North Korea

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Foreign to Policy

As in everything he does President Trump brings to foreign policy a unique approach. One unweighed down by precedent, existing alliances, traditional enmities or common sense. I recently referred to a book “On Grand Strategy” written by JL Gaddis. He employs a distinction used by Isiah Berlin to categorise different types of leader. On the one hand there are those who know one big thing on the other those who know many small things. President Trump, again in a category of his own, knows nothing.

His foreign policy triumphs include haranguing NATO allies and threatening to pull out of the post-war bulwark against the Soviet Union and latterly Russia. Around the same time inviting the Russian ambassador into the oval office without US minders (no adults in the room) and sharing intelligence provided to the US by an ally. Keeping your adversaries confused is  the kind of mundane strategy the President eschews in favour of keeping his allies confused.

In the far east he has engaged in a costly and misguided tariff war with China in the belief that the tariffs he imposes will be paid by the Chinese.  He is currently having to bale out the US farming industry damaged by the consequential Chinese response.

His calming influence on the Korean peninsula has provided the pariah leader of the North with a boost to his legitimacy. Worse, the comparison between the ramblings of the dotard and the sharp responses of the rocket man, and their relative diplomatic success, has undermined the credibility of the leader of the free world. It really is only President Trump who could lose a shouting war with the leader of a failed state whose economy is ranked 204th in the world.

Unfortunately for the Middle East this has been an area that has benefited from a significant amount of Trump diplomacy. Red lines have been drawn with missile strikes on Syria following the use of chemical weapons. Unfortunately the Syrians and their Russian allies went around the red lines with the indiscriminate use of Barrel Bombs and traditional munitions to kill civilians and combatants alike in their destruction of ISIS and those within Syria opposed to Assad.

Early on the President, keen to demonstrate his grasp of the dynamics of the region and fresh from dancing with the Saudis, announced that Quatar was promoting terrorism. This is a state which is home to the largest US military base in the region with some 11,000 US military personnel. A place that mistakenly thought it was an ally of the US. To be fair a misapprehension the State Department was also under.

Not content to bring his own distinctive brand of incompetence to the area Trump has secured the services of his son in law, Jared Kushner to deliver the “ultimate deal” resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict. This seems to be retreating into the long grass following the electoral problems of Benjamin Netanyahu and the “other” problems of Mohammed Bin Salman. These were the two key contacts for an honest broker deal which has shifted the American embassy to Jerusalem and stood by as more land has been taken by Israeli settlers. No doubt the Palestinians are waiting with bated breath for the revelation of the “ultimate deal”.

There is more, much more but the clowning achievement to date must be the tweet following his conversation with President Erdogan of Turkey, another great defender of democracy, giving the green light to an invasion of Syria. An invasion to exterminate the Kurdish fighters who had been fighting the US’s war against ISIS for them in Northern Syria and dying for that cause. How naive to believe that would qualify them as allies.

With his characteristic penchant for inconsistency however, as soon as preparations for invasion were announced President Trump Tweeted that “…if Turkey does anything that I in my great wisdom consider to be off limits I will totally destroy and obliterate the economy of Turkey…” So far his “great wisdom” has not judged indiscriminate shelling and air attacks, the creation of 100k refugees and the escape of ISIS sympathisers in the fog of war as off limits.

To date it seems, President Erdogan, Muhammad Bin Salman, Kim Jong Un, Xi Jin Ping, and most of all Vladimir Putin have run rings around the Wise One. His approach to foreign policy is straight out of the BSD school outlined in Liars Poker by Michael Lewis. Just about as crude and just about as beneficial.

The brilliant theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli did not suffer fools gladly. After reading a paper by a colleague he said “It is not even wrong.” The same criticism applies to Trump and his negotiation of relationships with foreign powers. It is a policy free, strategy free, tactic free, idea free zone. It is so bad that even the supine GOP is struggling to rationalise his actions much less support them.

