The View from Right Field

America’s Future Foreign Policy: “The Jungle Grows Back” – Do We Care?

Dr. Robert Kagan has written a fascinating book on the future of American foreign policy: The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World.  His main points are laid out in this excerpt available at Amazon.com:

“The American-led liberal world order was never a natural phenomenon.  The past seven-plus decades of relatively free trade, growing respect for individual rights, and relatively peaceful cooperation among nations – the core elements of the liberal order – have been a great historical aberration. … Our own era has not lacked its horrors …. Yet by historical standards…, it has been a relative paradise. … The great Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union ended peacefully, a historical rarity. … Since the end of the Second World War the world has also enjoyed a period of prosperity unlike any other …. Since 1945, some four billion people around the world have climbed out of poverty. … But all this has been an anomaly in the history of human existence. The liberal world order is fragile and impermanent. Like a garden, it is ever under siege from the natural forces of history, the jungle whose vines and weeds constantly threaten to overwhelm it. …

Jamal Khashoggi: What’s Worse? Foreign Policy Edition.

What’s worse (it’s easy until you think about it):

(i)  Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist, has been living in self-imposed exile for the last year, while writing articles critical of the Saudi government for, among others, The Washington Post.   On October 2, he enters the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and is killed at some point thereafter, while in the embassy, by people connected with the Saudi government.

(ii)  Between October 2015 and December 2015, five employees of Causeway Bay Books, a bookseller in Hong Kong, disappear.  At least two of them disappear while in the People’s Republic of China, one while he is in Thailand, and another in Hong Kong itself.  All five are later confirmed to be in the PRC in connection with an alleged investigation of an old traffic incident involving one of them.  Causeway Bay Books sold political books, banned in China, that were critical of the Chinese government.

The Policies of Donald Trump and the Trump Administration

A commentary in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal bring up a fascinating point: The difference in ideas and policy between Donald Trump and the Trump administration.  In this case, Ukraine.  While President Trump doesn’t seem to care about Ukraine, and has told aides he doesn’t want to get involved in the question of Russia’s support of Ukrainian rebels occupying part of eastern Ukraine,¹ the Trump administration has actually been very supportive of Ukraine.

According to Judith Miller in the Journal:

“Ukrainians say Mr. Trump’s policies are surprisingly supportive of Kiev and hostile toward Moscow. In some ways they believe Mr. Trump has been much better than his predecessor.

Syria – Again. And Beyond.

It looks like more hell is coming to one of the places that has had so much of it over the last seven or eight years: Syria.  Bashar al-Assad, along with his Russian and Iranian allies, is ready to attack Idlib, the last major rebel-held enclave in Syria.  With three million civilians and tens of thousands rebel fighters, and nowhere to escape to, the outlook is almost beyond imagination.  While many seem to like to blame Donald Trump for just about everything that goes wrong in the world, this is not one to blame on President Trump.  Also, at this point, unfortunately, I am not sure there is much the United States can, or is at least willing to, do in Syria.

If the United States had wanted to do anything about Syria, we would have had to do it five years ago (or more).  But back then, Barack Obama decided it was better for the United States to not do anything.  After giving the world the impression he was going to do something about Syria’s use of chemical weapons (he had drawn a red-line against it), he did a 180-degree backward somersault, saying he had accomplished all he needed to do by getting Russia to agree that Syria would dispose of its chemical weapons.  Oops.  Oh well, not every decision works.  This one certainly didn’t.  I don’t know if President Obama is still defending this decision, but in 2016, when he was doing farewell interviews, he seemed proud of it.  I guess the decision worked in theory; it just didn’t work in the real world.  Ask the Syrians.  For that matter, ask the countries of Europe, who had to deal with the tide of Syrian and other refugees that started coming in 2015.¹

Another August 8 Anniversary: Georgia, 2008

I am referring, of course, to the Georgia of Tbilisi, not Atlanta.  Ten years ago today, during the Olympics in Beijing, Russia invaded Georgia.  Robert Kagan recalls what happened: 

“Vladimir Putin struck one of the first major blows [against the liberal world order] when he sent Russian forces into South Ossetia in neighboring Georgia in support of Russian-backed separatists.  The Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, fearing a full-blown invasion, ordered his troops to attack [i.e., attack the Russians who were in Georgia], thus springing Putin’s trap.  Using the Georgian attack as a pretext, Putin launched that full-blown invasion, with tens of thousands of troops, fighter aircraft and elements of the Black Sea Fleet all pre-positioned and ready to move the instant Saakashvili acted.”

