Trump In the Middle East -- Saudi Arabia

I must concede that Trump's policy in the Middle East is more coherent than many people give him credit for.  In effect, he sought a bargain with Saudi Arabia -- stop your support for radical mosques and madrassahs that are breeding ground for terrorists and we will agree to a policy of "no daylight" in all your decisions.  The goal, of course, was to forge an alliance between the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel against Iran.

So how has it worked?  It has proved a mistake to rush to quickly to judgment.  For a while, our saber rattling with North Korea looked truly disastrous and like a possible precursor to war.  Now Korean relations are in an unprecedented thaw and member of the Trump administration are already popping the cork to celebrate North Korea's imminent surrender of its entire nuclear arsenal.  How things will end up -- let's wait and see.

The same applies to Saudi Arabia.  How is the end to funding of radical mosques and madrassahs going?  As a mere Enlightened Layperson, I have no idea.  But it seems improbable that such support can be cut off overnight, and even if such support does end, it will some time to get rid of all the radical Islamists who have risen up.  But if such a cutoff has occurred (or even started) it is a major step in the right direction.

How about the "no daylight" policy?  Well, it makes the Saudis happy.  And the Saudis are apparently pressuring the Palestinians to make peace with Israel.  And certainly the anti-Iran alliance is well underway.

But at the same time, "no daylight" with Saudi Arabia is causing problems because the Saudis keep doing things we wish they wouldn't.  

The Saudis have an ongoing war in Yemen, which they are blockading in an attempt to starve the pro-Iranian government into submission, accompanied by bombing on civilian targets.  We have been supporting the attempt since the Obama and stepping up support under Trump.  The blockade has led to malnutrition and disease on a massive scale and over 10,000 civilian casualties from air strikes.  No doubt we would condemn these as war crimes if Iran were doing them, but the good guys are doing them, so no problem.

Since Trump pledged "no daylight," Saudi Arabia has engaged in two other foreign policy adventures, less ruinous from a humanitarian standpoint, but clearly inexcusable and not successful.  It placed neighboring Qatar under blockade, with possible plans to invade, unless Qatar closed down Al-Jazeera and started toeing the Saudi line on foreign policy.  Trump supported the Saudi plans, not knowing that the US has an important military base on Qatar.  Is it necessary to point out that this is an example of why it is not a good idea to make foreign policy on blind impulse and dismiss knowledge as "elitist"?  Qatar responded by seeking protection from Turkey and trying to ingratiate itself with us.  All parties are now trying to back down from this awkward situation.

In Lebanon, the Saudis have long been worried about the power and influence of the Shiite militia Hezbollah -- reasonable.  They regard Hezbollah as a puppet of Iran and threat to Lebanese sovereignty -- true.  So how did they seek to alert the Lebanese people to the danger and counter the threat?  Why, by summoning Lebanon's pro-Saudi Prime Minister (a dual citizen) to Saudi Arabia, putting him under house arrest, and forcing him to step down as Prime Minister and replacing him with a more pliant substitute who would remove Hezbollah from the cabinet.  Unsurprisingly, this action did nothing at all to convince the Lebanese people of the threat that Iran posed to their sovereignty, and mostly served to anger them at Saudi Arabia.  The US quickly brokered the release of the Prime Minister, but Hezbollah gained seats in the next election.  Hezbollah is, indeed, an Iranian puppet, but the Iranians at least have the sense not to pull the strings so publicly.

And now the Saudis want the US to maintain a troop presence in Syria indefinitely but are not willing to send any troops of their own.

There is evidence that Trump is becoming disillusioned with the "no daylight" approach to Saudi Arabia.  Trump is now demanding that the Saudis pay for any troops we leave in Syria and attempting to persuade Arab countries to step in.  And in his latest visit to Saudi Arabia, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly told the Saudis to stop these feuds and focus on opposing Iran.

My overall grade here would be a C -- nothing disastrous, but some lessons learned the hard way.

