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FOREIGN POLICY

Let Our Stale Foreign Policy Dogma Leave with Tillerson A golden opportunity awaits to bring real change to the State Department. Bruce Thornton

Rex Tillerson’s departure from the State Department is an opportunity to correct the fossilized received wisdom that for years has hampered our foreign policy. His replacement, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, seems likely to rejuvenate State by bringing a more realist philosophy to our relations with the world.

From the start Tillerson was a dubious pick to implement the president’s policies, and his differences with Trump were predicated on the same assumptions evident in Barack Obama’s two terms. Obama is the epitome of the globalist idealism that dominates Western political and business elites. In their view, interstate relations and conflicts are best managed with “supranational constraints on unilateral policies and the progressive development of community norms,” as Oxford professor Kalypso Nicolaides put it. This “security community” favors “civilian forms of influence and action,” rather than military, and the “soft power” international idealists regularly tout to create “tolerance between states” and to “move beyond the relationships of dominance and exploitation” by mean of “integration, prevention, mediation, and persuasion.”

Obama’s disastrous foreign policy mirrored these utopian goals, what the New York Times at the beginning of Obama’s presidency identified as a “renewed emphasis on diplomacy, consultation, and the forging of broad international coalitions.” The Times was quoting Obama. In a 2007 Foreign Affairs article, he highlighted the “need to reinvigorate American diplomacy,” and to “renew American leadership in the world” and “rebuild the alliances, partnerships, and institutions necessary to confront common threats and enhance common security.” These goals, moreover, required toning down expressions of American exceptionalism, which he recommended in 2009, and participating in global affairs “not in the spirit of a patron but in the spirit of a partner–– a partner mindful of his own imperfections.”

Why Tillerson Had to Go By Arthur Herman

In the Trump administration, unconventional, assertive thinking about foreign policy is in; ineffectual, process-driven diplomacy is out.

Of all the abrupt comings and goings in this administration, the dismissal of Rex Tillerson is undoubtedly the most important — maybe one of the most important firings since Harry Truman fired Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War.

By dismissing MacArthur, Truman drew a firm line between military and civilian authority that no soldier since has dared to cross. By dumping Tillerson, Trump has sent a similarly unambiguous message to the entrenched bureaucracy — Foggy Bottom’s version of the “deep state” — and to America’s political elites about the future direction of U.S. foreign policy, hopefully one that will outlast his administration.

To understand what’s going on, let’s stipulate a couple of things.

First, Rex Tillerson is a man of deeply conventional mindset during a deeply unconventional time, a man with no understanding of the rapidly changing face of world trends, especially but not limited to the rise of China as an aggressively revisionist power; Iran’s determined bid for regional hegemony, including getting nuclear weapons; and the fateful dynamic of Russia’s reassertion of its imperial ambitions in Eastern Europe and against the West under Vladimir Putin.

Second, Trump almost certainly did not realize this when he appointed Tillerson secretary of state. He probably assumed Tillerson would bring a businessman’s mindset to the job, as a hard-headed negotiator with a shrewd nose for good deals sharpened by years as a CEO of a global energy corporation, ExxonMobil. Above all, he assumed Tillerson would be someone like himself, who would immediately recognize the place of American interests in the world, and fight for those interests with energy and boldness.

‘A Foreign Policy for the Left’ Review: Can There Be a ‘Decent’ Left? The editor of Dissent magazine asks his comrades for a more nuanced moral response to America’s use of power abroad. Martin Peretz reviews ‘A Foreign Policy for the Left’ by Michael Walzer.*****

Michael Walzer, now 83, is the unanointed dean of the American left. The editor of Dissent magazine for more than 30 years, he has written a book criticizing his comrades’ foreign policy and, subtly but unmistakably, their worldview. He sees both as morally lacking and advocates something more humane and more engaged.

Mr. Walzer is a leftist not for psychological or emotional reasons but for moral ones. He believes, a priori, in practicing human decency: a moral sensibility toward other people and their existences. He thinks that capitalism’s inequality has coarsened this sensibility but that capital’s productive capacity can be harnessed, through political action, to transcend the capitalist system: to create societies where people can live more equally and so be more decent to one another. The aim is democratic socialism, the means are helping “oppressed men and women to become political agents who control their own lives.”

