RUTHFULLY YOURS

Should American personnel be removed from Syria, President Erdogan will be able to use his tanks and airplanes to revive the Turkish genocidal tradition by expelling the Syrian Kurds from their towns and villages along the entire border with Turkey. These are the same Kurds — remember Kobani? — who drove out ISIS from its Syrian “caliphate” and enabled other Syrians to regain their freedom and return to their own homes.

In early February, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman begged Turkey to cease its assault on Afrin, claiming — truly enough — that “the continuation of Turkey’s military operation will facilitate the return of instability and terrorism to Syria.” Indeed, deprived of American protection, the Kurds will hardly find anyone else willing to rescue them apart from Iran. If that happens, the Kurds will reward Iranians with same loyalty and devotion that they showed hitherto to Americans. Understandably, since they will owe their lives and homes to Iran, not to the United States.

Even if the implications of the massacre in Afrin were not so clearly evident, President Trump should remember the worst mistake of Obama’s presidency in the area. This was Obama’s precipitous and petulant decision to withdraw residual American military forces from Iraq. So, Mr. Trump, we beg and urge you not to copy Obama, who made his big mistake and reversed it, but to reverse your mistake before you make it.

The terrified dire warnings that greeted Donald Trump’s election to the presidency of the United States have proved to be mostly exaggerated or imaginary. In some cases, like his decision to terminate absurd diplomatic antics about the location of Israel’s capital, he has put an end to nonsense perpetrated by politicians throughout the world, including all recent American presidents. Very sadly, extremely sadly, he now seems inclined to repeat the worst mistake of his predecessor, President Obama.

WASHINGTON — Two GOP senators urged President Trump in a letter today to sell new F-35s to Taiwan “as a necessary deterrent to China’s aggressive military posture across the Asia-Pacific region.”

Trump began his presidency by taking a call from Taiwan’s president that infuriated China, but has drawn closer to the “very special man,” as he calls Chinese President Xi Jinping, throughout his term — his tariffs announcement last week notwithstanding.

The administration’s Taiwan policy has been hazy, prompting Congress to try to push Trump to support the island over the PRC.

Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) wrote to Trump that the administration should “commit to providing new, U.S. made fighters to aid in Taiwan’s self-defense.”

“Since the early 1950s, the United States has promoted peace by ensuring that Taiwan has the means to defend itself. The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), states that the US should ‘maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan,’ which codifies the U.S. policy of robust support for Taiwan’s self-defense into law,” the senators noted.

“After years of military modernization, China shows the ability to wage war against Taiwan for the first time since the 1950s,” they added. “However, with your leadership, it is possible to help Taiwan remain a democracy, free to establish a relationship with China that is not driven by military coercion. Taiwan has a legitimate requirement to field a modern fighter fleet to address a myriad of defense contingencies. Therefore, Taiwan is requesting U.S. support in their procurement of the F-35B.”

The U.S. sold 150 F-16s to Taiwan in 1993, and the island currently has approximately 144 F-16 fighters in its inventory. Cornyn and Inhofe noted that “15 are in the U.S. for training, and an additional 24 will be offline on a rolling basis in their ongoing upgrade program that runs through 2023,” so “at a reasonable operational rate, Taiwan is likely able to field only 65 F-16s at any given time in defense of the island… not enough to maintain a credible defense.”

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen wants to buy the F-35B vertical take-off and landing aircraft to bolster Taiwan’s air defense. CONTINUE AT SITE

Boy, I hope President Trump doesn’t charge tariffs on Chinese products to the U.S. That may cause China to retaliate. They may start charging tariffs on U.S. goods. That seems to be the story line we are getting, not everywhere, but in most of the press overall. It’s as if China isn’t already charging tariffs on a wide range of products.

The way the media reports Trump’s trade policy is to suggest that he is stupid and is going to destroy the economy if he imposes mirror tariffs on Chinese goods. Yet at the same time, many suggest that existing polices are great.

It would be helpful if news organizations listed some existing tariffs on U.S products being exported to China.

I looked up cars, car parts, computers and grains, and they all have significant tariffs or taxes already. (Nothing I looked up did not have a tariff or tax.)

Here is what I found.

Manufactured in Toledo, Ohio, the Wrangler is a descendant of the jeeps that were used by American forces in World War II. Equipped with a 3.6-liter engine and a five-speed automatic transmission, the Rubicon edition of the Wrangler has a suggested retail price of $40,530 in the United States.

But in China, the same vehicle would set a buyer back by a hefty $71,000, mostly because of taxes that Beijing charges on every car, minivan and sport utility vehicle that is made in another country and brought to China’s shores.
Chinese rules on taxes for the import of auto parts impose 15% charge (on top of the 10% customs duty) on imported car parts when they are destined to a
model that fulfils the “characteristics of a whole vehicle.”

The buzz about President Trump’s possible meeting with North Korean strongman Kim Jong-un has been followed by the usual Trumpophobe disdain matched by Trumpophile enthusiasm. But if this recent talk of an unprecedented presidential face-to-face negotiation with Kim turns into a reality, don’t expect much other than photo-ops and diplomatic clichés like “progress” and “productive,” with nothing meaningful accomplished. The Kim dynasty has been playing this game for three generations, and have become masters of exploiting the West’s diplomatic magical thinking that talk alone can stop a determined aggressor.

