RUTHFULLY YOURS

“They [the North Koreans] will eat grass but will not stop their program as long as they do not feel safe.”— Vladimir Putin, Beijing, China, September 5, 2017

China has put the U.S. into an existential dilemma. Its surrogate North Korea — whose nuclear arsenal is certainly in large part a product of Chinese technology and commercial ties — by any standard of international standing is a failed, fourth-world state. North Korean population, industry, culture, and politics would otherwise warrant very little attention.

Yet in late 2017 North Korea poses the chief existential threat to the United States. We fret over its daily assertions that it is apparently eager to deploy verifiable nuclear weapons against the U.S. West Coast, U.S. allies such as Japan and South Korea, or U.S. bases and territory abroad such as those in the Marianna Islands.

Even if such offensive thermonuclear threats are ultimately empty, they continue to eat up U.S. resources, demand diplomatic attention, make us spend money on deployment and military readiness, and prompt crash anti-missile programs.

Central to the strategy is China’s “plausible deniability.” The ruse almost assumes that China’s neighbor North Korea — without a modern economy or an indigenous sophisticated economic infrastructure — suddenly found some stray nukes, missiles, and delivery platforms in a vacant lot in Pyongyang. Thus China is willing to “help” resolve the issue it deliberately created.

As the U.S. obsesses over North Korea, China is in theory freed to do even more of what it already does well — intimidate its Pacific and Asian neighbors, in the passive-aggressive style of violating sovereign air, ground, and sea space of other nations. Its tactics are accompanied by implied quid pro quos along the lines of “If you would just join our Chinese Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, there would be no need for such misunderstandings.”

Beijing is following somewhat the Japanese model of imperial construction of the 1930s. Chinese aims are based on similar radical increases in naval construction and air power; massive importation of Western military technology; intimidation of neighbors; assumptions that the U.S. is a spent, has-been power in decline; and reliance on morally equivalent and circular arguments that regional hegemons have a natural right to impose regional hegemonies.

China does not want a pro-U.S. country on it borders. It does not wish reunification of the Korean Peninsula by South Korea. It does not want North Korea to give up its nuclear arsenal. It does not want another major land war on its border. It does not want Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan to have either a nuclear deterrent or a missile-defense system.

But it does favor the status quo, in which North Korea every few months upsets the world order, threatens chaos, wins concessions, and then behaves — for a while. So North Korea is an effective surrogate — it keeps the U.S. busy and distracted from China’s aggrandizing strategies while not upsetting the commercial trajectory of the Pacific.

The result of the North Korean crisis is a sort of strategic stalemate, in which both sides in the stand-off try to find advantages or new breakthroughs in technology. North Korea escalates by detonating a heretofore unknown thermonuclear weapon. South Korea responds by taking caps off its conventional missile-delivery weights. The U.S. scrambles to beef up missile defenses while ratcheting up diplomatic pressures.

During last year’s presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to do a great deal more in the Middle East than his immediate predecessors, but with much less. That is, he would achieve significantly more than Barack Obama at a much smaller sacrifice of blood and treasure than was incurred under George W. Bush. This he would accomplish by defining American interests sharply and pursuing them aggressively, not to say ruthlessly. The result would be a global restoration of American credibility and, as Trump never ceased to remind voters, renewed global respect. https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2017/09/what-america-should-do-next-in-the-middle-east/

As an act of political “signaling,” Trump’s blunt message was savvy. Many Americans, especially those in his base of supporters, regarded Obama as timid, weak, and more solicitous of enemies than of friends; Bush, they believed, had been strong in some ways but prone to quixotic adventures like building democracy in the Middle East, a putative sin of which Obama had at least been innocent. Trump offered an attractive alternative: a hybrid approach that would combine the best qualities of his predecessors in office while jettisoning their worst inclinations. “America First” meant placing a Bush-style readiness to use military force in support of a leaner, Obama-style agenda that nixed democracy promotion. Unlike Bush, Trump would resist thankless nation-building projects; unlike Obama, he would reward friends and punish enemies.

