The View from Right Field

Foreign Policy: Are Presidents Trump and Obama All That Different?

Wilbur Ross, Donald Trump’s Secretary of Commerce said, last Wednesday, that Hong Kong was an internal matter for Hong Kong and added: “What are we going to do – invade Hong Kong?”  In response, Edward Luce, of the Financial Times, commented: “In a few words, Mr Ross captured the degeneration of US foreign policy.”¹  Which may be true, but it didn’t start January 20, 2017.

Secretary Ross’s choice, invasion or doing nothing, sounds suspiciously like the phony choices Barack Obama used to justify his do-nothing, or at least, do-as-little-as-possible, approach to foreign policy.  For example, when Russia invaded Ukraine, annexed Crimea, and fomented a war in eastern Ukraine in 2014, President Obama asked: “Do people actually think that somehow us sending some additional arms into Ukraine could potentially deter the Russian Army?”  In fact, the Trump administration, even though President Trump is supposedly in the pocket of Vladimir Putin, has sent the kinds of defensive weapons that President Obama refused to send.  And it has seemed to help.

President Trump’s Foreign Policy Claims Are Often Bizarre, But It’s Not the First Time We’ve Seen That

The foreign policy follies (and worse) of Donald Trump are so bad, it sometimes makes us forget bizarre positions that prior administrations have taken.  For example, in 2011, when the United States was involved in the bombing of Libya (because, inter alia, Moammar Gaddafi was threatening to massacre Libyan civilians), the question of the War Powers Act arose.  The War Powers Act was passed over President Nixon’s veto in 1973.  It provided that presidents are to get Congress’s approval or authorization within 60 days¹ after they send troops into hostilities.

The Obama administration, however, did not want to seek Congressional approval of our operations in Libya.  But it also did not want to say, as other presidents have said, that the War Powers Act was an unconstitutional limit on the President’s power.² So, the State Department legal advisor, a politically appointed position, came up with the theory that the War Powers Act did not apply to the bombing of Libya because we were not engaged in “hostilities” since the other side could not effectively shoot back at us.  (See here and here,)

Did Barack Obama Really Make America the Biggest Oil and Gas Producer?

In a speech at the Baker Institute at Rice University in Houston last week, former President Barack Obama said:

“You wouldn’t always know it, but it [oil production] went up every year I was president. … [S]uddenly America’s like the biggest oil producer and the biggest gas [producer] — that was me, people."

Two comments.  First, separate from whether it’s true (it’s not, see below), could you imagine George H.W. Bush ever bragging about himself like this?  I can’t either.

“We’ll Be Coming Out of Syria, Like, Very Soon.” Not a Good Idea.

Donald Trump probably wouldn’t like being told that any of his policies are like Barack Obama’s, and former President Obama probably wouldn’t like it either.  But last Thursday, President Trump said, in what was apparently an unscripted aside, during a speech/campaign event in Ohio, that “we’re knocking the hell out of ISIS” and that “we’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon.  Let the other people take care of it now.”  All of which sounds an awful like President Obama’s policy in Iraq (and, especially with respect to the last part, Syria). 

President Obama never wanted to be in Iraq.¹  And so, once he got into office, he used the agreement George W. Bush signed with Iraq in 2008, which required the United States to get all of its troops out of Iraq by the end of 2011, as the reason (aka excuse) for leaving.  President Obama could have tried to get the agreement changed.  In fact, the expectation probably was that the United States would do so – and that Iraq would agree.  But President Obama didn’t really try.  He wanted out. 

What’s Worse: Trump’s Scandals or Obama’s Executive Overreach?

I was talking to a friend last night.  He was very worried about the scandals in the Trump administration.  Now I don’t know which scandals he was talking about.  The possibilities are many: possible collusion with the Russians during the 201 campaign;¹ firing the head of the FBI; Michael Flynn lying; Trump family products promoted from the White House; Stormy Daniels;² the Secretary of HHS resigning after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on private flights; etc., etc..  Then there are things like some of his tweeting, which may not fit the definition of a “scandal,” but are appalling just the same. 