Quick Follow Up on Korea

I am getting mixed reports on Korea.  On the one hand, North Korea is is offering a verified plan to destroy its nuclear testing site and stop unannounced missile testing.  This is altogether to the good, although it must might be because the North Koreans believe they have already completed what they consider necessary to have a credible deterrent.

On the other hand Secretary of State Michael Pompeo is proclaiming that he expects to walk away from the June summit with a plan for North Korea to give up its entire nuclear arsenal and all nuclear capacity.  Each step of the plan will be followed by a measure of sanctions relief, complete relief to be delivered only after complete disarmament.  This article even notes the contradiction, commenting:

Pompeo and other US officials have repeatedly said they are seeking North Korea's permanent verifiable denuclearization, while North Korean officials have said that they have already achieved their nuclear objectives.

So I suppose it is possible that Trump and Kim will walk away from the summit with a plan in place to scrap North Korea's entire nuclear arsenal.  Maybe some serious saber rattling was all that was needed to bring about complete capitulation.  Or, more probably, maybe tougher sanctions really are bringing North Korea to its knees.  But all this strikes me as unlikely.  Changes that dramatic do not usually take place in the timeframe of a few months.  Usually long and tedious negotiations are needed first.   North Koreans have long believed that nuclear weapons are an essential deterrent to regime change.  And the North Korean government held onto power under conditions of famine and mass starvation in the past.  But if I am wrong and North Korea is willing to give up its entire nuclear arsenal in exchange for sanctions relief, this is an extraordinary achievement and I will have to admit I was wrong about the Trump Administration on this one issue at least.

I would guess it more likely that the North Koreans believe they have achieved a credible deterrent and are willing freeze their nuclear program, halt testing, and perhaps enter into the long, tedious sort of arms control negotiations that were common during the Cold War.  If they are willing to do so, and to do so verifiably, this will be altogether to the good and will be a considerable diplomatic triumph for the Trump Administration.  It should certainly be possible for the parties at the summit to issue a joint statement vague enough to be taken as complete disarmament by our side and a freeze by the North Koreans.

But the real danger is this.  What if the North Koreans are willing to agree to a verifiable freeze and end to testing, but not to giving up their nuclear weapons, while we believe that they are willing to give up their entire arsenal.  Ultimately this mismatch will have to come to light.  That is when relations begin to deteriorate and move to the next phase of the euphoria-disillusionment-realism cycle the so often accompanies a diplomatic engagement.  And, if I am right about this, the important thing will be NOT to succumb to despair when we see how far the sides are apart, but to continue and achieve what is achievable.

And Another Piece of Advice for Trump Opponents

It has often been commented that Trump has so many scandals surrounding him that he presents s --an embarrassment of riches.  That proved to be a problem in the 2016 campaign.  Each weeks would reveal a new scandal that would get breathless attention and then be dropped in favor of the next shiny object (scandal).  Trump, on the other hand focused on one thing and one thing only -- Hilary's e-mails.  But he hammered relentlessly on the e-mails, even if not always for the same reason.  Sometimes he emphasized that the e-mails violated security protocols and thereby placed the nation in danger.  Sometimes he demanded that Hilary produced the deleted e-mails and insinuated that there must be something terribly incriminating about them.  And other times he harped on what the e-mails released by Wikileaks revealed about the Clinton Foundation and Hilary's willingness as Secretary of State to talk to large donors.  Every time he was accused of anything, he successfully turned the subject back to those damn e-mails and successfully got them to be seen as the biggest scandal by a candidate in the history of the Republic. 

So let us, by all means, do the same to Trump during the 2020 election.  Don't focus on the immense wealth of scandals that he has to offer.  That just looks like throwing everything as that wall to see what sticks.  Begin by running everything by carefully by polls and focus groups -- and by everything I mean not just scandals, but also policy matters -- and see what Trump's biggest vulnerability is.  And then endlessly harp on that.  Don't worry about anything else, no matter how horrible it may seem to you.  The goal is to defeat Trump.  Only then can we address whatever issue it is that you care about.  Instead, take whatever the American people are most bothered by in this Administration and hammer on it over and over, to the exclusion of everything else.  Make it to focus of every speech, every ad, every debate point, everything.  If asked about anything else, turn the subject back to that one thing.  If you keep hammering on it, the media will see no choice but to give it attention, too.  That was how Trump worked the refs to focus on Hilary's e-mails in 2016; we need to work the refs the same way.

