What Set Me Off

So with that out of the way, I must admit what got me started.  It was some wildly irresponsible speculation about Paul Manafort's notes from the infamous Trump Tower meeting.  Taken out of context, the notes are rather cryptic.  They say:

Bill browder
Offshore — Cyprus
133m shares
Companies
Not invest — loan
Value in Cyprus as inter
Illici
Active sponsors of RNC
Browder hired Joanna Glover
Tied into Cheney
Russian adoption by American families

Perhaps it was inevitable that this would lead to wild speculations.  Some have connected it with a passage from the Steele Memorandums which provides:

At least one part of this memo is definitely true.  A 19% share of Rosneft was definitely sold to a mystery purchaser.  There was some speculation that the purchaser might be Trump or the Trump camp, but the purchaser has since been determined to be Qatar.  But that leaves suspicious minds to speculate that, although Trump enterprises did not receive a 19% share of Rosneft, they might have received the brokerage fee, which would be quite substantial.

This has led to wild speculations that the 133 million shares are the commission on the sale of about 2 billion shares of the total 10.6 billion Rosneft shares.  References to "Cyrus," "offshore," "not invest -- loan," and "illic" are plans to launder the proceeds.  The "active sponsors of RNC" is taken to mean illicit donations by Russia to the RNC.

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but this is paranoia, plain, pure and simple.  It reminds me of nothing so much as the central plot premise of Foucault's Pendulum.  Three editors are publishing a bunch of outlandish conspiracy theory works of zero literary merit.  Among the authors is an unreconstructed Fascist who found a mysterious and cryptic note in an archeological excavation of a 14th Century French city, full of strange codes and secret items transported to mysterious destinations.  He develops the note into an elaborate, centuries-old conspiracy.  The editors weave their own conspiracies around it.  They get a rather deflating insight from the girlfriend of one of the editors, who does a little historical research and discovers that the place excavated was an account house for merchants, the codes were common abbreviations of the day, the items were frequently traded articles of merchandise, and the places were landmarks around town.

Such is the case with Manafort's notes.  First of all experienced intelligence professionals agree that first meetings do not immediately jump into criminal conspiracies.  First meetings are innocuous, allowing all parties plausible deniability so that if (for instance) Junior had gone to the FBI, the participants could claim the whole meeting was innocent.  In this case, Natalia Veselnitskaya, the head of the Russian delegation focused on having the Magnitsky sanctions against Russian oligarchs repealed.  She presented extensive dirt on Bill Browder, sponsor of the sanctions, but no dirt on Hillary Clinton, except that some of Browder's investors were major contributors to the Democratic Party and may have contributed to Hillary as well. 

Veselnitskaya made available a memo of what she claims to have discussed at the meeting.  Manafort's notes track the memo.  He begins with "Bill browder," the main subject of the memo.  The 133 million shares refer to 133 million shares of Gazprom (a Russian gas company) that Browder supposedly illegally bought, laundered through three Cypriot companies (hence the reference to offshore, Cyprus and companies).  It is not clear what "Not invest -- loan" means, but presumably part of the alleged scheme, along with the second reference to Cyprus and "illici[t]."  "Joanna Glover" is not mentioned in the memo, but apparently Juleanna Glover worked with Browder to promote the Magnitsky sanctions and also worked for Cheney in the past.  The reference to adoptions is not in the memo, but was clearly raised at the meeting as a reason to lift the sanctions.  The only odd thing in the notes is "Active sponsors of RNC (Republican National Committee)," when Veselniskaya actually called Browder and his investors supporters of the DNC (Democratic National Committee).  This article speculates that "RNC" may have been a typo or autocorrect from DNC. 

None of this means, by that way, that we should accept claims that the meeting was simply a lobbying attempt and that the belief that the Russians had damaging information on Hillary was all a misunderstanding.  Veselnitskaya has been caught recruiting others to serve as Russian agents.  The planners of the meeting took great care not to have any direct electronic communications with the Trump campaign, but to either meet in person or communicate through someone who would not attract suspicion.  The general style resembled the early stages of recruitment. 

But can we please not go drawing connections that don't exist, not invent elaborate plots where a simple explanation is at hand and, in short, not give way to paranoia.  Reality is bad enough.

Trump Feeds My Paranoia

One of the things I hate about Donald Trump is the way he encourages paranoia in people I would otherwise take seriously -- including myself.

Presidents have been subjects of conspiracy theories, probably for as long as we have had Presidents.  And certainly those conspiracy theories have been more widely circulated since 1992.  Bill Clinton has been accused of everything from running drugs in Arkansas to the Clinton Body Count.  GW Bush has been accused of engineering 9-11.  Barrack Obama has been accused of being a Kenyan-born Muslim infiltrator and plotting to invade Texas in Operation Jade Helm.