My friend then said that Barack Obama didn’t have any scandals.  I disagreed, which I think surprised him.  When he asked me what they were, I decided not to talk about President Obama publicly prejudging the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, both because I’m tired of former Secretary Clinton’s emails and because I wanted to mention what I think was real scandal in the Obama administration: what I saw as the gross overreach of executive power by the President and his administration.

A Few Comments on the Government Shutdown

Everybody is talking about the federal government shutdown, so maybe I should, too.  First, I suppose the proper libertarian response to the shutdown is that it is unfortunate – that it will eventually end.  (Just to be clear, that is a joke.)

Second, you can tell something about a presidential administration not only by the President himself (someday, herself), but also by the way the people in the administration act.  In that regard, the response of the lower down people in the Trump administration to the shutdown is so much better than the response of some of the lower down people in the Obama administration in 2013.

The Dangerousness of Donald Trump’s Comments on Venezuela

What Donald Trump said about Venezuela last Friday was lost in all the news about what happened in Charlottesville on Saturday, and what President Trump has said about it, but I think it’s worth looking at what President Trump said about Venezuela:

“We have many options for Venezuela.  And by the way, I’m not going to rule out a military option.  We have many options for Venezuela.  This is our neighbor.  This is, you know, we are all over the world.  And we have troops all over the world, in places that are very, very far away.  Venezuela is not very far away, and the people are suffering, and they are dying.  We have many options for Venezuela, including a possible military option, if necessary.”

Obviously, this statement will be a big help for President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela.  With things going absolutely horribly in Venezuela, because of President Maduro’s policies, what better distraction and what better way to deflect blame than a threat from the United States.  President Trump couldn’t have helped President Maduro any more, except maybe by sending him a billion dollars of food and medical supplies.

Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump

When Vladimir Putin moved into Syria in 2015¹ to prop up Bashar al-Assad’s truly terrible regime, Barack Obama said Russia would get “stuck in a quagmire.”  Last week, President Putin ratified an agreement, originally signed in January of this year, providing Russia with a 49-year lease on the Hmeymim air base, near Latakia, Syria.  (Russia also has a long-term lease for a naval base at Tartus, Syria.)

It was to get away from such naiveté in foreign policy that I was looking forward to the presidential election in 2016.  Unfortunately, the choice last November doesn’t seem to be any better.
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¹ I originally commented on Russia’s move into Syria here.  I was slightly off in what I said then, however.  Until President Obama, Russia/the Soviet Union had been kept out of the Middle East since the Nixon administration, not since World War II.

President Obama: How Can I Miss You If You Won’t Go Away

No, this isn’t the title of a country music song.¹  It’s a comment people have made about President Obama’s decision to stay in Washington after he leaves office.  The President has said that he will stay in Washington so that Sasha, who is a sophomore at Sidwell Friends high school, doesn’t have to change schools.

Most past presidents have followed the tradition of George Washington and left town after their presidency.  (Woodrow Wilson was the last president to stay in Washington, but he was too sick for it to matter.)  But with today’s media, et al, leaving town is less a physical thing than mental.  Today, it doesn’t matter where an ex-president is.  If he wants to say something, the media will be there, one way or the other.  Especially, I would imagine, in the case of Barack Obama.

But you have to wonder how much Barack Obama will be leaving, regardless of where he is living.  He has already said:

Barack Obama and Afghanistan

In December of 2014, President Obama declared the end of our combat mission in Afghanistan.  Unfortunately, the Taliban didn’t agree, and they escalated their attacks against the Afghan government in 2015.  It is one of the problems of fighting a war based on a calendar, instead of what is actually happening on the ground.

Eventually, President Obama agreed to slow the withdrawal of our troops from Afghanistan and, in January of last year, to allow our troops to do more.  The fact that ISIS was showing up in Afghanistan gave the President an excuse for his action.  By June, President Obama was allowing our forces to attack the Taliban and help Afghan forces keep control of provincial capitals.