The View from Right Field

If 2016 Was the “Presidential Election from He**,” What Will 2020 Be?

Actually, the question may be “Isn’t 2020 That Way Already?”  It seems pretty clear that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee – if he decides to run, but back to that in a moment.  First, the Democrats.

The Democratic contest seems to be a race to see who can get as close as possible to Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who would, based on publicity levels in the MSM, have the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination wrapped up by now if not for a group of old white men in Philadelphia in 1787 who set the minimum age for president at 35.¹  On the other hand, we wouldn’t have Ms. AOC to kick us around if those same old white men had set the same age, i.e., 30, for the House of Representatives as they did for the Senate.² 

Foreign Policy After Trump: A Return to Normal or Is There a New Normal?

Commentators left, right, and center are explaining, and complaining, about why Donald Trump’s summit with Kim Jong Un, Supreme Leader of North Korea, failed to reach an agreement.  Cutting through all of the commentary, the main reason is because President Trump is himself.  Maybe an agreement could have been reached if President Trump did things differently, in terms of preparation, etc.  But complaining about President Trump being himself is silly, at least at this point.  He is what he is.  He is not going to change, no matter how much some of us might wish it.

And things are going to continue as they have been.  For example, in January, I asked if we were bugging out of Afghanistan because of what President Trump said then, but now it appears we are staying.  Similarly, in December, President Trump said we were leaving Syria (which is why Defense Secretary James Mattis resigned), but now it looks like we may be keeping some troops there, after all. 

With President Trump, there are times when we don’t know, from one day to the next, what our policies are.  And we have almost two years to go.  Of course, while some people see that as a long time, others look at it and say we can elect a new president in less than two years – and then everything will be fine again. 

What’s More Important: Stormy Daniels or Nuclear Powers Fighting a War?

While official Washington and its media are focused on Michael Cohen’s testimony before Congress yesterday that Donald Trump is a liar and racist and was deeply involved in efforts to pay hush money to Story Daniels, on the other side of the world, two countries that have nuclear weapons are fighting a near-war against each other.  India is bombing Pakistan, and Pakistan is fighting back.

I remember, in 1998, when Pakistan finally developed a nuclear bomb.  India already had one, but now the two of them, countries which had fought each other four times in the prior 50 years, both had nuclear weapons.

Will Trump Reach a Real Agreement With China? More Importantly, Can Pandas Fly?

Donald Trump has delayed the March 1 deadline for increasing tariffs on Chinese imports, saying that he expects the details of a final deal between the U.S. and China will be worked out at a summit meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, to be held at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.  One question, of course, is what any such agreement would provide.  Would it just cover China agreeing to buy more stuff from the United States or would it really change the way the Chinese economy works?

The Economist, in a leader in its current issue (“Can pandas fly?”¹), encourages President Xi to, inter alia, limit the state’s role in allocating capital and temper China’s industrial policy.  The Economist says that “[a] more economically liberal China would end up richer and make fewer enemies.” 

But this misunderstands President Xi’s priorities – and the priorities of his predecessors.  Thirty years ago, Deng Xiaoping crushed the protesters in Tiananmen Square because maintaining control was worth putting his economic reforms on hold for a time.  It is the same with President Xi.  Growth is nice, but political control is more important.
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¹ “Can pandas fly?” was the title of the leader in the print edition of The Economist.

When Donald Meets Kim [Jong Un]

As Donald Trump heads for his second meeting with Kim Jong Un of North Korea, Robert Zoellick, former President of the World Bank and State Department official in both the George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations (as well as serving in the Treasury Department under Ronald Reagan), wrote in The Wall Street Journal on “How to Negotiate With Kim Jong Un.”  Here are the five steps Mr. Zoellick suggests:

“The first step must be to address the danger of warfare on the Korean Peninsula. … The North Korean army is too big.  Negotiators must reduce both its size and its capacity for surprise attack.  The goal should be to equalize the North and South Korean militaries at smaller levels.

The 1992 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, which helped end the Cold War in Europe, offers examples of terms.

