to lift sanctions on Moscow. John Bolton, a skeptic of Russia, is apparently slated for the often powerless number 2 job, where he will be subordinate to Tillerson’s russophilia.
Trump seems blissfully unaware of Russia’s decline, which is apparent in many different dimensions. Its economy and government revenue are largely dependent on hydrocarbons, whose price collapse in 2014/15 left it in a severe recession. Its private sector is shrinking. Its large companies are increasingly controlled by Moscow. Its health and life expectancy are declining. Its once-vaunted athletes have been reduced to massive, state-sponsored doping. Only its military, nurtured with big doses of funding, appears in good shape, but that is true only for its elite forces.
So why would the president-elect choose to align himself with Putin? Trump says the Russians are needed to defeat the Islamic State in Syria. The difficulty with that point of view is that Russia has never expended much ordnance against the Islamic State but has instead concentrated its fire on non-jihadi fighters, whose destruction has strengthened rather than weakened the extremists. The main Islamic State stronghold in Syria today is Raqqa, which the Russian air force has only occasionally targeted.
I think it far more likely that Trump views Putin as an effective and admirable leader, one who does the things the president-elect would like to do: control the media, enforce draconian law and order, shut down dissent, vaunt nationalist pride, crack down on Muslims, and run a foreign policy committed exclusively to enhancing his own country’s gains without regard to any international norms or multilateral constraints. The bromance really is a bromance, at least on Trump’s part.
This spells peril, not only for the Syrian opposition but also for all those whose interests the US has supported during the past 10 years or so of Russian aggression. Ukraine can kiss Crimea good-bye. Trump is unlikely even to support reintegration of Donbas. The Baltics, Finland and Sweden, Montenegro, and others in Putin’s crosshairs are going to find little solace in Washington. At best, Trump will give them a hand if they pay for it.
Trump’s admiration for Putin will embolden the latter and whet his appetite for more successes with which to stave off the inevitable realization among the Russian people that they have been driven down a cul-de-sac. Putin is running a Ponzi scheme of foreign policy aggression, with each “success” enabling the next.
If Trump wants to try to do business with Putin, the deals he strikes should be judged on the transactional basis the President-elect prefers with everyone else: what does he get in exchange or what he gives? If he gets a serious political transition away from Bashar al Assad in Syria, full implementation of the Minsk II agreement in Ukraine, and an end to harassment of Russia’s neighbors, I’ll be the first to applaud. Until then, I’ll sit on my hands.
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Let’s enjoy this election evening!
I’m doing a press briefing on the implications of the American election for foreign policy in a few hours. Here are the speaking notes I’ve prepared for myself:
- It is a pleasure to be with you tonight, as America concludes an ugly election campaign and decides on its 45th president.
- I won’t pretend to be neutral: I have supported Hillary Clinton with words, money, and even knocking on doors in West Philadelphia.
- But in these opening remarks, I would like to focus first not on the candidates but rather on the process, which is a complicated one.
- One consequence is that there is little uniformity: as you’ll see tonight, the states will close their polls at different times, starting in just a few minutes at 7 pm with Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Vermont, and Virginia.
- The initial results will likely favor Trump, but swing states North Carolina and Ohio close their polls at 7:30 pm and by 8 pm lots of Clinton states close their polls.
- Key then will be Florida and Pennsylvania, and at 9 pm Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Clinton could be in trouble if she doesn’t win there.
- In the meanwhile, you’ll be getting exit polling from many of the “swing” states, those that might go one way or the other. Exit polls in my view are not terribly reliable: sampling errors can be significant, and in many states a significant percentage of people have already voted.
- Not only are rules and procedures decided by the states, but the vote in each state determines that state’s votes in the electoral college that meets in state capitals on December 19.
- Each state has a number of electoral votes equal to its number of Representatives and Senators. Because each state has two senators, this favors less populous (more Republican) states, but the reliably Democratic District of Columbia, which has no senators, gets three votes as well.