Oh, yes, and don't try too hard to crack Trump's hardcore base.  Zero percent approval rating is not a thing in real life, and much as we think Trump may deserve it, it ain't gonna happen.  Focus on people who are persuadable.

Advice to Trump Opponents (That No One Will See)

Look, I'm as bad an offender as anyone else (hence the illustrations), but really we have to stop catastrophizing everything Donald Trump does.  It makes us look like Chicken Little.

Withdrawal from the Paris climate accords, threats of protective tariffs, recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the war of words with North Korea and now withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal. Every time Trump's opponents predict some unspeakable horror will result from his latest action and it fails to appear, we just reinforce his supporters in their belief that Trump is a lot smarter that the Establishment that criticizes him.

Look, I remain firmly of the opinion that deliberately wrecking the civilian federal government through corruption and incompetence and running foreign policy based on who flatters you most are not going to end well.  But the system is proving more resilient than many of us anticipated.  Saying this will end badly doesn't necessarily mean it will end in disaster (except in Puerto Rico, which no one ultimately cares about), much less that disaster will occur overnight.  Maybe deliberately wrecking the civilian federal government and running foreign policy by caprice will instead cause a variety of small problems that get bigger and bigger over time.  There is a definite pattern.

Republicans proposed legislation to repeal Obamacare and strip over 20 million people of their health insurance.  The great outcry stopped them, but instead they are now slowly undermining the exchanges and seeking to bring them down.  Stripping 20 million of their health insurance overnight is a political disaster, but stripping a mere 5 million of their health insurance each year for 4 years can achieve equal results with less attention.

Likewise, when Trump threatened trade, hysteria as a little misplaced given that he had no actual plans in place for doing so.  So nothing happened at least immediately.  Now we are in trade talks with China and they are not going well.  Most likely outcome -- not the ruinous trade war that some people are predicting, but a ramping-up of trade barriers that will bite and hurt.

During Trump's war of words with North Korea, some people noted that there was no actual heightened military alert.  And cooler heads in Iran are now pointing out that neither us reimposing the old sanctions nor Iran developing a nuclear weapon will happen overnight or easily.  But there are any number of less dramatic ways that things can go down hill.

So, please, folks.  By all means let us criticize Trump, as he so richly deserves.  But don't let it spill over into hysteria or we will only make ourselves look foolish.

A Very Short Post

Seriously, guys?  This is IT?  Of all the scandals surrounding Donald Trump, the one that is sticking involves payoffs to a PORN STAR?!?  I guess it's true that sex sells.

Trump and Foreign Policy -- Korea

Although people like me tend to assume that putting someone in charge of foreign policy who knows absolutely nothing about it and who bases foreign policy decisions on who flatters him most cannot possibly go well, I have to admit that nothing disastrous has happened so far, and that at least to major foreign policy triumphs may be in the works, although the old rule about not counting your chickens till they hatch still applies. 

Triumph One:  Korea.  North and South Korea have held a summit, and we will be holding a summit with North Korea in a month or two.   I was as alarmed as anyone over Trump's saber rattling toward North Korea.  I also thought it unfortunate that the South Koreans voted for the conciliatory party just as tensions were escalating, although given the scandals surrounding the hardline party, it was probably inevitable.  But it actually looks as though belligerence by the US and conciliation by the South Koreans is quite an effective combination, a good game of good cop/bad cop.  So good job all around (so far).

Just for the record, I am not one of those people who think that just talking to a hostile government is an immense unilateral concession, or that we should never negotiate until the other side surrenders. I had some concerns about the Trump Administration lacking finesse to plan the summit out in advance, but they actually seem to be doing a reasonably good job of it. 