The danger of this a priori politics is vanguardism, under which acolytes of an ideal believe that the ideal is more important than how they reach it. Where Mr. Walzer differs is that he believes that if the aim is decency, the means must be decent. This requires departing from theory and practicing a politics of distinction, “[paying] close attention to local circumstance and particular histories” and “[thinking] hard about the relation of means to ends.”

It also requires a foreign policy of distinctions, of recognizing that people labor under different kinds of oppression that call for different kinds of responses. And it requires recognizing that local resistance to oppression varies: Sometimes, as in Cuba, people who speak in the name of the oppressed simply want to use them as tools for power. Mr. Walzer is an honest leftist, and he tries to keep his comrades honest, too.

But he isn’t sure whether many of them are. “A Foreign Policy for the Left” reads like an anguished plea to comrades who have strayed so far from a politics of distinction and decency that the author doesn’t know whether they can be brought back. According to Mr. Walzer, the left’s vanguardism has put it in bed with dictators, fanatics and activists who reject reasoned debate as a means to democratic change.

This is most obvious to Mr. Walzer in foreign policy, because it’s so extreme. He gives many examples: leftists’ unwillingness to engage with unionist and feminist allies in Afghanistan and Iraq because American intervention as a force for good didn’t fit their theory of America as a force for evil; their mischaracterization of America’s world reach as totalistic, which allows blame always to ricochet back to us; their lumping in of Israel with despotic and imperialist regimes, ignoring the unique historical situation in which this encircled democracy finds itself; their attraction to thinkers like Judith Butler and Noam Chomsky and Slavoj Zizek —the last of whom preaches, Lenin-like, violence by the few in the name of change. CONTINUE AT SITE

Don’t Meet with Kim NRO

If President Trump indeed conceives of his presidency as a reality-TV show, he pulled off his greatest cliff-hanging plot device yet with his quick agreement to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

This is stunning improvisatory diplomacy and also, we believe, a very bad idea. North Korean leaders have long sought summits with American presidents as the ultimate means of international legitimacy. And what has Kim done to deserve this honor? Over the last nine months or so, he murdered Otto Warmbier, threatened Guam, and launched multiple missile tests, including two that flew over Japan.

Kim reached out for a meeting with Trump via South Korean intermediaries with hazy assurances he is willing to discuss denuclearization. The gambit may reflect the squeeze Pyongyang is feeling from sanctions that the Trump administration has, to its credit, steadily ratcheted up. But it is also straight from the regime’s playbook. Its pattern over the decades has been to buy time and get relief from sanctions, while continuing to pursue its core strategic goal of developing nuclear weapons and an advanced missile capability.

The North may believe that Trump is an easy mark for the latest iteration of this approach. The president is not given to extensive preparation or attention to detail, and his recent White House meetings on immigration and guns demonstrate a negotiator who is eager to tell his interlocutors what they want to hear, even if it is counter to his administration’s policy. Trump will be under pressure from South Korea and from his State Department to be conciliatory, and the temptation to get an agreement, any agreement, to wave around as an against-the-odds diplomatic achievement will be considerable.

The Trump-Kim Summit The President is giving recognition before any nuclear concessions. see note please

The President issued a stark and dark warning, and Little Kim offered to meet….and the President agreed with no pre-conditions….Why does the WSJ sound like the airheads of CNN? rsk

A diplomatic breakthrough is easy when you offer the other side what it wants. And Donald Trump on Thursday gave North Korea something it has long craved: a summit with a sitting U.S. President. Perhaps this will be the start of a stunning nuclear disarmament, but it could also end up in a strategic defeat for the United States and world order.

Mr. Trump doesn’t do normal diplomacy, and this leap to a face-to-face meeting had his impulsive trademarks: spur of the moment in response to a Kim Jong Un offer relayed through South Korean mediators; no vetting with his senior advisers or as far as we can tell our Japanese allies; and no pre-planning. What could go wrong?