The West pretty much ignored the Russian attack.  Even though Georgia had contributed more troops to the war in Iraq than any other non-NATO country, George W. Bush refused to provide military equipment.  We only provided humanitarian aid (like the Obama administration did in Ukraine).

Uncertainty

I have talked before about how uncertainty can slow down the economy.  Businesses won’t invest if they are uncertain what the future holds.  During the Obama administration, uncertainty in regulatory matters, what the government was going to do, what new rules or costs the Administration might come up with, was a drag on the economy.  It seems like President Trump’s “trade wars” are probably a bit of the same today, and it could get worse.

But uncertainty is just as much of a problem, if not more, in foreign affairs.  Almost regardless of what your position is, it is better if other countries know what your position is and know that you will follow through on it than if they are uncertain.  Which brings me to Donald Trump.

What we have seen so far is President Trump saying, or tweeting, one thing and his administration saying something else.  President Trump denies (at least sometimes) that the Russians tried to interfere with the 2016 election.  People in his administration, such as Dan Coats, Director of National Intelligence, say the exact opposite.  President Trump rips on NATO.  Secretary of Defense James Mattis goes on trips trying to reassure our allies that our commitment is still strong.

70th Anniversary of the Berlin Airlift

I don’t have enough time to write a proper post on this subject, but I cannot ignore the 70th anniversary of the first flight of the Berlin Airlift, on June 26, 1948.  As I have said before, the story of the Airlift is amazing.  On June 24, 1948, the Soviet Union blocked the western land routes to Berlin.  Two days later, and just three years after the Allies had defeated the Germans in a war that lasted almost six years for the British, the U.S. and Britain started an around-the-clock airlift to supply West Berlin with everything it needed to survive, from food to coal.  The Airlift lasted fifteen months, and turned enemies into fast friends.  It may have been the biggest defeat the Soviets suffered in the Cold War until the Wall itself came down in 1989.

When Trump Meets Putin: Will He Agree NATO Should Not Have Expanded East?

It looks like Donald Trump may be meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Vienna before the NATO meeting in mid-July.  If they meet, I am sure President Putin will raise his complaint about Eastern European countries joining NATO.  Given that President Trump agreed with Kim Jong Un of North Korea that U.S.-South Korea military maneuvers constituted “war games” and were “very provocative,” the very terms that North Korea uses in its propaganda to criticize the maneuvers, it is entirely possible President Trump will agree with President Putin.  The fact President Trump thinks NATO members are ripping off the United States perhaps makes it even more likely he will agree with President Putin.

However, if President Trump does agree with Russia on this, then he will be wrong, very wrong.  The historical record is unclear as to what the United States and USSR agreed with respect to NATO expansion when Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to German unification and the right of a united Germany to stay in NATO.  While the official documents didn’t contain any promises about NATO expansion, it is possible the Soviets understood NATO wouldn’t expand as it did.  But regardless of what the Soviets, now Russians, understood back then, there is nothing wrong with the NATO expansion that occurred. 

Donald Trump and a “Rogue Superpower”

Robert Kagan writes in The Washington Post about Donald Trump turning the United States into a “rogue superpower”:

“Since the end of the Cold War, it has widely been assumed that U.S. foreign policy would follow one of two courses: Either the United States would continue as primary defender of the international order it created after World War II, or it would pull back from overseas commitments, shed global responsibilities, turn inward and begin transitioning to a post- ­American world.  The second approach was where U.S. foreign policy seemed headed under President Barack Obama, and most saw the election of Donald Trump as another step toward withdrawal.

It turns out there was a third option: the United States as rogue superpower, neither isolationist nor internationalist, neither withdrawing nor in decline, but active, powerful and entirely out for itself. …

If Only Nixon Could Go To China, Can Only Donald Trump Solve North Korea?

If, as the old Vulcan proverb says, only Nixon could go to China, is it possible only Donald Trump can solve the problem of North Korea’s nuclear weapons?  In a joint statement with Kim Jong Un, President Trump has agreed, in exchange for North Korea’s promise to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” to suspend joint military exercises with South Korea.

If Barack Obama had agreed to that, which I don’t think he would have, I would have criticized him for naiveté in the extreme.  We have given up the right to conduct military exercises with South Korea, in exchange for a promise that North Korean leaders have made before – and broken every time.  Why is this time different?  Is it because President Trump has a special bond with Kim Jong Un?  Like he said he had with President Emmanuel Macron of France.