Jul 30, 2017 · 3 min read
U.S. Foreign Policy During Trump: Status Update
Trump’s foreign policy, so far, is this:
- Reactive and undisciplined (possibly due to understaffing, which frustratingly continues with almost no press coverage or questioning) policy on North Korea, which so far as only increased the danger of accidental war with unfathomable costs to us and our allies. The strategic balance, assuming the DPRK even has warhead small enough to place in an ICBM, has not moved very much since the recent missile tests: the North Korean regime has always had a large conventional military threat pointed at the South, to whom we have security treaty obligations in case of an attack. Their nuclear capability has probably been able to reach Asian allies, like South Korea and Japan, since well before now. We need to reiterate our deterrent, of course. But besides that, there are no reasonable military options, and everyone knows that. This is because the DPRK has succeeded in building a mostly conventional deterrent, which they’ve had for decades. We’ve succeeded in deterring them for all that time, even though our policy on the North Korean regime has been an inconsistent, flailing mess since the fall of the Soviet Union and the “loose nukes” problem first gripped this country; we could continue to deter them, except with a coherent strategy, like the recent proposal from Secretary Robert Gates.
- Picking sides in the broader sectarian conflict — going for the Sunnis — in the Middle East. The Middle East is confounding, but one simple framework is the sectarian conflict: it’s in Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Syria, Iraq. Picking the Sunnis, as it were, in this case means funding the Saudis, UAE, Bahrain, Sunni, anti-ISIS militias in Northern Iraq and Syria — against Iran, the Syrian Alawite government, and Shiite anti-ISIS militias. ISIS tends to complicate the story, since both sides are fighting them. Hence, they won’t last: instead, the broader conflict described (loosely) above is of much more geopolitical importance. Picking sides is a terrible risk at a terrible cost, one that Obama deftly avoided, despite his many other failures in the region. The Iran nuclear deal was a part of this avoidance: reduce the possibility of nuclear weapons in the region threatening Israel or our military assets (not so much from the Iranian state as from terrorists either working with Iran or simply pilfering the technology or enriched uranium) while that broader conflict is playing out. There is no ostensible security benefit to the U.S. from picking sides or provoking Iran; at the very least, no official strategy behind this has been articulated other than jingoism about Iran.
- Absurd equivocations on our commitment to NATO, which is vital to avoiding a war in the Baltics. The former Warsaw Pact countries are the most belligerent — not without reason — when it comes to Russian aggression, but they are also therefore the most on a hair-trigger. De-escalation is only possible with unyielding U.S. commitment to the alliance. Given the risk that any Russian military conflict on European soil would inevitably involve U.S. one way or another, we might as well reiterate our commitment in advance, when it could do some good. Simultaneously, we should pursue de-escalation with the Russians, which Trump himself seemed to have favored. (It was possibly his only redeeming quality, in my judgment.) In Trump’s defense, it is now Congress that has taken the mantle of jingoistic rhetoric, though Trump has contributed tremendously by continuing to obstruct justice in the internal investigations of his campaign. I’m skeptical they broke the law — but it’s undeniable they are pathologically lying to the American people and that this only stokes the fire more. It’s a fairly predictable outcome of their usual, reactive politics.
So far, so good?