And up until now these wild stories were easily dismissed.  But Donald Trump?  Well, here is his problem (or here are his problems).  He owns an immense business empire that he has not divested himself of, and probably cannot divest himself of, given that name branding is his stock-in-trade.  He operates foreign policy with governments that have the authority to facilitate or obstruct his business ventures in ways that can create at least the appearance of conflict of interest.  And he gives no evidence of having any concept of the public good apart from his personal advancement.  And who simultaneously had the Russian government manipulating the election in his favor and had several campaign operatives with sleazy Russian ties.  And who, unlike any previous President, has the support of the conspiracy nuts who believe he is on their side, and who seems to believe a whole lot of conspiracy theories that anyone with any sense should dismiss out of hand.

With all that, it gets a little too easy to start looking for connections among a wide array of events and end up drawing connections that don't exist.  And that is the very definition of paranoia.

Consider some of the stories coming out. 

Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen was attempting to negotiate a contract to build a Trump Tower in Moscow at the same time that Russia was manipulating the election in Trump's favor.

China approves Ivanka Trump's trademarks just about the same time that Donald Trump enters into an agreement to save the Chinese telecom ZTE. 

Qatar refuses Jared Kushner a loan.  Kushner and Trump then back Saudi Arabia in its blockade of Qatar.  The Qatari government then cleared the loan and the US began pushing for a resolution.

Michael Cohen sets up Essential Consultants, LLC, which gives all appearance of being an influence peddling scheme.  It will take a long time to sort out whether any influence was actually peddled.

And now it is reported that the Ukrainian government paid $400,000  or $600,000 to Cohen to set up a meeting with Trump.  At that meeting a deal was reached -- the US would sell Ukraine lethal weapons and Ukraine would drop its investigation of Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort's incredibly sleazy dealings with Ukraine's pro-Russian party.  This is usually portrayed as a concession by the Ukrainians -- that they saw dropping the investigation as the price of support.  But it could be a game of blackmail -- sell us arms, or we spill the beans on Paul Manafort.

Anyone with a lot of research time and a minimum of imagination can draw all sorts of connections between Trump's foreign relations and his business activities and find suspicious proximity.  And here is the thing.  I certainly don't believe that all these stories are true.  With any other President, I would have dismissed the whole thing as paranoia pure and simple.  But with Donald Trump, I can't rule out the possibility that at least some of these stories might be true.  And if even one is true, it would be an impeachable offense, not to mention a scandal unprecedented in our history.

The Middle East Lends Itself to Controlled Experiments

I am generally not a fan of counterfactual histories.  They are attempts to show that if some other policy that the speaker/writer prefers had been followed, the outcome would have been much better than the one we have now.  It is much easier to imagine how things might have turned out better than to foresee all the ways some alternative course might have gone wrong -- what Donald Rumsfeld was (unreasonably) mocked for calling "the unknown unknowns."  There is no way to run a controlled experiment to see how these alternate scenarios might have gone if actually tried.*  Nonetheless, the Middle East has way of presenting thorny, persistent problems that defy all attempts to tackle them.  By attempting on approach and then another to the Mideast's intractable problems, be have as near as can be found to a controlled experiment in our various policy approaches.

Consider the first Gulf War.  Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army invaded and conquered Kuwait.  The US and a team of allies joined forces and drove them out.  However, our army stopped at the border and did not march on Baghdad to finish Hussein off, assuming that defeat would lead to his overthrow.  Although revolts broke out across the country, Hussein successfully crushed them and held on to power, leaving the US to wonder how to deal with him.  Conventional wisdom held that we had made a terrible mistake in not finishing Hussein off, and that all would have been well if only we had proceeded.  Then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney defended our decision, saying:

[I]f we'd gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn't have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off.

Twelve years later, the US government decided that not deposing Hussein had been a mistake that we should correct, and Cheney (by then Vice President and widely believed to be the power behind the throne) was one of the strongest advocates of the invasion.  Cheney would have the opportunity to see a controlled experiment play out and his earlier predictions proved absolutely right.  One just doesn't hear very often anymore about the mistake we made in not going all the way after freeing Kuwait.

Current conventional wisdom holds that Obama could have prevented the mess that currently exists in Syria and the rise of ISIS if he had left a residual force of 5,000 to 10,000 in Iraq.  Like the old conventional wisdom that all would have been well if we had only deposed Saddam Hussein, this us not treated as a possible outcome, but as a self-evidence certainty. 