Exactly how Trump intended to translate this framework into concrete policy started to become clear only after the election. As he appointed his national-security team, four major policy goals in the Middle East came into focus. First in line was the swift defeat of Islamic State (IS). Second, the Trump team was keen to improve relations with America’s traditional allies in the region, especially Israel, who had felt abandoned by Obama. Third, the administration would push back aggressively against Iran’s hegemonic regional ambitions while also renegotiating the 2015 agreement on Iran’s nuclear program. Finally, Trump was personally eager to explore the possibility of a strategic accommodation with Russia, especially in Syria.

These goals were not and are not obviously compatible with each other. The most significant contradiction has emerged between, on the one hand, Trump’s desire to defeat IS with the smallest possible commitment of American ground forces and, on the other hand, his intention to contain Iran. In the event, as we shall see, the administration has chosen to prioritize the defeat of IS. In so doing, however, it has unconsciously assimilated much of the strategy developed by the Obama team in its final years, a strategy thatconsciously facilitated the rise of Iran and brought the policies of the United States into alignment with that goal.

This alignment is now so extensive that any serious effort to contain or roll back Iranian power will require an equally lengthy and systematic effort to rethink American interests and reorder American policy. Such an effort will demand sustained presidential attention, the devotion of new resources, and, inevitably, the disruption of established relations with key allies. It will also bring down on Trump even more criticism than he is already receiving from pundits, allied nations, his own national-security bureaucracy, and, on a few key issues, his political supporters.

In the short term, the path of least resistance for the administration has been to accept Obama’s terms and muddle through on that basis. Ultimately, however, the outcome of any such course of action is certain to be deadly—not only for Trump’s agenda but for the interests and the national security of the United States.

I. The Great Reset

At the heart of Trump’s dilemma are the binding restrictions that the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, Obama’s signature foreign-policy initiative as president, has placed on the United States. But the nuclear deal itself was the direct outgrowth of an earlier decision in foreign policy, a decision at which Obama had arrived years earlier. Before he ever convened a meeting of the National Security Council, consulted with an ally, or received an intelligence briefing—indeed, before he ever set foot in the Oval Office in January 2009—Obama resolved to go down in history as the president who brought Bush’s wars to an end and who restructured relations with the Middle East.

Obama had articulated this vision throughout his first presidential campaign. At every rally, he promised that he would avoid the calamitous misadventures of the past, especially as exemplified by the war in Iraq. To fulfill this promise, Obama’s first priority in office was to bring the troops home from that country.

But how could the military withdraw without turning Iraq into a satellite of Iran? Obama declined to think in such terms. Rather, in keeping with a current of thought then circulating in national-security circles, he believed that the Middle East was altogether no longer as important to the United States as it once had been, and that, moreover, the fundamental interests of the United Statesoverlapped with those of Iran (not to mention Russia). In the case of Iraq, whose stability was vital to both Tehran and Washington, those interests were especially well-matched. The United States, therefore, could tolerate a reduction of its influence and a tilt by Baghdad in the direction of Tehran.

We have entered the most dangerous moment in world politics since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

The nightmare is only getting worse, thanks to North Korea’s increasingly rapid development of nuclear weapons, the missiles to deliver them, and the regime’s chilling threats to use them against the U.S., Japan, and South Korea.

Last week, despite U.N. sanctions andChina’s public call for restraint, Kim Jong Un tested his nation’s most powerful nuclear device yet. Analysts are still not sure if it was a hydrogen bomb, but Western intelligence believes those are coming soon. The regime is already miniaturizing its weapons and improving its long- and medium-range missiles. It also has thousands of conventional weapons pointed at South Korea, including some that could hit nuclear power plants.

A succession of U.S. presidents, from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama, could not slow these North Korean programs. Neither has President Trump. He has tried an open hand to China, a closed fist to North Korea, and repeated demonstrations of U.S. firepower, all to no effect. It is painfully clear that Kim will not pause his weapons program, much less relinquish it, unless he fears imminent death and destruction. So far, he doesn’t. Neither does his major backer, China.