My sense of caution would be this.  After observing any number of summits in the Middle East, I have found that they follow a certain pattern.  During the summit and in the immediate aftermath, a mood of euphoria takes hold.  A general honeymoon is underway and all things seem possible.  We are seeing that today with talk of North Korea giving up its nuclear arsenal, the two Koreas signing a peace treaty, and the US withdrawing its forces from the Korean peninsula.  But let's not get carried away just yet. 

Invariably the mood of euphoria is followed by an outbreak of disillusionment as things don't go as quickly and smoothly as seemed possible during those first heady days.  Inevitably it will turn out that Kim Jong-un is not willing to give up his entire nuclear arsenal in exchange for promises of sanctions relief somewhere down the line, and that the prospect of the US leaving South Korea will generate a huge outcry.  All will seem futile and tensions will rise again.

The secret to success is to be able to ride out the euphoria and the disillusionment.  Recognizing that disillusionment is itself a phase to be expected and not a sign that all is lost is critical.  Because if one can do that, then when the disillusionment fade, it will be possible to finally accomplish something, even if the "something" is less than one hoped for in those early, heady days.  I have no idea what can be accomplished  in Korea, but I am betting that persuading Kim to give up his entire nuclear arsenal is not going to be on the menu.  But freezing it, or scaling back, or reducing tensions between the two powers are all worth accomplishing.  And even if the only effect is to scale back tensions to what they were when North Korea first started testing bombs and rockets and Trump first started texting, that will be well worth doing.

Republicans are Playing Fizzbin with the Budget

At least we got a tax cut

So what is fizzbin?  Well, fizzbin is sort of like Calvinball if Calvinball was played with cards, and why shouldn't it be?

Captain Kirk explained the rules to three gangsters with sub-machine guns:

KIRK: The name of the game is called, uh, fizzbin.
KALO: Fizzbin?
KIRK: Fizzbin. It's not too difficult. Each player gets six cards, except for the dealer, uh, the player on the dealer's right, who gets seven.
KALO: On the right.
KIRK: Yes. The second card is turned up, except on Tuesdays.
KALO: On Tuesday.
KIRK: Oh, look what you got, two jacks. You got a half fizzbin already.
KALO: I need another jack.
KIRK: No, no. If you got another jack, why, you'd have a sralk.
KALO: A sralk?
KIRK: Yes. You'd be disqualified. You need a king and a deuce, except at night of course, when you'd need a queen and a four.
KALO: Except at night.
KIRK: Right. Oh, look at that. You've got another jack. How lucky you are! How wonderful for you. If you didn't get another jack, if you'd gotten a king, why then you'd get another card, except when it's dark, you'd give it back.
KALO: If it were dark on Tuesday.
KIRK: Yes, but what you're after is a royal fizzbin, but the odds in getting a royal fizzbin are astron. Spock, what are the odds in getting a royal fizzbin?
SPOCK: I have never computed them, Captain.
KIRK: Well, they're astronomical, believe me. Now, for the last card. We'll call it a kronk. You got that?
KALO: What?

Kalo now being completely confused, the party takes the opportunity to overpower him and the other sub-machine gun wielding gangsters.  (Don't try this at home).

So, let's play fizzbin with the budget.  Each player gets an uncertain but very large number of cards.  These cards stand for spending and revenue.  The shortfall of spending compared to revenue is called a "deficit."  Except when it's caused by deliberately cutting revenue, in which case it's called "skranch."  The object of the game is to get rid of the deficit.  A skranch, no the other hand, is just fine and does not have to be cut at all.  Unless a Democrat is in the White House, in which case the skranch turns back into a deficit and must be cut at all costs.  Unless the cost is restoring the revenue you deliberately cut while the Republicans were in power.  That would be a disaster.  And remember, if by some miracle the Democrats actually do get rid of the deficit, that is no obstacle to Republicans running up a skranch.  Then you can turn it back into a deficit next time the Democrats come along.

Come to think of it, this doesn't really sound like fizzbin.  The rules in fizzbin were were completely arbitrary, but at least they pretended to be randomly arbitrary.  They were not in obvious bad face, merely deliberately confusing.  To get the the level of bad faith Republicans play with the deficit, you really need to go back to Calvinball.