What’s Going to Happen In Venezuela?

Venezuela is starving.  Literally.  Aid is on its borders, but President Nicholas Maduro is refusing to let it in because the aid has been organized by opposition leader Juan Guaido (and countries supporting him).  Already, at least four people have been killed and hundreds injured, reportedly by Venezuelan security forces, including militia. 

What happens next?  Obviously, nobody knows, but 2019 is the 30th anniversary of two possible outcomes.  The first is Tiananmen Square.  In 1989, people in China were starting to demonstrate for more rights and liberties.  The protests reached a peak in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in early June.  The Army faced off with the protesters.  The Army won because it was willing to shoot the protesters until they disbanded and left.  Deng Xiaoping was willing to put his economic reforms on hold to maintain political power.

Are We Bugging Out of Afghanistan?

According to news reports, United States and Taliban negotiators have agreed on two key points of a settlement in Afghanistan: (i) the United States will withdraw its forces from Afghanistan; and (ii) the Taliban will ensure that no international terrorist attacks are made from Afghanistan.  U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad told local media in Afghanistan said that the U.S. and the Taliban had agreed in principle on two important points, and Taliban sources said what the points were.  Still to come, though, are the details on these two points, as well as agreements on two other issues the United States has raised: (iii) direct negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government; and (iv) a comprehensive ceasefire, neither of which the Taliban has been willing to agree to. 

Predictably, observers such as David Rohde at The New Yorker were excited.  Mr. Rohde said:

“The news sparked surprise – and applause – from American diplomats who have tried and failed to negotiate with the Taliban in the past.  ‘I think this is the beginning of a credible process for the first time in ten years,’ Dan Feldman, who served as the Obama Administration’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told me.

President Trump Fires Defense Secretary Mattis, Even Though He Already Resigned. And a Comment on Isolationism.

President Donald Trump has moved up Defense Secretary James Mattis’s termination date from February 28 to January 1.  In other words, he fired a man who has already quit.  And President Trump did it in his own, very classy and dignified, way.¹ 

President Trump concluded his tweet about Secretary Mattis with a response to the Secretary’s comment, in his resignation statement, on the importance of our allies: “Allies are very important – but not when they take advantage of U.S.”

While President Trump’s phrasing was more crass than the way most people would probably say it, the fact is isolationism is a legitimate approach to U.S. foreign policy.  I think it is wrong, and it is not an approach that has had as much support since World War II as it did before.  But staying out of the world’s problems is something America did for a long time.  It was, for example, why we stayed out of both World War I and World War II for over two years. 

Donald Trump. Barack Obama. James Mattis. Syria and Afghanistan.

Donald Trump has unilaterally, and apparently without consultation with our local allies, decided to pull all of our forces out of Syria, where they were helping local Kurdish forces fight ISIS.  And to do so almost immediately.  We are doing this, President Trump says, because ISIS has been defeated in Syria, but then people say lots of things 

There are also reports that President Trump has decided to cut our presence in Afghanistan by up to half and, once again, to do so quickly.  This will take a little longer because Afghanistan is a NATO fight and we have to do some consultation with our NATO allies before pulling our troops out – unlike Syria where we can leave our Kurdish allies high and dry and tough luck on them.

How to Lose Allies and Influence Almost No One

I have pretty much stopped commenting on Donald Trump’s foreign policy mess-ups for a couple of reasons.  One, it was becoming a full-time job and there are other things to do in life.  Two, I wasn’t sure complaining about yet another mess-up was really adding anything to the point that President Trump doesn’t know what he is doing.  But President Trump has perhaps topped himself last week, so let me comment one more time.

On December 1, Canada, acting on a U.S. extradition warrant, arrested Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei corporation (and daughter of the company’s founder, Ren Zhengfei), on charges that she had lied to banks about Huawei’s ownership of a Hong Kong company that violated U.S. sanctions on Iran by selling U.S. technology to Iran.  To say the least, China was upset.  They demanded Ms. Meng’s release, claiming it was a political act, and in retaliation detained two Canadians on bogus charges.