But we run into problems.  As for the residual force in Iraq the Iraqi parliament refused to authorize a continued US stay.  It is often proposed that the Nouri al-Maliki government really wanted US troops to stay and that an unofficial agreement could have been reached.  And then, it is assumed, the presence of US troops would have made everyone get along and prevented the rise of ISIS.  Maybe.  But I can think of any number of ways it might have gone wrong.  Since it is undisputed that the Iraqi people in general did not want US troops in their country, a new insurgency might have broken out against them.  The rise of ISIS was in response to al-Maliki's oppressive, anti-Sunni policies.  Was it the place of US troops to make Maliki change his policies?  And, if so, how long would Maliki have agreed to let our troops stay, and should be have kept troops in place against the wishes of the host government?  Well, now we are hearing hints of an ISIS comeback and conventional wisdom is unanimous that the only way to prevent it is to leave a small residual force in Syria.  I guess we will see just how effective such small residual forces are. 

Another error Obama is regularly accused of making in the Middle East is not speaking out soon enough and forcefully enough when demonstrations broke out against the Iranian government in 2009.  If only Obama had spoken out soon enough and forcefully enough in condemning the Iranian crackdown and supporting the protesters, conventional wisdom is certain that he would have toppled the Iranian government (and, of course, that we would have liked what took its place).  When anti-government demonstrations broke out again on Donald Trump's watch, Trump was not going to make the same mistake twice.  He immediately, loudly, and forcefully, expressed support for the protesters and condemned the crackdown.  In this he garnered great praise.  Obama critics everywhere demanded to know why Obama couldn't have done the same thing.  How difficult would it be?  Somehow, critics failed to notice the the protests nonetheless sputtered out, and that Trump's forceful speaking out had exactly the same effect as Obama's silence, which is to say, none at all.

But above all else, Obama is blamed for the ghastly civil war in Syria.  Conventional wisdom has it that if only he had intervened earlier and more forcefully in Syria's civil war, we could have toppled Assad and prevented the carnage.  Some accounts see our mistake as not moving earlier and more forcefully to arm the moderate opposition.  But above all, Obama's mistake is seen as not bombing Assad when he used chemical weapons in 2013, despite having pledged to do so.  Conventional wisdom assures us that dropping bombs in 2013 would have toppled Assad without escalating or requiring a significant ground commitment of US troops and would have maintained US credibility.  Conventional wisdom is emphatic that no President before Obama 2013 ever made a threat and failed to follow up on it.  And conventional wisdom does not think too hard about what would have happened if we had succeeded in toppling Assad, but simply assumes that all would have been well.

Well, we have had at least a partial test of conventional wisdom (twice) when Trump responded to chemical attacks by dropping bombs.  Conventional wisdom applauded, said this was exactly what Obama should have done, pointed out that there had been no escalation and the US had not committed ground troops and generally proclaimed US credibility to be restored.  Somehow unnoticed in all this celebration -- the air strikes were pinpricks, strategically  meaningless, with no effect whatever on the actual war.  So Trump has now performed a controlled experiment and conclusively proved that the US could have made airstrikes without ill effect so long as the strikes were strategically meaningless and had not actual effect on the outcome of the war, other than to deter further chemical attacks.  And I don't know.  Maybe the people who condemn Obama for not bombing any targets would have applauded a pinprick strike and said that it made no difference whether the attack actually had an impact on the war, the point was simply to do something establish US credibility.  But somehow I wouldn't bet on it.

But what if we had intervened earlier and more forcefully on behalf of the rebels.  Would have toppled Assad?  Possibly.  Conventional wisdom assumes that if we had acted early and forcefully enough, the Russians would have backed down, rather than risk a confrontation between nuclear powers.  But another outcome is possible.  Russian intervened in force only when it appeared that Assad was in danger of losing.  Possibly an earlier move to topple Assad would simply have meant earlier Russian intervention to prop him up.  That one does not lend itself well to controlled experiment.

But what if we had successfully toppled Assad?  So far as I can tell, conventional wisdom simply assumes that all would have been well.  The same source laments:

Instead of implementing what had sounded like the commander-in-chief’s directive, the State Department was saddled in August 2012 by the White House with a make-work, labor-intensive project cataloguing the countless things that would have to be in place for a post-Assad Syria to function. But how to get to post-Assad? The White House had shut down the sole interagency group examining options for achieving that end.