Making that threat credible without actually launching a major war is the nub of the current crisis, not because Kim himself is likely to change course but because Beijing might. China is Kim’s only lifeline, and it dreads a war on the Korean Peninsula. Short of that, Beijing is deeply concerned about a deteriorating security environment, encircled by adversaries, bristling with U.S. troops and ships, and shaken by the prospect of Japan rearming.

China has only itself to blame for this increasingly toxic environment. Facing no serious external threat, it chose to expand aggressively in the South China Sea and ignore international courts that ruled against it. It chose to make North Korea a lethal threat by providing it vital economic and military aid. Now, facing the unhappy consequences, China must decide whether to stay the course or change dramatically.

The choices are momentous. They will be made knowing that, if nothing changes, North Korea will soon be capable of incinerating American cities and millions of lives. Every U.S. president has said that is unacceptable. What we don’t know is whether they meant it.

Countering Violent Extremism was one of the great counterterrorism frauds of the Obama era. Not only was CVE useless, but it was an excuse for building ties with assorted Muslim Brotherhood groups.

A week before President Trump’s inauguration, Jeh Johnson, Obama’s Secretary of Homeland Secretary, gave his allies one last gift with millions in CVE grants. The list of grantees included the Muslim American Leadership Alliance, Unity Productions Foundation and Ka Joog. Once Kelly took over at DHS, some were either removed or, like Ka Joog, claimed that they had opted out to protest the Muslim travel ban.

But when the final grantees were announced, two troubling organizations remained on the list: Peace Catalyst International and Masjid Muhammad.

Though it bills itself as the ‘Nation’s Mosque’, Masjid Muhammad was set up by the racist hate group known as the Nation of Islam which believed that white people were racially inferior. Lucius Bey Muhammad, who set it up, had said, “The black man is indeed the greatest. His genes are stronger! No white man can produce a baby darker than himself.”

Elijah Muhammad, whom the mosque’s site still praises, had allied with the American Nazi Party. He had preached that, “these enemies of Allah are known at the present as the white race”

While the branch of the movement represented by Masjid Muhammad has parted ways with Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, they still maintain a relationship. At the mosque’s 53rd anniversary, Farrakhan’s personal representative phoned in with remarks.

Should Countering Violent Extremism funding be going to a mosque set up by violent extremists and which still seems unable to end all connections with one of the nation’s worst racist hate groups?

But the case of Peace Catalyst International is in some ways more troubling than Masjid Muhammad.

Peace Catalyst International claims to “create safe spaces and foster authentic relationships between Christians and Muslims”. While PCI strongly emphasizes its Christian identity, its agenda largely seems to involve propagandizing for Islamists. Sometimes to an extremely disturbing degree.

PCI boss Rick Love wrote, “Some Pakistanis do hate us for these reasons: the war in Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq on false pretenses, decades-long support for oppressive regimes in the Muslim world, bias in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the killing of thousands of innocent Muslims described as ‘collateral damage’”.

PCI’s latest post is from Jennifer S. Bryson and it includes a call to Christians to engage in “sacrificial listening” to Muslims. Even if they’re ISIS supporters. Bryson heads the Zephyr Institute and its pet project, the Center for Islam and Religious Freedom. Also working at the Center for Islam is convicted Jihadist Ismail Royer. Bryson was formerly a member of the Board of Directors of PCI.

Any nuclear conflict with North Korea would be an “unimaginable” apocalypse in the recent words of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford. http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/29/north-korea-goes-ballistic-washington-dithers-on-missile-defense/

Yet the nuclear threat from North Korea’s erratic tyrant Kim Jong-Un is becoming more imminent every day. After fewer than six years in power, Kim Jong-Un has overseen more missile tests than his father or grandfather combined including a July 4 test of an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) capable of hitting Alaska. The “American bastards must be quite unhappy,” Kim stated on Independence Day, and a subsequent July 27 (a North Korean holiday) test launched an ICBM capable of hitting America’s west coast. Given recent intelligence assessments that North Korea has successfully miniaturized nuclear warheads for ICBMs, American intelligence analysts predict that North Korea could target the United States with nuclear ICBMs by 2018.