Mr. Trump tweeted Thursday that “sanctions will remain until an agreement is reached,” which is somewhat reassuring. But like his predecessors, he is giving the Kim regime a substantial reward before it takes verifiable steps toward denuclearization. Even a brief meeting will boost North Korea’s claim to be a nuclear power that must be given respect and recognition. In return, Kim appears to have given nothing other than the promise not to test his weapons in the interim. He can resume those tests at any time.

Mr. Trump can claim credit for putting the diplomatic and sanctions screws on North Korea to a greater extent than any previous President. And it’s possible that pressure may have hurt the North Korean economy enough that Kim chose this moment to change tack. (The Trump critics who claimed he was trying to blow up the world but now say he’s leaping too fast to diplomacy are especially amusing to watch. They wouldn’t give him credit if Kim disarmed entirely.)

Passing the Torch to China? By Lawrence J. Haas

UNFOLDING EVENTS IN Washington and Beijing raise the disturbing specter of a global passing of the torch from the United States to China, one with frightening implications for freedom and democracy.

First, President Donald Trump seemed to applaud from afar as China’s leader consolidates his power over a more authoritarian government at home, while the regime promotes its model of governance in increasingly aggressive terms abroad. Second, Trump announced that he will slap steep tariffs on steel and aluminum and welcome a trade war that most of the world, and most of his own Republican Party, dreads.

These events may seem unrelated, but they’re really sides of the same coin, for they both signal a U.S. retreat from defending the Western liberal order of free-market capitalism and democratic government that it did so much to nourish in the decades since World War II.

Let’s take these one at a time.

In Beijing, the Communist Party is amending China’s constitution to end presidential term limits, enabling Xi Jinping to remain as party chief and Chinese president for as long as he likes and, thus, become China’s most powerful leader since Mao.

Kim Jong-un’s Peace Gambit Why any dialogue with the North Korean regime must be pursued with caution. Joseph Klein

It appears that the outreach to South Korea by North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, which began in the lead-up to and during the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, did not end with the Olympics closing ceremony. Kim Jong-un has just hosted talks with a high-level delegation from South Korea, led by its national security director Chung Eui-yong. The South Korean delegation came away believing that these talks have borne some fruit. A possible summit meeting between Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in was discussed, which could occur in late April at the so-called Peace House, which is located on the South Korean side of Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone. In the meantime, the two Koreas have reportedly agreed to set up a telephone hotline between the leaders of both countries.

The South Koreans also indicated that North Korea would agree to halt tests of its nuclear weapons and missiles in conjunction with opening talks with the United States on the denuclearization issue. According to Chung Eui-yong, the North Koreans are looking for a credible security guarantee and the end to military threats against it, in which case they believed they would not need to keep their nuclear arsenal. He claimed that North Korea was interested “in an open-ended dialogue to discuss the issue of denuclearization and to normalize relations with North Korea.” Notably, Kim Jong-un is said to have withdrawn, at least for now, his insistence that the United States and South Korea suspend their joint military exercises as a precondition to any negotiations. “Kim Jong-un simply said he could understand why the joint exercises must resume in April on the same scale as before,” Mr. Chung declared. “But he said he expected them to be readjusted if the situation on the Korean Peninsula stabilizes in the future.”

North Korea’s Negotiation Play Maybe this means pressure is working, or maybe it’s another con.

South Korean officials disclosed Tuesday that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un says he’s ready to talk with the U.S. about giving up his nuclear weapons. That’s news because Kim has long said he’d never negotiate away his weapons. But the world has seen this diplomatic movie before, only to learn that the North was merely buying more time to build more bombs and ballistic missiles.

“I think that their statement, and the statements coming out of South Korea and North Korea have been very positive,” President Trump said Tuesday. “That would be a great thing for the world. A great thing for the world. So we’ll see how it all comes about.”

Realism is warranted. The hopeful case is that the North’s reversal is a response to the Trump Administration’s policy of pressure through tighter sanctions and diplomatic isolation. Building on United Nations sanctions, the Treasury Department has been blacklisting companies, most of them Chinese, for trading with the North.

