Danielle Ryan has a sensible take on Bundespräsident Von Trump's approach to foreign policy to date, Trump’s foreign policy: Bizarre and inconsistent, or more strategic than we think?Salon 07/30/2017: "Maybe the haphazardness and mixed messages that characterize Trumpian foreign policy are part of a grander strategy we cannot yet perceive — or maybe they are indicative of an administration that can’t even manage itself, never mind complex international conflicts."
She observes that such inconsistency isn't entirely surprising, "He has been on both sides of most issues at one point or another."
Ryan uses the example of Trump bombing Syria and then later ending support to the fabled Syrian Moderates, seemingly conflicting positions. She also notes that despite his apparent desire to improve relations with Russia, Trump's administration also announced what could be a significant anti-Russian escalation with Ukraine:
Why then, just a week later, did the new U.S. special envoy on Ukraine, Kurt Volker, announce during an interview in Paris that the U.S. was now considering sending weapons to the Kiev government, which could be used against pro-Russian rebels in the breakaway eastern regions of the country — a move that would undoubtedly undo any Moscow goodwill resulting from the decision to stop arming rebels in Syria?
And she describes:
... a creeping advance on the town of [Russian separatist area] Avdiivka by Kiev’s forces — and a subsequent effort to lay the blame solely on the separatists, while maintaining the government’s innocence.
Ukraine’s deputy defense minister blew the lid off that narrative when he told Ukrainian media: “As of today, despite everything, meter by meter, step by step, whenever possible, our boys have been advancing.”
It is unrealistic to think that support and weapons from the Trump administration would not increase tensions in Ukraine and irritate an already complicated situation. Throwing new weapons at the problem is no solution.
It would be a mistake to discount the role of plain incompetence in the Trump Family Business Administration's policies, foreign and otherwise.
Some progressives have expressed the hope that Trump is rejecting the "War Party" in favor of a less interventionist foreign policy. The problem is that Old Right isolationist views can sound superficially like pacifist ones. But that outlook, which seems to be Trump's basic reference point in foreign policy, is actually highly nationalistic and leans toward unilateral military solutions. This administration's dramatic de-emphasis on even basic staffing for the State Department and US embassies abroad is consistent with the rightwing isolationist approach.
Ryan opens the piece describing how cutting off the aid to the legendary Syrian Moderates can be taken as a pro-Russian policy, an anti-interventionist policy and/or a realistic, pragmatic move:
When Trump administration officials announced an end to the covert CIA program to arm and train Syrian rebels in their fight against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, many framed it as a win for Russia — and while it was indeed something Russia had been seeking for years, it also, more importantly, made sense.
For years, this “secret” effort to aid rebels against Assad had been openly reported. The program enjoyed a budget of up to $1 billion per year — yet it had achieved absolutely nothing. It only helped prolong the war and actually aided groups like al-Nusra (al-Qaida’s Syrian affiliate) and ISIS by allowing arms meant for “moderate” groups to enter into their hands instead.
Despite the effort ending in abject failure, much of the media reporting painted the decision to end this scheme as a catastrophe — simply because it also happened to benefit Russia (which supports Assad against the rebel forces). [my emphasis]
But even a strongly antiwar foreign policy would require competent diplomacy. And so far, that doesn't seem to be a prominent characteristic of this administration.
Chris Matthews and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper makes Trump's announcement that the CIA would be cutting off support to "the moderate opposition groups" (sic; Clapper) sound like a mindless concession to the Russia. And it may actually be. James Clapper: President Donald Trump Is Making Russia Great Again 07/20/2017:
But as Trump's Secretary of Energy Rick Perry once memorably observed, even a stopped clock is right once a day.
"Ever since Russia intervened in Syria in fall of 2015, its Aerospace forces have given support to the Syrian Arab Army in a bid to roll back and defeat the armed opposition, especially in the northwest of the country," he writes, adding:
Still, the Syrian Arab Army is small and stretched thin. The small and not very important CIA program was enough to keep some of the rebel groups going in ways that proved an irritant to the Baath government and to Russian strategic planners. They would much prefer that the US stopped supporting the rebels in any way. For one thing, withdrawal of Washington’s backing would be a huge blow to the flagging morale of the opposition. [my emphasis]
So it's a concession to Russia and the Assad government in Syria.
But the material effect on military operations is unlikely to be substantial:
Many of these remnants of the Free Syrian Army appear to have been small and to have controlled two valleys and a hill each. The most effective fighters in the opposition continued to be extremists, whether Nusra or its forrmal ally, the Freemen of the Levant.
The Free Syrian Army and the more radical groups have in any case been decisively defeated, with Russian help. The only reason given for continued US backing of a lost cause was to maintain some leverage to force Bashar al-Assad from office. But al-Assad won’t be forced out as long as he has Iranian and Russian support, so that wasn’t going to happen. The US program was just prolonging the violence in some northern provinces.