- As a result, an election can be close in the popular vote (polling suggests Trump and Clinton are within 3 or 4 percentage points of each other), but the electoral college difference can be big.
- If Trump were to get fewer than 200 electoral votes (and Clinton the remaining 338 plus), that might be considered a landslide, even if the popular vote is close.
- It is also possible for a candidate to lose the popular vote and win in the electoral college. That happened with George W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000. I went to bed convinced Gore had won.
- By morning, the Florida controversy had erupted and the election was eventually decided in the Supreme Court, which allowed Florida’s determination of the winner to stand and Bush to become President without a popular vote majority.
- The lesson here is don’t go to bed too early tonight. It may be late before the outcome is clear and unequivocal. In the last three elections it was past 11 pm.
- What does it all mean for foreign policy?
- First, I think an uncontested and clear outcome is highly desirable. The world does not need another month of uncertainty about who will be the 45th president.
- Second, there are dramatic differences between Trump, who prides himself on unpredictability, and Clinton, who has a long track record well within the post-911 foreign policy consensus.
- Trump is erratic, inconsistent, and hyperbolic. He wants to put America first, which he has defined not only as ignoring others, blocking immigrants, and doubting America’s alliances but also destroying the existing international trading system and illogically pursuing a bromance with Vladimir Putin.
- Clinton is committed, studious, internationalist, all perhaps to a fault. She once pursued a reset with Putin that failed. She wants to maintain the stability of the international system and restore American authority some think President Obama surrendered in his retrenchment.
- A word or two about what this all means in some important parts of the world.
- In the Middle East and Europe, including the Baltics and Ukraine, Clinton is far more likely to push back on Russian aggressiveness than Trump.
- In Asia, Trump has occasionally talked tough about China’s trade policy and suggested that South Korea and Japan might want to get their own nuclear weapons.
- Clinton would certainly not want that but might also be tough with China on trade. She would likely want to continue to build up American alliances in Asia, including with India and Vietnam.
- Both Clinton and Trump oppose the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), but Clinton would likely want to renegotiate parts of it and proceed while Trump would scrap it entirely.
- Presidents do not always get to decide which issues they focus on. I would expect Moscow and Beijing, and perhaps others, to take an early opportunity to test the new president.
- An incident involving China in the South China Sea? North Korean launch of a missile that could reach the US? A new push by Russian-supported insurgents in Donbas? An incident with Iranian ships or missiles in the Gulf? A massive cyberattack?
- Clinton understands the capabilities and limits of American power, as well as the need for allied support. Trump does not. He mistakes bravado for strength and unpredictability for leverage.
- Most of the world understands this and favors Clinton. Moscow may not be alone in favoring Trump, but it is certainly lonely.
- Those of us who enjoy foreign policy for a living—Republicans as well as Democrats like me—will likewise be almost universally relieved if she, not he, becomes president.
- But the evening is young. Let’s enjoy it with some questions!
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What the election means for the Balkans
I did this interview for Filip Raunic of the Croatian website Telegram about a week ago. They published it today.
Q: The situation in the Balkans, especially Bosnia and Hercegovina with separatist tendencies of its entity “Republika Srpska (RS),” is tense. Do you think US will regain its focus on Balkans any time soon? And should it?
A: It is difficult for Washington to focus on the Balkans. Apart from the election, the Americans have a lot of other things they are dealing with: Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Ukraine, Afghanistan, the South China Sea, just to mention a few. Washington long ago transferred the main responsibility in the Balkans to Europe. Still, the US will not accept an RS declaration of independence or other moves that threaten peace and stability in Southeast Europe.
Q: How do you see Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton with respect to foreign policy towards Europe and Balkans?
A: I think Hillary Clinton would be good for all those who look to the EU and NATO as anchors of their foreign policy. She understands the region and will want to see progress by those countries who seek membership in these organizations. Donald Trump appears to know nothing about the Balkans and likely cares less, except when it comes to collecting a few Serb or Croat votes in Ohio. I’ve seen no sign his wife has given him any instruction on Slovenia.