We know that Trump considers himself a master negotiator, eager to solve intractable foreign policy conflicts. Getting the Norks to denuclearize would be “the greatest deal in the world,” as the president said, something he reminds us his three predecessors could not accomplish. Perhaps the time is ripe. Kim may be feeling pressure from economic sanctions, especially since China has supported U.N. sanctions on their regional pit-bull. Or maybe Kim takes seriously Trump’s “fire and fury” threats, considering that the unconventional Trump may be a Nixonian “crazy” man who just might act on his bluster.

But as a perusal of the history compiled by the Arms Control Association shows, the canny Kims have survived over three decades of sanctions and saber-rattling rhetoric, participated in numerous negotiations and summits, and signed a plethora of agreements they have serially violated. Their aim has been clear throughout: possession of nuclear weapons that can be delivered on missiles capable of reaching the U.S. The vague “concessions” and “concrete actions” expected of the North before talks can begin, not to mention the suggested goal of the talks that North Korea gives up its nuclear weapons, are highly unlikely to be forthcoming.

The Trump administration announced Thursday it is implementing new sanctions against Russian entities and individuals for their roles in election meddling and cyberattacks, in what amounts to the starkest repudiation of the Putin regime since Trump’s election.

The new round of sanctions targets 19 individuals and five entities, including the Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin funded digital-propaganda group that sowed discord in the American electorate during the 2016 race by posting incendiary content on social-media outlets like Facebook and Twitter.

The announcement coincided with the release of a joint statement by the White House, Britain, France, and Germany chastising Russia for its suspected role in perpetrating a nerve-gas attack on a former Russian spy and his daughter living in the United Kingdom. In the statement, the allies voiced their support for the U.K. and affirmed their belief that Russia was responsible for the attack.

The move, which targets many of the same entities identified by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, comes roughly a month and a half after the administration missed a congressionally mandated deadline for imposing new sanctions in response to Russian election meddling.
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The Trump administration was roundly criticized for failing to meet the deadline, stipulated by a bill passed and signed into law in August, with Democratic lawmakers accusing the White House of pandering to Putin.

In addition to election meddling, the sanctions announcement cited a number of cyber attacks, including a previously undisclosed Russian attempt to breach the U.S. energy grid.

“The administration is confronting and countering malign Russian cyberactivity, including their attempted interference in U.S. elections, destructive cyberattacks, and intrusions targeting critical infrastructure,” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said in a statement. “These targeted sanctions are a part of a broader effort to address the ongoing nefarious attacks emanating from Russia.”

Democracies need different rules of engagement with authoritarian regimes.

“Iknow very well that right now some are trying to isolate Cuba. We Europeans want to show, on the contrary, that we are closer to you than ever,” said Federica Mogherini, the head of the European External Action Service, in a not-so-subtle dig at the Trump Administration. A few weeks later, Carl Bildt, Sweden’s former Prime Minister, pussyfooted on Twitter around Iran’s aggressive posture in the Middle East: “Yes, Iran obviously sent a drone into Israel airspace. Israel regularly violates the airspace of Lebanon and Syria.”

The idea that political dialogue, or engagement on economic and cultural topics, can bridge the gap between countries governed by leaders who are accountable to voters and taxpayers and those pillaged by a narrow predatory elite counts among the worst misconceptions plaguing foreign policy thinking on the political Left and Right. While the two approaches often differ in their prescriptions, Barack Obama’s multilateralism and Donald Trump’s cynical realism are two sides of the same coin, producing much the same effect: to obscure the motivations of leaders of different countries and the particular incentives that they face.

Fortunately, there is an alternative to both. Even though defending Bush-era neoconservatives might not be the most popular of propositions these days, the neoconservative outlook left little space for the illusion that democracies and authoritarian regimes could behave alike in any meaningful respect in the international arena. That insight needs to be re-learned today by both American and European policymakers.

No social scientist would deny that the nature of a political regime—or its institutions—matters a great deal for domestic policy outcomes. Autocracies dependent on natural resource revenue are less likely to supply public goods and be responsive to the wishes of voters and taxpayers than democracies where public revenue comes from general taxation. Governments facing weak political scrutiny will rely on networks of patronage catering to political loyalists instead of providing public goods and a social safety net for the general public. And so on and so forth.

The same logic extends itself easily to foreign policy. When authoritarians engage in “multilateralism” or “dialogue,” they are not doing the same things as liberal democracies. A government that is accountable to voters faces public scrutiny and criticism of its foreign policy decisions. Large and consequential commitments made by liberal democracies—such as EU and NATO membership, for example—do not reflect just the whim of the leaders of the moment but a broader societal consensus, running across political divides. Not even Poland’s Law and Justice Party and Hungary’s Fidesz question the geopolitical decisions that previous governments made after the fall of communism.

Because of a much smaller number of veto players, one should accord a much lower degree of trust to promises made by authoritarians. Not even the staunchest supporters of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action would dare to argue that the deal means a material shift in the long-term ambitions of Iran’s mullahs, who are likely to scrap it the moment it becomes convenient for them. After all, the regime did not acquiesce to the temporary restrictions on its nuclear program in good faith but only because the Iran Deal also empowered it to play a much more aggressive game in the Middle East.

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.”

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.