As Cole also alludes to in that post, the moderation of these Syrian Moderates has also been hard to find all along. But maybe the same people still searching for Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction" are searching for the Syrian Moderates.
But not all US aid to anti-Assad forces has been cut off:
The cancellation of the CIA program does not affect the Department of Defense effort in the northeast of Syria, which has formed the Syrian Democratic Forces, mainly leftist Kurds fighting ISIL.
Al-Akhbar (leftist, Beirut) wonders if this move will have an effect on the rivalry between US-backed rebels in the southeast near the Jordanian border where the US has a small base. That base is aimed at ISIL to its north but also at Iran and Iranian logistics for supplying Hizbullah. It could be that US troops will now be evacuated from this southeast pocket which would be a victory for Iran more than for Russia. [my emphasis]
It's always good to keep in mind that Turkey is highly suspicious of Kurdish separatists. And that the EU is relying very heavily right now on an agreement with Turkey to hold refugees headed for Europe. Richard Haass and Gareth Porter had these Twitter comments:
Bob Dreyfuss talks about the Don Jr. story in Smoke Gives Way to Fire in the Trump-Russia SagaRolling Stone 07/10/2017, "Until this weekend, there'd been lots of smoke, but little actual fire with regard to the Trump-Russia story. Now, the Trump administration is ablaze."
Charlie Pierce gives his take, What Do the Russians 'Have' on the Trump Family? Fear. Esquire Politics Blog 07/10/2017:
This, then, is Junior's official explanation: I thought we were colluding to ratfck the Democratic candidate, and the presidential election in general, but then she started talking about getting the mobsters' money back. Bitch set me up.
With last night’s report in the Times, I think we are officially past the point of the ‘was there collusion’ question. There was. The President’s son now has the barest argument that he tried to get damaging information about Hillary Clinton which he was told came from a Russian government campaign to help his father become president, only to find it was insufficient.
To me this seems like a generally meaningless and highly implausible distinction and claim. We are now into the territory not of ‘was there collusion or contact’ but how substantial was it. Given the circumstantial evidence, it’s always seemed probable to me that there were contacts or perhaps winks and nods somewhere. There were just too many points of contact between Trumpland and people tied to the Russian government for their not to be. But was it mere encouragement and heads ups, or did it go deeper. Was there – to use that word everyone resists – an actual conspiracy involving members of the Trump entourage and members of the Russian government?
The emails show music promoter Rob Goldstone telling the future US president’s son that “the crown prosecutor of Russia” had offered “to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary [Clinton] and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father”.
Goldstone adds: “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr Trump”.
“If it’s what you say I love it,” replies Donald Trump Jr.
And he's on his way to Europe this week for the G-20 Summit in Hamburg on Thursday. There will be the usual supply of protesters, including an "autonomous and anticapitalist" alliance calling themselves Welcome to Hell. which is advocting for militant disruptions: "With mass blockades and further actions we will sabotage the summit. We will hinder logistics in the port and make it clear that we can intervene in the capitalist flow of goods." (Hamburg City Strike)
But the biggest disrupter could be our current mad king, who has adopted a relatively hostile stance against the EU. And they aren't really in a mood to take it passively. Spiegel International reports on a recent broadcast made by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to Angela Merkel and one of the business groups whose interests she and her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party serve (Merkel Concerned G-20 Summit Could End in Fiasco 06/30/2017):
Standing next to an American flag, he read out a speech that was being transmitted to Berlin via video link. Specifically, it was being broadcast into the ballroom of a luxury hotel where German Chancellor Angela Merkel and several hundred guests of the Economic Council, a German business association that is closely linked to Merkel's political party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), were listening.
Ross had initially wanted to travel in person to the German capital, but he canceled at the last minute because, he said in the video, "urgent unexpected matters required that I remain in Washington." The commerce secretary then straightened his glasses and monotonously recited what his president expected of the Germans.
He demanded that Germany buy raw materials from the United States instead of from Russia, lower tariffs on automobile imports from the U.S. and ensure that America "obtain a larger share" of the European market. Otherwise, he added, the government in Washington, D.C., would have no alternative but to "engage in self-help."
Ross had been allotted a speaking time of 10 minutes, but when he still hadn't finished after 30 minutes, the event participants had heard enough. They turned down the sound and switched off the video link. The U.S. commerce secretary disappeared from the screen, silenced like a political gadfly. Some in the audience laughed.
And the differences are likely to show up at the G-20 Summit: "Environment, refugees, trade: On a long list of issues, Trump and his America-first administration are sabotaging the search for joint positions among the world's industrialized and emerging economies. The discrepancies are 'obvious,' Merkel said during a speech before German parliament on Tuesday, the discussions 'will be difficult.'"