Q: Croatia is considered as the main US ally in the region. If so, would President Clinton because of her interventionist policy be better for Croatia and its political role in the region than president Trump?
A: It takes two to influence. Russia is a declining regional power with a GNP less than that of Spain, an aging and shrinking population, an imploding economy, and a petty autocratic as president. Anyone who wants Russia’s influence can have it so far as I am concerned, but I expect most people in the Balkans understand that the EU has a great deal more to offer, especially as it begins to recover from a deep recession.
Turkey, like Russia, has a long history in the Balkans, and its companies have done well there. But it too suffers from a burgeoning autocracy. Sure Ankara will have some influence wherever it plants its commercial activities, but I don’t think it today a very good model of how to administer rule of law or allow a free press.
The US will continue to be diplomatically present and influential in the region, but it will also expect the sovereign states that are allies and friends to handle as much of their own affairs as possible. That, after all, was the purpose of creating the independent states from former Yugoslavia: so that they could manage their own issues and enjoy the benefits of free democratic states.
Today, Milena Pejic of the Belgrade daily Blic asked another question about the election, and I answered:
Q: I was just hoping that you can give us some final predictions and thoughts about he US election? Who do you think is going to win and who would be the better choice for the rest of the world, particularly Serbia?
A: I have long supported Hillary Clinton and believe she will win: Go vote! – peacefare.net
Neither Clinton nor Trump is likely to give much priority to the Balkans, but Clinton would certainly be committed to stability and democracy there, including the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as Kosovo.
With respect to Serbia, it seems to me recent events suggest it faces a serious political and criminal threat to its democracy and stability from Russian and Russia-aligned forces within Serbia. Trump’s “bromance” with Putin could lead to an increase in this threat. The safest place for Serbian democracy is inside the EU, not straddling between the EU and Moscow.
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In the box can be good too
I enjoyed 90 minutes today with SAIS’s Mike Lampton and CSIS’s Michael Green commenting on Amitai Etzioni’s Foreign Policy: Thinking Outside the Box, a recent Chatham House publication. Here are my speaking notes, though I should note much of the event focused on China, which was not within my remit:
- First let me say it has been a privilege to be required to read this book. It is a model of precision and intelligibility. Professor Ezioni says what he means clearly and concisely, marshaling the evidence with skill and erudition.
- My doubts have to do mainly with the title: it advertises thinking outside the box, but much of the book is devoted to ideas I would regard as well inside the box, even if some of them might be labeled “new normal.”
- Take, for example, the chapter on “defining down sovereignty.” A good deal of it is spent pooh-poohing the Westphalian notion of sovereignty and arguing in favor of a more contemporary alternative: sovereignty as entailing rights as well as responsibilities.
- This leads naturally to Responsibility to Protect, which is well within the box these days, and another, new to me notion, “responsibility to counter terrorism.” If states fail or refuse to do this, intervention might be justified, Professor Etzioni says.
- It’s an interesting idea that even explains some current behavior, in particular the anti-ISIL intervention in Syria, which the host government has not unauthorized.
- The downsides are all too clear: the slippery slope that leads to an unjustified excuse for invasion or other intervention, as in George W.
- The chapter on spheres of influence is not so much outside the box as it is outside the realm of academic discussion, as Professor Etzioni himself documents. Spheres of influence are a well-established practice in international affairs, even if the concept has not attracted much scholarly attention.
- Professor Etzioni sees spheres of influence, Russia’s “near-abroad” for example or Iran’s influence in Iraq, as providing space for rising regional powers and buffer zones that bolster a feeling of security.
- The trouble with that notion is that it discounts the will of those who live in these buffer states. The limits of his approach are all to evident in Ukraine, where Etzioni admits Russia used force to try to prevent the Ukrainians from choosing their alignment with Europe.
- People just aren’t always content to serve the purposes of other powers.
- When it comes to self-determination, I would quibble with Amitai’s characterization of Kurdistan as more democratic than the rest of Iraq, but more importantly he ignores the negative regional and internal political contexts for any independence move by the Iraqi Kurds. I doubt it will happen, or that it will be democratizing if it does.