The key to America’s missile defenses against North Korea is the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system. GMD’s 32 Ground-based Interceptor (GBI) missiles at Fort Greely, Alaska, (with eight more GBIs deploying there by the end of 2017) and an additional 4 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, stand ready to shoot down North Korean ICBMs. GMD is America’s only missile defense system capable of destroying missiles during their “midcourse” flight in space where missile debris and explosions are far removed from targets.

GMD contrasts with missile defenses like Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) or the United States Navy’s ship-based Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense. These systems intercept missiles after their reentry into the earth’s atmosphere during their “terminal” flight towards the target. This characteristic not only raises dangers with explosions and debris, but also means that terminal defenses have only regional coverage areas as opposed to GMD’s continental defense.

Defense officials express confidence in the ability of America’s missile defenses to counter emerging North Korean threats, yet there is no margin for complacency, even though the latest May 30 GMD intercept test was successful. Critics questioned the test’s realism restrictions, and GMD in the past has only achieved ten intercepts during 18 tests (a 55 percent success rate), with only two of four tests since 2008 being successful. Although Fort Greely’s final eight GBIs will have an upgraded kill vehicle (the CE-II Block I, debuted in the May 30 test), 20 of the 32 GBIs currently there have an older kill vehicle that has not had a successful intercept since 2008. Because ensuring a missile intercept might require as many as four GBIs, nine North Korean ICBMs would exhaust the GMD’s current arsenal. Necessary GMD improvements like new sensor systemsand a Redesigned Kill Vehicle (RKV) urgently require more funding.

Along with inadequate funding, “disaggregation” of procurement, a policy initiated under Obama and made permanent by his MDA director on his last day in office under Trump, damages our missile defense readiness. As commentator Peter Weyrich notes, disaggregation “in-sources” missile defense development in the government. “Under this system, rather than purchasing programs off-the-shelf, the Air Force would buy components from different firms and try to piece the system together,” which is a “mandate for delay and waste.” Other commentators have noted that disaggregation “adds layers of bureaucracy to a process that had been more streamlined” and often involves parceling out work from a single proven company to untested firms.

Meanwhile Kim Jong-Un’s Machiavellian plans for nuclear Armageddon proceed apace. While his iron rule apparently suffers no budgetary shortfalls or bureaucratic obstacles, Washington, DC, policymakers should assure that spending and policy changes reverse years of missile defense neglect. North Korea’s doomsday clock is ticking, with perhaps incalculable costs.

The aftermath of the Cold War has seen the emergence of what neocon gurus Robert Kagan and William Kristol have called “benevolent global hegemony” of the United States. Throughout this period, key figures of both major parties have asserted that America’s unchallengeable military might was essential to the maintenance of global order. This period was marked by military interventions in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and (less overtly) in Syria. Each violent exercise of hegemony was validated by the rhetoric of “promoting democracy,” “protecting human rights,” “confronting aggression,” and by the invocation of alleged American exceptionalism.

That bipartisan consensus was codified in the official strategic doctrine. George W. Bush’s 2002 National Security Strategy declared that the U.S. would “extend the peace by encouraging free and open societies on every continent,” and—furthermore—bring about an end to “destructive national rivalries.” The Obama Administration’s 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance (“Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense”), which is still in force, claimed that the task of the United States was to “confront and defeat aggression anywhere in the world.” Such continuity of utopian objectives reflected the chronic refusal of the policymaking community in Washington to establish a rational correlation between strategic ends and means, or to see America as a “normal” nation-state pursuing limited political, economic, and military objectives in a competitive world.

As a result, one major source of instability in contemporary global order is the tendency of the most powerful player to reject any conventionally ordered hierarchy of American global interests. Traditional foreign policymaking may be prone to miscalculations (e.g. Vietnam), but in principle it is based on some form of rationally adduced raison d’etat. Deterritorialized strategy of full-spectrum dominance, by contrast, had its grounding in ideological assumptions impervious to rational discourse. It consistently creates outcomes—in Iraq, Libya, etc.—which are contrary to any conventional understanding of U.S. security interests.