Given Trump's obvious goal of weakening if not destroying the European Union, it is very much in the interest of the EU nations to stand more united than ever and to cooperate more closely.
But we say in the Iraq War crisis that the Cheney-Bush Administration was able to exploit different national perspectives to split off not only eastern European countries but Britain, Spain, Portugal and Italy away from the the antiwar position taking by Germany and France and supported broadly by the European publics.
The EU survived that crisis, as did NATO, the alliance more immediately affected by that controversy.
The post-Second World War US leadership was certainly focused on securing power and economic advantages to the United States. Within the framework of the bipolar world division that became the Cold War, the US leadership did pursue a visionary and bold approach to building international alliances, from the Marshall Plan to Bretton Woods to NATO to the grudging acceptance of decolonization in Asia and Africa. (Though obviously in some places like Indochina, that acceptance was very grudging.) The possible alternatives to the Cold War are always worth revisiting, especially now when much of the US foreign policy establishment embraces a New Cold War seemingly without much serious reflection. But within the context of the Cold War and the nuclear confrontation between the US and the USSR, the Western alliance did achieve the not inconsiderable accomplishment of preventing any new major war in Europe.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Warsaw Pact, the US under Old Man Bush's Administration and under Clinton's favored the formation of the EU and its expansion. But the US also favored a broadly expanded but relatively weaker EU, as opposed to a smaller and more unified version. The bipartisan approach was to prevent the EU from becoming a "peer competitor" to the US in world affairs.
While it's possible to see the policy of the US toward the EU as a pragmatic but cautious internationalism, the post-Cold War policy on NATO was considerably less visionary. The purpose of NATO was to defend Western Europe against a Soviet invasion. Once the Warsaw Pact and then the Soviet Union had fallen, NATO became an alliance in search of a mission. And each new step in eastward NATO expansion added to the risk with diminishing returns. Adding the Balkan states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia incorporated areas that had previously been parts of the Soviet Union and effectively placed the credibility (foreign policy mavens consider Credibility the holy of holies) and effectiveness of NATO on the line for countries that would be physically a big challenge to defend if Russia should decide on some kind of military aggression against them. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the decision to incorporate them into NATO was done with a lack of real seriousness.
Now in times of increased tensions with Russia - in part clearly a result of the NATO expansion itself - it would be much harder to redefine or replace NATO. And it would take a far more visionary and capable President than the current resident of the White House to do that. It would also take an Administration that understood the importance of diplomacy and the State Department whose job it is to conduct it.
The Trump Family Business Administration's so-called America First approach is raising a number of areas of potential confrontation between the US and the EU: tariff on steel, beef and other products; international enforcement against money laundering; Germany's trad deficit; environmental regulation.
But there is a basic problem with European unity: the austerity economics on which Germany and its currency Chancellor have insisted, a true triumph of hardcore rightwing dogma over pragmatism and moderation. In the economic crisis and most dramatically with the unending Greek debt crisis, insistence of austerity dogma has encouraged some genuinely bitter nationalist hatreds, the very thing the EU was founded to dissipate. That nationalism and lack of genuine cooperation and solidarity spilled over into the also unending refugee crisis. Europe can't end the movement of refugees in its direction on its own. One obvious immediate source of the refugee influx has been the wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East. The overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi as ruler of Libya with the active military intervention of NATO and the US, Britain and France in particular opened an additional stream of refugees from Africa. And for the EU countries to effectively oppose such wars, they will require a unity in foreign policy even in opposition to the United States beyond what they have shown so far. And they will also have to make decisions to oppose such wars, which certainly wasn't the case in the Libyan intervention.
In a longer term, the increasing effects of climate change are also driving immigration to Europa. Europe is more united on constructive climate policy than on Middle Eastern wars. But the need for a decently human response to immigration and improving the integration of immigrants is also a long term one. And, as it turns out, EU countries like Greece and Italy that were particular targets of nationalist contempt in the debt crisis from their richer EU partners have to bear much of the immediate brunt of the influx of refugees.
With Trump and Putin agreed at the moment on the need to weaken the EU, the EU badly needs to ditch austerity economics and bring their economic policies at least into the 20th century (Keynesianism) and to come up with a genuinely cooperative solution to immigration to replace Merkel's chronic extend-and-pretend approach.