- I would agree however with Amitai’s main conclusion: decentralization rather than secession is far more likely to produce positive outcomes in democratic societies like Spain, where unfortunately the central government has been unwilling to concede even that. That however is a conclusion well inside the box, not outside it.
- One concluding thought: Professor Etzioni repeatedly doubts the applicability of liberal democratic notions outside the family of liberal democratic states.
- As an American, I feel condemned to believe in universal rights, as our founding documents are all too clear on this subject.
- But I would also say that I’ve virtually never met someone outside the liberal democratic world who didn’t aspire to those rights.
- We don’t need to export the notion that all people are created equal. We only need to help people find ways of institutionalizing equal rights in ways that are appropriate to their particular contexts.
- All in all, a good and interesting read, even if the novelty is overblown.
I made two points in the discussion period worth recalling:
- Liberal democracy is not congruent with secularism, since we have liberal democratic states (where rights are in principle equal) like Italy and the UK with established churches (not to mention the penetration of religion into government in the US).
- Russia’s behavior in Ukraine cannot properly be attributed to NATO expansion. Putin has made it clear that he is trying to re-establish Moscow’s hegemony in what he considers Russia’s near-abroad. That is not a reaction to NATO expansion but rather an aggressive program vital to his view of Russia’s historic and cultural role, as well as to his domestic political standing.
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The company he keeps
Donald Trump yesterday overhauled for the umpteenth time his campaign apparatus, bringing in Breitbart News executive Stephen Bannon, promoting pollster Kellyanne Conway, adding former Fox News chief Roger Ailes as an advisor, and sidelining campaign chair Paul Manafort. He already had on board Walid Phares, who appeared last night on the PBS Newshour paired with top Clinton surrogate Wendy Sherman.
There is no better way to understand a candidate than from the company he keeps.
Breitbart News Network is an unabashed Trump supporter with a record of misleading, inaccurate and mistaken coverage aimed at embarrassing its political enemies on the left. Fox News is the leading right-wing news outlet, with no concern for anything resembling balance in its own coverage. Ailes has resigned as its chief, accused of sexual harassment that he denies. Manafort is listed as a recipient of millions in cash in the black book of Ukraine’s erstwhile pro-Russian rulers. Walid Phares is a former spokesman and leader of a Christian militia in Lebanon thought to have committed war crimes.
Conway is the only one in this lineup I would consider even remotely respectable. She is a Republican pollster who claims to have predicted correctly the outcomes of the major 2012 races. All have ridden the Trump wave and will likely be well paid for their services, but they are not folks I would want to sit down to dinner with.
Where are the Republicans who would make respectable dinner companions? Not supporting Trump is the short answer. Some say they will vote for Clinton. Others won’t go that far. But Trump has definitely made enemies of my Republican colleagues and friends.
Last night’s performance in West Bend, Wisconsin says something more about the company Trump keeps. Advertised as a “law and order” speech, Trump addressed the nearly all-white group in a 95% white community repeatedly as if he were in Milwaukee, which is two-thirds black. I have no idea why he thinks this subterfuge will get him any black votes. It is well known that he has avoided predominantly black audiences. He made an important point last night: black people are principal victims of street violence of all sorts. They know that well, but they also know that West Bend is not Milwaukee.
This kind of smoke and mirrors offends, but it was not the only offensive part of last night’s performance. Trump apparently has no more to say about law and order than he said about national security: he wants to use “extreme vetting” to make immigration more difficult and renegotiate trade deals. He had a few positive words for the police and promised more of them, but there was little more “law and order” substance than that, along with his usual promise to create lots of jobs. His recitation of statistics showing increases in crime was cherry-picked. While recently ticking up in some places, overall violent crime in the US is dramatically and pretty steadily down for more than 20 years:
Clearly Trump and his friends don’t keep company with the facts any more than they do with black people or objectivity in the media.
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