As the Journal reported last week, trade across the border with China has declined sharply. Despite its official ideology of self-sufficiency, the North depends on imports of energy, food and raw materials to survive. It also needs luxury goods to reward top officials.

The Trump Administration’s threats of military action if sanctions don’t work may also have secured more Chinese cooperation, even if a military strike carries huge risks. Beijing has been forced to consider the possibility of conflict between nuclear states on its doorstep. It’s also notable that the North told South Korean officials that it agreed to the U.S. demand to halt nuclear and missile tests while talks are underway. Perhaps Mr. Trump’s tough line wasn’t as dangerous and destabilizing as his critics claimed.

Yet the U.S. and the world should still be skeptical that Kim will really put his nukes on the negotiating table. Kim’s father and grandfather used talks to stall for time while they continued the nuclear program in secret. They also extracted concessions in return for talking and broke every promise they made.

The new diplomacy offer also follows a familiar Pyongyang pattern. First make nuclear or missile advances that increase its threat to South Korea and the world. Then make a diplomatic bid once a dovish government takes over in Seoul. This time Kim took advantage of the recent Olympic games and the aching, almost palpable, desire of new South Korean President Moon Jae-in for talks.

The South Koreans said North also demanded “security guarantees,” which it may define as the departure of U.S. forces from Korean peninsula. That would be a security and geopolitical disaster as long as the North retains its military threat.

Punishing Syrian Chemical Weapons Use Shoshana Bryen

The primary goals of American foreign policy are to make our citizens, friends and allies secure and to make our adversaries think twice. There are moments in history when well-timed, well-placed military action will have the effect of causing fear — and moments that, if allowed to pass by, ensure the opposite. President Barack Obama’s failure to uphold the international conventions against chemical weapons worked against American interests in what is perhaps the ugliest battlefield of the 21st century. President Donald Trump’s decision to attack the Syria’s Al-Shayrat Military Airbase from which the Assad regime launched chemical attacks in 2017 was a welcome reversal, though with limited results.

The illegitimacy of chemical weapons use is one of the few points of international consensus in war fighting. The first treaty against it is more than 115 years old – the Hague Declaration of 1899, which was followed by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and the 1925 Geneva Protocol.

But the Bashar Assad regime in Syria — with the active support of Russia — has again been using chlorine barrel bombs against the 400,000 hostage civilians of Ghouta. Having failed to pass a Security Council resolution to sanction Syria (Russia and China vetoed), the United Nations Security Council succeeded in passing a unanimous resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire. Less than 24 hours later, there were new reports of chemical raids killing hundreds.

Haley Says UN Job is About Having ‘Absolutely No Patience for Bullying’ By Bridget Johnson

WASHINGTON — UN Ambassador Nikki Haley told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee annual policy conference that “standing up for your friends is critical” and the administration is looking at tying foreign aid to voting with the U.S. at the United Nations.

Haley told the crowd that she was raised with “absolutely no patience for bullying” as she grew up in the only Indian family in small South Carolina town. “That didn’t mean every day was great,” she said. “My family were immigrants. My father wore a turban. My mother wore a sari.”

“You don’t pick on someone just because they look differently than you, you don’t pick on someone just because they think differently than you, or because you can,” she added.

Haley said that upon arriving at the United Nations she learned that Israel “gets bullied because the countries that don’t like Israel are used to getting away with it — just like that little girl in South Carolina, that doesn’t sit well with me.”

As examples of the administration countering UN bullying, Haley cited the U.S. withdrawal from UNESCO for “attempting to change ancient history” by recognizing Hebron in the West Bank as a Palestinian world heritage site in need of protection.

Haley said when she started attending a monthly UN session on the Middle East and found it to be “an Israel-bashing session it was actually shocking.”

“I can’t say that we’ve solved the problem but I can say that several other countries have followed our lead,” she said. “What used to be a monthly Israel bashing session now has more balance.”

On moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, Haley declared, “Like most Americans, I knew what the capital of Israel was.”

“America did not make Jerusalem Israel’s capital,” she said, but simply recognized reality “denied for too long.”CONTINUE AT SITE