President Trump created some press that no doubt pleased his fans earlier this month, saying that he had given his Secretary of Defense, James "Mad Dog" Mattis, who until recently was a serving general, the authority to decide on troop levels in Afghanistan. Pentagon stenographer and nominal reporter Michael Gordon reported on it for the New York Times, Trump Gives Mattis Authority to Send More Troops to Afghanistan 06/13/2017:
One United States official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing internal deliberations, said that Mr. Trump decided on Tuesday morning to grant Mr. Mattis the authority. It was the latest in a series of moves by the White House to give the Pentagon and its military commanders more latitude to deploy forces and carry out operations.
Mr. Mattis alluded somewhat cryptically to the decision when he testified on Tuesday morning to the Senate Armed Services Committee. During his appearance, the defense secretary promised Congress that the Trump administration would develop a new strategy for Afghanistan by mid-July to turn around the war.
That timetable led to a feisty exchange with Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and the committee’s chairman, who complained that the Pentagon had yet to present a plan to regain momentum in a conflict that has been going on for more than 15 years.
“We’re now six months into this administration,” Mr. McCain said. “We still haven’t got a strategy for Afghanistan. It makes it hard for us to support you when we don’t have a strategy.”
Letting the generals run the war and not having civilians interfere with them is a favorite trope of conservatives. It reflects the chronic alibi-making from the military - we did everything right, it's just that the meddling politicians messed things up - that finds a welcome audience among military-idolizing Republicans. There is always somebody who will say we could have "won" if the US had just put in more troops, dropped more bombs, been more ruthless in killing civilians and torturing prisoners, etc, etc.
For the elected officials to defer unquestioningly to the generals on matters of war and peace would be irresponsible. And they often have been, including Congress in their shameless abandonment of their Constitutional responsibilities on war and peace. And, in general, the post-World War II foreign policy of the US has been excessively militarized in the sense of relying disproportionately on military threats and coercion as compared to reliance on diplomacy and "soft power." In a sad twist, the fall of the Soviet Union that made the United States the unquestioned sole superpower, or hyperpower, or global hegemon, resulted in a heavier reliance on military action than previously. And that really is a problem of both parties.
The Cheney-Bush Administration made a big show of giving the military everything they needed. But that was PR posturing. They did inflate the military budget, because pumping public money into the profits of the weapons manufacturers is a shared mission demanded by the donor class of their sponsored politicians in both parties. Actually, that Administration imposed some fairly strict military scrutiny and control of military operations. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was particularly focused on the idea that the US could knock off a "rouge" government with minimal forces and quickly install a new, stable government. So he insisted on going into to Afghanistan with limited force at the start.
Journalist Philip Smucker provided an account of how Rummy's strict imposition of his minimalist daydreams affected the Afghanistan War during what we now know was its early days in Al Qaeda's Great Escape: The Military and the Media on Terror's Trail (2004).
The problem with that approach was even more dramatically evident in the invasion of Iraq. While US forces were staging a propaganda scene of pulling down a statue of Saddam in Baghdad, looters were getting ready to sack anything and everything they could. By all accounts I've seen, the mass looting episode in Baghdad was a critical moment very early in the occupation that made establishing order far more difficult. Rummy insisted in limiting the number of troops, largely dismissing the risk that the occupation forces would run into protracted resistance after the regime's fall.
Whether Trump likes it or not, he is still responsible for managing the armed forces. And, of course, Mad Dog Mattis is serving in a civilian office, despite his recent status as a general. And i's highly unlikely that either Mattis nor his generals and admirals will abandon their well-established practices of providing alibis so that they can blame the meddling civilians one way or another for any military failures. As Fred Kaplan writes, "Letting a Cabinet secretary make the call does not let him off the hook; deciding not to decide is itself a decision." (An Abdication of DutySlate 06/15/2017)
The main problem in Trump giving the nod to Mattis to escalate US troops presence and military activity in Afghanistan, he's escalating the risks inherent in continuing direct participation in the war there. Kaplan observes:
Mattis was an excellent wartime commander as a Marine. He is well-read in history and philosophy. But even the best Marines are trained mainly to execute policy, not to make it. And to the best wartime generals, the mandate of carrying out policy means winning the war. Retreating, withdrawing, drawing down — these might (or might not) be the preferences of a president, who views a war’s costs and benefits in the context of many other priorities, but they have little place in the thinking of a general whose job is to focus only on the war. (Mattis, who retired from the Marines four years ago, is now the civilian overseer of the Defense Department, but his reading of military history and his experience as an officer — a wartime commander, at that — govern his thinking about national-security matters.)
In other words, by turning over his authority to Mattis, Trump has all but guaranteed that more American troops will soon be sent to Afghanistan. Senior officers in the Pentagon have reportedly asked for another 5,000 troops in addition to the 8,000 still there. It’s a fair bet that Mattis will endorse the request. And it’s also a fair bet that they won’t be the last American troops sent over. When things go badly in a war, an officer’s natural instinct is to believe that a few more battalions or brigades might turn the tide. President Lyndon Johnson acceded to this instinct in Vietnam. President Obama quashed it in Afghanistan. (Obama let the generals have 30,000 more troops at the end of 2009 but said he’d start withdrawing them 18 months later if they failed to accomplish the mission by then — and, to everyone’s surprise, he kept his promise.) [my emphasis]
That delegation of authority is wrong not because civilian leaders necessarily have better judgment on such things than military officers. ...