What he appears to be saying is that we should have toppled Assad first and worried about what would follow later.  But we had already performed two controlled experiments on what happens if you topple the tyrant first and worry about what to do next later -- Iraq and Libya.  Both countries degenerated into civil war and anarchy.  Given how immensely fragmented the Syrian opposition was, and how many different factions had backing of different Mideastern powers, by far the most likely outcome of toppling Assad would have been chaos, anarchy, and intervention and escalation by rival powers.  It is not unreasonable to want to figure out how to avoid such an outcome, preferably without requiring a large-scale commitment of ground troops, before removing the devil we know.  The only truly honest and open-eyed argument in favor of toppling Assad is to argue that such an outcome would still have been preferable to what we have now.  (I have heard that argument made, mostly on the grounds that the factions would have less fire power than the Assad has would and therefore be less destructive). 

And, I will grant, given that Assad has effectively won the war by now, that is one controlled experiment we will not have the opportunity to make.  But given how badly every intervention we have made in the Middle East has gone so far, can we please drop the assumption that all the ones we didn't make would have been great if only we had made them.

__________________________________________
*One might try complex, multi-player games.  I believe this can be made to work with economics, which follows actual economic laws.  But most other such scenarios are simply too complex and unpredictable for such games to be much use.

And a Quick Thought on Iran

Of course, the worst case scenario for Iran is the Iranians throwing out their nuclear inspectors and developing a nuclear bomb.  Given that they would have to centrifuge enough uranium to make a bomb, that would take some time.  General estimates are about a year, which would give us some time to respond.

I would also guess that if the Iranians ever develop a nuclear bomb, Donald Trump will be rather pleased, actually, because it will give him the opportunity to say that Obama's deal failed.  Worse yet, he will probably get away with it, and conventional wisdom will be that Obama and Trump both equally failed to stop Iranian nuclear ambitions. 

My reason for thinking that is that conventional wisdom says exactly the same thing about North Korea.  Bill Clinton had developed and agreement with North Korea that, in exchange for financial assistance, North Korea would keep it s plutonium reactor and processor under seal and admit weapons inspectors to ensure that it was sticking to the agreement.  As long as the agreement held, North Korea did not, in fact, develop a nuclear bomb.  But then Bush II deliberately blew up the agreement.  The North Koreans kicked out their inspectors, unsealed their reactor, and developed a nuclear bomb.  Clinton and Bush are considered as having equally failed to prevent it. 

So I imagine if the Iranians respond to Trump blowing up this deal by developing nuclear weapons, the President who negotiated the arms control agreement and the one who destroyed it will be blamed equally, just like in North Korea.

And Back to Korea Again

Well, well.  Things are moving a lot faster than I anticipated.  I had assumed that we and the North Koreans would hold a summit amid euphoria and wildly unrealistic expectations and issue some sort of joint communique papering over differences that we could interpret to mean that the North Koreans would give up all nuclear weapons and the North Koreans could interpret as freezing their existing program.  Disillusionment would set in once we realized just how far apart the sides truly were.  But no need to despair; a freeze of North Korea's nuclear program and reduction of tensions on the Korean peninsula would be well worth doing.

What I did not expect was the disillusionment would set in before we even held the summit.  But apparently the North Koreans decided that the euphoria was getting badly out of hand can could use a dash of cold water. They have made clear they are not giving up their nukes.  No big surprise there.  In threatening to cancel the summit over military maneuvers they knew about when the summit was announced, they are also demonstrating the sort of incredibly arrogant behavior that has made them such a difficult negotiating partner for all previous Presidents. 

So now what?  Clearly the North Koreans are testing us.  How to we respond.  I would say, don't cancel or scale by the military exercises.  The North Koreans knew about those and agreed to the summit despite them.  Canceling pre-planned exercises looks very much like being pushed around.  Don't fire John Bolton.  Much as I loath the guy, I loath the idea of North Koreans meddling in our government even more.  But do muzzle him. 

And above all, do recognize that lowering tensions is well worth doing even if it does not mean total nuclear disarmament by North Korea.  I highly recommend this column by David Clapper pointing out why insisting that we will not negotiate until the other side surrenders is a futile policy, and why reducing tensions will have to precede, not follow, any effort at nuclear disarmament.*  Clapper faults Obama for sticking to this longstanding policy, but can you imagine the outcry if he had abandoned it. General hysteria would have broken out warning that any negotiations before the other side surrenders is appeasement, and that diplomacy failed at Munich and must never be attempted again.  Even Trump has been running into that buzz saw, for Pete's sake.  And, of course, if John Kerry had achieved anything, Trump would be going out of his way to wreck it.


*One can certainly argue that the Obama Administration made a serious mistake in not seeking to reduce tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran before entering into a nuclear agreement.  Although it is far from clear that any of the parties would have been willing to reduce tensions regardless.

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.