Parable of the Rolled-up Newspaper

I saw a tweet storm that, alas, I can no longer find, asking, seriously, what is the point of sanctions.  The immediate question was addressed to Trump, but it applies just as well to US policy makers as a whole.

The author likens sanctions to toilet training a dog.  If you want to toilet train a dog, you smack it with a rolled-up newspaper when it pees on the floor.  If it goes outside, you do not smack it with a rolled up newspaper.  If you respond to the dog going outside by smacking it even harder to show how tough you are, you remove all incentive for the dog to become toilet trained, since the beatings are the same (or worse) regardless of what it does.

This obvious lesson somehow escapes the attention of the Blob when it comes to sanctions.  A hostile foreign country engages in some noxious behavior.  We respond by slapping on sanctions.  The power then responds by ceasing from the behavior that led to the sanctions.  But the Blob gravely warns that to remove sanctions would be a show of weakness, so we must continue the sanctions or even intensify them.  We make clear to the foreign government that no change in behavior on its part will be met by a favorable response from us.  And then we wonder why the foreign power doesn't change its behavior and conclude it is just proof of how unreasonable that country is.

Of course, ultimately behavior change is not the real point of sanctions.  The real point is two-fold.

In their milder form, sanctions are a way of expressing disapproval.  Once in place, even if the objectionable behavior ends, we can never remove them because to remove sanctions might be taken as an expression of approval.  So sanctions remain endlessly in place, even if they serve no purpose whatever, because to end the sanctions is to give up our self-righteous indignation.  See Cuba.  I suppose the equivalent would be smacking you dog with a rolled-up newspaper all the time because you dislike the dog regardless of its behavior. Not very useful for behavior modification though.

But very often the real purpose of sanctions is regime change.  This is even worse than imposing sanctions as a statement of disapproval.  It amounts to issuing an ultimatum to a foreign government, "If you don't drop dead, we will kill you."  Oddly enough, this ultimatum never produces a favorable response.  Still more oddly, our government never seems to understand why.  While sanctions as a statement give no real incentive for anything and leave the hostile power free to do as it pleases since our response will be the same regardless, attempts at regime change invariably convince foreign leaders of the need to oppose us at all costs and never show any weakness.

The equivalent would be if you decide the dog has so many bad habits that you will never cure all of them, so you decide to kill the dog instead.  Needless to say, if you really want to kill the dog, something a lot stronger than a rolled-up newspaper would be more effective.  But you have any number of household members/neighbors who do not agree with your goal of killing the dog and so you keep insisting that you are not trying to kill the dog, but merely to toilet train it and that is why you are only beating it with a rolled-up newspaper.  You are not able to give a coherent account of why you beat the dog harder and harder regardless of what it does.  If you have other household member/neighbors who do agree with the goal of killing the dog, you tell them that are attempting to kill the dog.  You are not able to give a coherent account of why you never use anything stronger than a rolled-up newspaper.  Neither group trusts you much.

 But their distrust is nothing compared to the dog's.  Because, oddly enough, if you try to beat a dog to death with a rolled-up newspaper, the dog is most unlikely to passively submit.  If the beatings become truly menacing, it may start doing something like violently resist or bite you.  Naturally, you take this as proof of how wicked the dog is and how much it deserves to die.  Even if you do succeed in beating the dog to death with a newspaper, it will only be at the cost of considerable injury to yourself.

Trump and the Middle East -- the Iran Deal

So, now that the rubber meets the road, what about the Iran deal?  What is Trump trying to accomplish in withdrawing from it?  And what will be the likely consequences?  And, given that basically everyone agrees that it would be disastrous for Iran to get a nuclear weapon, why are so many people determined to destroy the agreement that is preventing that outcome?

The answer to that last appears to be regime change, or at least behavior change so extreme as to be regime change in all but name.  The assumption is that if we tighten the screws enough, we can topple the Iranian government.  Also unstated in this assumption is that if we topple the Iranian government, we will automatically like what takes its place.  Underlying much of the opposition to the agreement in the first place was the assumption that if we had just held on a little longer, the government would have fallen and been replaced by one more to our liking.  Underlying the wish to withdraw from it is the assumption that the Iranian government will fall once we re-apply the screws and, of course, that we will like what takes its place. This appears to be one alternative the Trump is hoping for.

What is likely to actually happen?  I can see as an optimistic scenario an effective game of good cop-bad cop with us and Europe.  Europe maintains trade with Iran so long as they stick with the the terms of the nuclear deal, but they are worried about that crazy US out there.  If the Iranians fear that Europe will abandon them too if  they misbehave, maybe it will create stronger incentives for Iran to curb much of its other objectionable activities.

Maybe.  But Iran's recent firing rockets across the Israeli border is not exactly encouraging.  Those rockets appear to have been part a long series of retaliations and counter-retaliations between Israel and Iran and may not be related to the nuclear deal at all.  But at a very minimum, the recent escalation means that our pulling out of the Iran deal is not leading to any immediate improvement in Iran's behavior.  And there is at least some evidence of stepped-up cyber hostility as well.

But even if worse escalations occur, it is not clear that Donald Trump will be concerned.  He appears to think that since his threats and bluster persuaded North Korea to want to talk to us, rising tensions will produce a similar change in Iran.  In particular, if Trump believes that North Korea is about to give up its entire nuclear arsenal, he may be expecting Iran to grant all our demands if we ramp up tensions enough.

So, short term forecast -- rough sailing ahead.  Long term forecast -- who knows.

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.