What is instead wrong about the current president’s approach is that it loses sight of the principle that militarily achieving certain things on the ground is a means, not an end. Trump’s approach fails to acknowledge the need for a military expedition to have a clear objective that is not defined in a circular, self-referential way solely in military terms. It fails to acknowledge not only the need for careful assessment of what can be achieved with military force but also whether such achievement is worth whatever costs are entailed, bearing in mind the full range of U.S. interests that may be at stake, including alternative purposes to which scarce national resources might be put. That last topic gets squarely to questions of troop levels in foreign lands. And it is a topic that the military should not be expected to try to answer on its own.
[my emphasis]
David Stockman is best known as the Budget Director for St. Reagan 1981-85. Stockman now describes himself as "the ultimate Washington insider turned iconoclast." "Iconoclast" these days basically means "crank."
Crankery is often a feature of financial tipsheets produced by rightwingers. Stockman's version is the online David Stockman Contra Corner.
Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who is normally a careful analyst, for some reason decided to reproduce the text of a Stockman rant at Contra Corner, "The Little Putsch That Could ... Beget a Great Big Coup" 06/16/2017; McGovern's post is The “soft coup” under way in Washington 06/19/2017.
I've written before about my reluctance to talk about a possible of impeachments as a "soft coup." There are both left and right versions of this notion, neither of which is persuasive. Stockman's clearly falls into the rightwing category. He starts off by giving Trump advice in the Nixon-should-have-burned-the-tapes variety:
Bull’s eye!
“They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story. Nice … You are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history – led by some very bad and conflicted people!”
The Donald has never spoken truer words but also has never sunken lower into abject victimhood. Indeed, what is he waiting for– handcuffs and a perp walk?
Just to be clear, “he” doesn’t need to be the passive object of a “WITCH HUNT” by “they”.
If Donald Trump had any kind of presidential strategy and propensity to take command, he would have had all the intercepts of Russian chatter gathered up weeks ago. He would then have had them declassified and made public, even as he launched a criminal prosecution against Obama’s hit squad-John Brennan, Susan Rice and Valerie Jarrett for illegally unmasking and leaking classified information.
Such a course of action would have crushed the Russian interference hysteria in the bud.
I suppose McGovern found it attractive that Stockman notes recognizes that some of the opposition to Trump comes from anti-Russian hawks who fear Trump, for whatever reason, may back off from the New Cold War policy that has been developing. But Stockman doesn't actually get beyond reflexive rightwing conspiracy talk, e.g., "Given that he is up against a Deep State/Dem/Neocon/ mainstream media prosecution [sic], the Donald has no chance of survival short of an aggressive offensive of the type described above."
That kind of cynicism always needs to be tempered by remembering the old saying, "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you." The case against Trump is overdetermined in the sense of involving a variety of motives, some more honorable than less. But Trump's obstruction of justice looks very real. And there are substantial, serious reasons for a real investigation of the Trump campaign's involved in the Russian hacking operations connected to the Presidential campaign in 2016, and certainly investigating his business ties and the potential for pressure against Trump as well as conscious self-dealing on his family's part. It would be irresponsible to not investigate it seriously. It is irresponsible on the part of those who are actively trying to block such investigations.
A strong and militaristic trend toward unilateralism in American foreign and military policy didn't begin for the Republican Party with the nomination of Donald Trump for President in 2016.
I'm not trying to make a case for "normalizing" bad behavior by the Trump Family Business Administration. But I am pointing out how deeply rooted this set of bad ideas is within the Republican Party.
Philip Gordon's and Jeremy Shapiro's book Allies At War: America, Europe, and the Crisis Over Iraq (2004) had this to say about the Cheney-Bush Administration's general attitude post-9/11 about alliances and unilateral actions by the United States. This comes in a discussion of how the Administration shafted European and other allies over an environmental agreement by rejecting the Kyoto Protocol:
In retrospect, the manner in which the U.S. government withdrew from the process of international negotiation on global warming signaled more than just a repudiation of Kyoto. The harsh diplomatic style of the rejection contrasted sharply even with a similar rejection by the Reagan administration of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1982, when that administration also decided to reject a treaty that its predecessors had supported. But unlike the Kyoto rejection, before doing so the Reagan administration sent a special envoy - ironically, Donald Rumsfeld - to consult with allied governments and convince them not to sign or ratify the treaty. While that position hardly endeared him to European publics, Reagan's willingness to conform to established practices of consultation meant that criticism focused on the U.S. objections to the treaty itself, rather than on its potential to cause a breakdown in the alliance. ...