Over the years, American “realists”—who accept that the world is imperfect, that violence is immanent to man, and that human nature is immutable—have often lamented the absence of grand-strategic thinking within the U.S. foreign-policy establishment. For the past quarter-century at least, successive administrations have displayed a chronic inability to deploy America’s political, military, economic, and moral resources in a balanced and proportionate manner, in order to protect and enhance the country’s rationally defined security and economic interests. Washington’s bipartisan, ideologically-driven obsession with global primacy (“full-spectrum-dominance”) has resulted in a series of diplomatic, military and moral failures, costly in blood and treasure, and detrimental to the American interest.

The 2016 presidential election, on the subject of foreign affairs, seemed to confront two polar opposites. On November 8, it appeared that Donald Trump, an outsider victorious against all odds and predictions, had a historic opportunity to make a fresh start. The moment was somewhat comparable to Ronald Reagan’s first victory in 1980. Reagan used grandiloquent phrases at times (notably the “Evil Empire”), but in practice he acted as an instinctive foreign policy realist. Likewise, Trump’s “America First” was a call for the return to realism based on the awareness that the United States needs to rediscover the value of transactional diplomacy aimed at promoting America’s security, prosperity, and cohesion in a Hobbesian world.

Some resistance from the upholders of hegemonistic orthodoxy was to be expected, as witnessed even before Trump’s inauguration by the outgoing administration’s frantic attempts to poison the well on every front possible. Giving up the neurotic desire to dominate the world, and recognizing that it cannot be shaped in line with the bicoastal elite class “values,” was never acceptable to the controllers of the mainstream media discourse and the government-subsidized think-tank nomenklatura. More seriously, some key components of the intelligence, national-security and military-industrial conglomerates proved effective in resisting Trump’s attempt to introduce traditional realist criteria in defining “interests” and “threats.”

Hillary’s World—Hillary Clinton was a leading exponent of the hegemonistic consensus. In 2002 she voted in favor of the Iraq war, the greatest foreign policy disaster in recent American history. In 2011 she tipped the balance within the Obama Administration in favor of the Libyan intervention, with devastating consequences for Libya, the region, and the world. She was the first major political figure in the world to compare Vladimir Putin to Hitler. She routinely saw military power as a tool of first resort: In the Obama cabinet she had been “the most hawkish person in the room in every case where she was in the room in the first place.” According to her aides, she subscribed to “a textbook view of American exceptionalism.”

Clinton’s strategic vision was a “known-known” of the 2016 campaign: open-ended global commitments in pursuit of hegemonistic goals. During the campaign she still advocated providing arms to the “moderate” Syrian rebels, which in reality meant further enabling non-ISIS jihadists supported by Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Her speech at the American Legion National Convention (August 31, 2016) was an exultant restatement of the doctrine of global hegemony. “The United States is an exceptional nation,” she declared,

“and is still the last, best hope of Earth . . . And part of what makes America an exceptional nation, is that we are also an indispensable nation. In fact, we are the indispensable nation. People all over the world look to us and follow our lead . . . [W]e recognize America’s unique and unparalleled ability to be a force for peace and progress, a champion for freedom and opportunity . . . U.S. power comes with a responsibility to lead, with a fierce commitment to our values . . . [W]hen America fails to lead, we leave a vacuum that either causes chaos or other countries or networks rush in to fill the void.”

Clinton’s triumphalist vision reflected the post-Cold War consensus, to which both ends of the Duopoly subscribed with equal zeal. Bipartisan consensus which she embodied prompted many establishment Republicans to support her. The continuity of duopolistic key assumptions, and the escalation of risks and tensions resulting from their application, was clearly predictable in case of her victory.