We know that Trump is not up to the job and we know he doesn’t even understand that. The damage he is doing to the United States of America, politically, socially, economically, internationally just goes from bad to worse and the Republicans must be held to account for their collusion in this  process. We must pray in 2020 both he and they are.

 

 

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Trump’s Roller Coaster Week

What a roller coaster of a week for President Trump. It starts with his saving the world from nuclear conflict in the Korean peninsula but ends with the heat of the Mueller Inquiry being turned up significantly on two of his ex colleagues.

The media coverage of the Trump – Kim summit was surely the triumph of wishful thinking over common sense. It would be foolish to expect this event to get the level of coverage its potential impact deserves. It was always going to be a media fest with the President of the economically strongest country on the planet meeting the leader of one of the economically weakest. However, the spectacle seemed to dazzle commentators into suggesting, albeit guardedly, that this was some kind of step forward.

Whilst it can be nothing but a relief that the views of John Bolton, the national security advisor, for whom the term hawkish sounds wimpish, seemed to be ignored. It must, however, be a concern that the man at the centre of the negotiations, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s best effort was a plain vanilla statement about the two sides commitment to motherhood and apple pie.

It would be interesting to know what Mr Pompeo thought when he heard his boss had carefully negotiated a cessation of war games in South Korea in exchange for … nothing. He really is some kind of deal maker. His defence of the cessation on money saving grounds, as well as being beside the point, betrayed all the sophisticated insight that is the hall mark of the man. Talking of the planes that participate in the games from the Guam air base he said “That’s a long time for these big massive planes to be flying to South Korea to practice and then drop bombs all over the place and then go back to Guam,…  I know a lot about airplanes. It’s very expensive.” Priceless, but scary.

In essence the summit involved two people who think truth is whatever was the last thing to come out of their mouths, meeting, getting photographed a lot and signing a document where the words detracted from the communicative force of a blank sheet of paper.

So that was the successful part of the week for President Trump. The close of the week has been much more threatening. First comes news that Mike Cohen, Trumps long time personal lawyer, is looking for a new legal team. This is important as it may be an indication he is about to flip to become a co-operating witness for the Mueller Inquiry.

Following raids on Cohens home and office an enormous cache of documents was seized. In an attempt to prevent Mr Mueller seeing the documents Mr Cohen claimed the documents were subject to legal privilege. After a review of the thousands of items of evidence by independent legal experts the courts seem to have recognised the protection of privilege for a tiny fraction of them. Those not protected are due to go to the Special Counsel’s office today. This might help Mr Cohen’s decision to turn against the boss that has already disowned him.

Probably the greatest increase in heat has been applied to Paul Manafort. Mr Manafort was briefly candidate Trump’s campaign chairman. A man with a colourful history of working in the Ukraine to support its former leader Viktor Yanukovych. That was before Mr Yanukovych fled to Russia following the 2014 Ukranian Revolution. Mr Manafort also has links to Russian oligarchs including Oleg Deripaska who is now suing Mr Manafort for monies he claims disappeared in one of their join tbusiness ventures.

Mr Manafort was subject to a dawn raid on his home and offices and subsequently indicted for money laundering and other offences. He was subject to house arrest and had to wear an ankle bracelet tracking device. He pleaded innocent to all the charges and has so far given no indication of flipping to become a co-operating witness. Today he has gone to jail as a judge found him guilty of witness tampering. Again this might start to focus his mind on how loyal he wants to remain to President Trump. He might think a pardon is coming his way although there is no sign of it yet and of course that might increase the President’s personal legal jeopardy in relation to obstruction of justice.

It may of course be that these men have nothing to tell the Special Prosecutor about President Trump. You would certainly think this was the case given the way President Trump has disowned them. On the other hand the President’s redeeming feature is he is stupid.

One suspects that stress levels in the Trump camp will increase significantly over the weekend. Expect some lashing out next week and further attacks on the FBI, the Attorney General, the Justice Department and most of all the Special Prosecutor. 

A weeks a long time in politics!