Bush's efforts with the allies, however - as one senior administration official put it - could best be described as "multilateralism à la carte." He was willing to use multilateral forums when they presented the most convenient path to accomplishing some specific U.S. foreign policy goal. But much of the administration never seemed to believe that U.S. commitment to international institutions and allied relationships had a long-term value that justified U.S. engagement when unilateral action- or actions with the support of certain individual countries-would be more expedient in the short term. The sum total of Bush's actions in his administration's first two years sent the clear signal that this type of deeper commitment simply did not exist. [my emphasis]
Cheney and Bush also used rejection of an international environmental agreement to thumb their noses at the European allies.
Where Gordon and Shapiro could say of that Administration, "The sum total of Bush's actions in his administration's first two years sent the clear signal that this type of deeper commitment [to NATO allies] simply did not exist," the Trump Family Business Administration has managed to do that in less than half a year.
"There is no good case for U.S. escalation in Syria." - Paul Pillar
Paul Pillar describes Russia's current stalemate situation in Syria and why he thinks the Russian leadership considers it acceptable for the time being (Syria: Still a No-Win SituationThe National Interest 06/05/2017):
The interests of the Syrian regime’s most important ally—Russia—are a key determinant of this stalemate. Russia has succeeded, at a cost acceptable to it, in achieving its objectives of shoring up its only client regime in the Middle East, securing its modest naval and air presence in the country, and demonstrating that it still is a player to be reckoned with in that part of the world. Moscow has an interest in not having those accomplishments erased. To try to do more than that, with a sweeping rollback of remaining opposition positions in Syria, would start to entail unacceptable costs to the Russians. Attempting to own all of Syria, à la Afghanistan in the 1980s, is not in Russia’s interest.
Pillar is not suggested that the US should meddle more in Syria to tweak the Russians. We tried that in Afghanistan in the 1980, when we backed the brave, fiercely independent mujaheddin fighters. Well, that's what we called them then. We usually call them Muslim terrorists now. Pillar writes:
The makers of U.S. policy should bear in mind how little stake the United States has in specific outcomes in Syria, beyond the concern with exportable extremism and political violence (and they should remember that even ISIS was exported from Iraq, where it was born under a different name as a consequence of the U.S. invasion and occupation). Avoidance of situations that risk sucking the United States into a larger military clash will be important. A sample of the risks of such escalation recently occurred when U.S. forces attacked a pro-regime militia, said to be supported by Iran, when it got what the U.S. military regarded as uncomfortably close to an installation that U.S. forces use in southern Syria. [my emphasis]
He concludes with a pragmatic suggestion, which the Trump Family Business Administration will likely ignore, "Meanwhile the Trump administration needs to discard its penchant for regarding every outcome in terms of wins and losses. So regarded, when you have a no-win situation such as Syria, that means the only possible outcome is a loss. And even when parties we don’t like suffer a loss, that does not necessarily help U.S. interests."
Ueber-Realist Stephen Walt also has some current advice for US policy in the Middle East. Walt is a fan of "offshore balancing" in foreign policy. Here's how he recommends the US apply it in the Middle East (Making the Middle East Worse, Trump StyleForeign Policy 06/09/2017):
There is no potential hegemon in the Middle East today, and as yet no external “peer competitor” like the former Soviet Union who might conceivably dominate the region. There is therefore no need for the United States to double down on its present commitments to any Middle Eastern countries. None of America’s current partners deserve unconditional support on either strategic or moral grounds: 1) Egypt is a brutal military dictatorship with a failing economy and of modest strategic value; 2) Saudi Arabia is a fundamentalist theocracy, is helping destroy Yemen and Syria, and engaged on a massive economic reform project that may fail catastrophically; 3) Israel is marching rightward toward full-fledged apartheid; and 4) Turkey is a mockery of democracy that has gone from “zero problems with neighbors” to problems with nearly all of them. Trump is easily seduced by foreigners who cater to his vanity — as his Saudi hosts clearly realized — but stroking the president’s ego is not the same as contributing to the U.S. national interest.
Facing an environment like this, a smart superpower would hedge. Instead of trying to create some sort of Sunni axis, the United States should return to the underlying logic of its earlier approach.The core U.S. interest in the Middle East, as in other vital areas, is to preserve a rough balance of power and prevent any single state (or external great power) from dominating. The Middle East is as divided today as it has ever been, which means the core U.S. objective is easy to achieve. Accordingly, the United States should be reaching out to countries like Iran, instead of jumping deeper into bed with Tel Aviv, Cairo, Riyadh, and Ankara. As the director of the CIA’s political Islam strategic analysis program, Emile Nakhleh, recently wrote, “Taking sides in the perennial sectarian feud between Sunni and Shia Islam or between Saudi Arabia and Iran is, in the long run, inimical to American national security and interests in the Islamic world.”