Donald’s Vision—Trump’s strategic concepts seemed less ideologically coherent than Clinton’s, but he was more rational in espousing his stated guiding principles and certainly more “realist” in policy detail. In the early days of his candidacy he repeatedly asked why must the United States be engaged everywhere in the world and play the global policeman. He raised the issue of NATO’s utility and core mission, a quarter-century after the demise of the USSR which it was created to contain. He even suggested creation of a new coalition in order to put America’s resources to better use, especially in the fight against terrorism. He repeatedly advocated rapprochement with Russia. He criticized the regime-change mania of earlier administrations, pointing out the “disastrous” consequences of toppling Saddam Hussein in Iraq. He said that he would leave Syria’s Bashar al-Assad well alone and focus on degrading the Islamic State.

Recently, two announcements regarding Afghanistan and the Arab-Israeli conflict suggested that the Trump administration is following the old failed strategies for dealing with the challenge of modern jihadism. If so, he is setting us up for the same old failures caused by the same old failure of imagination.

First, Trump announced a bold plan for dealing with Afghanistan, that 16-year-old conflict now in its third presidential administration. He set out an ambitious aim: “From now on, victory will have a clear definition — attacking our enemies, obliterating ISIS, crushing al-Qaida, preventing the Taliban from taking over Afghanistan and stopping mass terror attacks against America before they emerge.” He clarified that he would not make the mistakes of past administrations: no nation-building, no announcements of troop levels or withdrawal dates, no restrictive rules of engagements.

So far so good. But he also hinted that a diplomatic solution would be sought: “Someday, after an effective military effort, perhaps it will be possible to have a political settlement that includes elements of the Taliban and Afghanistan, but nobody knows if or when that will ever happen.” And he added that given such uncertainty, “America will continue its support for the Afghan government and the Afghan military as they confront the Taliban in the field,” suggesting that the war will continue indefinitely.

Yet all this depends on adding an unspecified number of troops, perhaps 4,000, whose mission will be mainly to support and train the Afghan army––pretty much what’s been going on for years. How this mini-surge will work when Obama’s surge of 33,000 soldiers in 2009––which raised the total number of troops to 100,000 by 2010––didn’t, isn’t quite clear. Prissy ROE and micromanagement from D.C. alone can’t account for that failure.

Worse, soon after Trump’s announcement, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson undercut Trump’s “We will always win,” by saying “We are there to facilitate and ensure that there is a pathway for reconciliation and peace talks. As the pressure begins to take hold, we believe we already know there are certain moderate elements of the Taliban [sic!] who we think will be ready and develop a way forward.” Even more astonishing, after he said the Taliban “will not win a battlefield victory,” he went on, “We may not win one, but neither will you.” Contra Trump, Tillerson implies that we are not fighting to destroy the enemy, but to “begin a process, a lengthy process, of reconciliation and a peace accord in Afghanistan.”

Once again, the delusions of diplomatic settlements take precedence over destroying the enemy and those who harbor him. I guess people have forgotten that LBJ’s similar strategy of fighting the North Vietnamese just enough to bring them to the negotiating table was a complete failure.

Meanwhile, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has asked Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian Arabs “to hold back on their threat to take unilateral diplomatic initiatives against Israel for a period of some four months, in exchange for an American commitment to submit a comprehensive diplomatic plan within that time frame to advance the diplomatic process,” as World Israel News reported. Trump plans to meet Abbas at the UN is September, where he will present his “road map for peace.” According to a White House statement, “Both sides agreed to continue with the US-led conversations as the best way to reach a comprehensive peace deal.” But they deny the quid pro quo of Palestinian constraint for a comprehensive plan.

Once again, the shibboleths and clichés generated by decades of diplomatic failure are passed around, despite the overwhelming evidence that the Palestinian Arabs are not interested in “two peoples living side-by-side in peace,” and use negotiation and complaints of “settlements” as a tactic in their “stages” strategy for destroying Israel. Meanwhile the terror continues, the incitement starting in preschool trains the next generation of “martyrs,” and the PA uses danegeld from the West to subsidize the families of jailed or killed terrorists.