Former Under Secretary of State Rick Stengel makes a practical and important point in that segment, "The way diplomacy works is through reciprocity."
That gets to my concern about Trump foreign policies that in themselves may look good. Going from a poor relationship with Russia to a better one is a big shift. And to get there would involve real deal-making. Not Trump business-style deal-making where he sets up a company, bankrupts it, and then stiffs the creditors.
In the unlikely event that Hillary Clinton had won the election and determined that improving relations with Russia would be a top priority - a very unlikely scenario, but stranger things have happened - we would have seen her making a big issue about Russian intervention in the election. But then she would have worked on getting deals with Russia that would involve various trade-offs. In the best case, the goal would have been ultimately to build a relationship that would wind up with (1) a nuclear arms agreement that further reduced nuclear weapons stockpiles on both sides and (2) coming to some agreement that the US and NATO would limit their poking around in politics in nations just to the west of Russia like Georgia and Ukraine, with Russia backing off of threatening nearby NATO members like the Baltic countries.
But to get there would have required bargaining and various kinds of diplomatic, political and, yes, military posturing, to be used as ingredients of deals that would be used to build to a wider agreement. It's not at all cynical to recognize that just giving the other side in the negotiation what they want without getting anything in return is likely to lead to a breakdown in trust and willingness to deal. So there is good reason to worry that the blundering diplomacy of the Trump Family Business Administration is less likely to achieve even desirable ends than more conventional approaches might be expected to accomplish.
The news that the Trump Family Business Administration intends to hand over the two resorts in the US back to the Russians that the Obama Administration shut down because they were used for spy activity prompted this response from Charlie Pierce, who has continually stressed the importance of the Trump-Russia story (There's So Much Russia Happening Right NowEsquire Politics Blog 06/01/2017).
... the general scope of the disaster that is gathering speed in the direction of the White House is becoming clearer. There is virtually nobody in the Trump inner circle who is not compromised in some way by the connections the campaign had with the oligarchs and kleptocrats, and now that seems to be spreading into the Cabinet as well.
The corruption is systemic.
I remain dubious that proving actual collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government will be very difficult. Though given the arrogance and amateurism of this Administration, who knows? But the liklihood is that the dubious business deals are at the core of the Trump-Russia scandal, as Pierce writes in a different post, It's Still All About the Money, and Robert Mueller Knows It 05/31/2017:
It's going to be about the money. It always was going to be about the money. There is something distinctly rotten at the heart of the president*'s family business, about which the president* and the rest of the Borgias don't want the world to know. The money is all that matters to these people. The money always has been all that matters to these people. The money is central to whatever arrangements the extended clan made with the Russian banks, which is to say with the Russian governments. The money is central to the absurd defense of Michael Flynn and the preposterous alleged double-naught escapades of the Dauphin with the Russian ambassador. The money may be the only thing of which the president* himself is consistently cognitively aware.
His use of "president*" is a way of referring to Trump's losing the popular vote and having only the most dubious qualifications for the job.
Robert Perry has been a left gadfly on the Trump-Russia scandal. I actually think he's being a little too nit-picky on some of his skepticism. Any way you cut it, senior official lying under oath and providing incomplete information on their security clearance forms about their various contacts with Russian officials looks pretty suspicious. Also firing the FBI Director and saying it was over his investigation of possible crimes in the Trump-Russia scandal.
But he makes some valid points in Hillary Clinton’s Deceptive Blame-Shifting Consortium News 06/01/2017 about how Hillary Clinton and some other corporate Democrats are misusing the scandal to detract for their own failures in the 2016 election. And also not being particular scrupulous about sticking to what is known in the public record. he writes:
Referring to a report released by President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence (DNI) on Jan. 6, Clinton asserted that “Seventeen agencies, all in agreement, which I know from my experience as a Senator and Secretary of State, is hard to get. They concluded with high confidence that the Russians ran an extensive information war campaign against my campaign, to influence voters in the election. They did it through paid advertising we think; they did it through false news sites; they did it through these thousand agents; they did it through machine learning, which you know, kept spewing out this stuff over and over again. The algorithms that they developed. So that was the conclusion.”
But Clinton’s statement is false regarding the unanimity of the 17 agencies and misleading regarding her other claims. Both former DNI James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan acknowledged in sworn testimony last month that the Jan. 6 report alleging Russian “meddling” did not involve all 17 agencies.
Clapper and Brennan stated that the report was actually the work of hand-picked analysts from only three agencies – the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation – under the oversight of the DNI’s office. In other words, there was no consensus among the 17 agencies, a process that would have involved some form of a National Intelligence Estimate (or NIE), a community-wide effort that would have included footnotes citing any dissenting views.
Instead, as Clapper testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on May 8, the Russia-hacking claim came from a “special intelligence community assessment” (or ICA) produced by selected analysts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, “a coordinated product from three agencies – CIA, NSA, and the FBI – not all 17 components of the intelligence community,” the former DNI said.
And, as Clapper explained, the “ICA” was something of a rush job beginning on President Obama’s instructions “in early December” and completed by Jan. 6. Clapper continued: “The two dozen or so analysts for this task were handpicked, seasoned experts from each of the contributing agencies.”
In other words, Clinton’s beloved claim that all 17 intelligence agencies were in agreement on the Russian “hacking” charge – an assertion that the “factchecking” group Politifact has certified as “true” and that has been repeated endlessly by the mainstream U.S. news media – is not true. It is false. Gee, you might even call it “fake news.”
He's right about that. Hillary started using the "17 intelligence agencies" line during the 2016 campaign. And she, her hardcore loyalist and at least some pundits continue to use it. Why try to gild the lily by exaggerating the serious of the already very series ICA on the Russian hacking?
Perry quotes this Hillary version from May 31, just a couple of days ago: "Seventeen agencies, all in agreement, which I know from my experience as a Senator and Secretary of State, is hard to get. They concluded with high confidence that the Russians ran an extensive information war campaign against my campaign, to influence voters in the election." Yeah, that's gilding the lily.
Perry quotes another comment of hers from that same appearance:
In Wednesday’s interview – after misrepresenting what the Jan. 6 report actually said – Clinton suggested that the Trump campaign must have colluded with the Russians in “weaponizing” the data.
“How did they know what messages to deliver?” Clinton asked. “Who told them? Who were they coordinating with, or colluding with? … [The Russians] were conveying this weaponized information and the content of it. … So the Russians — in my opinion and based on the intel and the counterintel people I’ve talked to — could not have known how best to weaponize that information unless they had been guided. … Guided by Americans and guided by people who had polling and data information.”
Although Clinton lacked any proof of this convoluted accusation, she cited as her “best example” the fact that “within one hour, one hour of the ‘Access Hollywood’ tapes being leaked [in which Trump was caught boasting about groping women], within one hour, the Russians — let’s say WikiLeaks, something — dumped the John Podesta emails.”
However, if you changed the context of this claim slightly – and made a similar jump in logic – you would surely be labeled a nutty conspiracy theorist, but instead Clinton has drawn nods of agreement for this wholly unsubstantiated speculation.
I thought something like that when I first say that quote. "So the Russians — in my opinion and based on the intel and the counterintel people I’ve talked to — could not have known how best to weaponize that information unless they had been guided. … Guided by Americans and guided by people who had polling and data information.” Really? Maybe she's referring to something that's not yet in the public record, but I don't want to speculate. It certainly didn't strike me as obvious on the face of it.
There's no doubt Trump's foreign policy is unconventional in major ways relative to the last several Presidents.
As long as Trump is willing to sign tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulate corporations and reduce the civilian government, in practice the Republican Party will go along with his foreign policy. It's what they do. And as Dave Neiwert keeps reminding his readers, be careful about underestimating the authoritarianism of the Republican base. Trump may be upsetting the neoconservatives. But his base is sticking with him. I expect that will be especially true on foreign policy.
Some people on the peace-oriented left are hoping to find some redeeming features in Trump's foreign policy.
And it's an understandable impulse for a couple of reasons. One is that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama pursued a confrontational posture with Russia and have a hawkish bent. The more I learn about US policy in Latin America, which policymakers have considered the "backyard" of the United States since the 1820s if not earlier, the less benign Obama's foreign policy looks to me. Because his Latin American policy was plain conservative, i.e., domineering. The only major instance for Good Neighborliness was his easing relations with Cuba. Now Trump is reversing even that. If Obama had made his Cuba adjustments before late in his second term, it would be a lot harder to reverse. (Mythili Sampathkumar, Donald Trump to reverse Barack Obama's Cuba policies after breakthrough of decades-old stalemateIndependent 05/30/2017)
Another is that there are substantial differences within the Democratic Party, with the corporate wing supporting the kind of Obama/Clinton hawkishness, which we saw in the disastrous Libya intervention. And since the hawks are largely from among the corporate Dems, they would also like to focus on almost anything than changing the dominant neoliberal economic orientation of the Democratic Party.
Max Blumenthal worries that the Trump-Russia scandal is distracting the Democrats too much from critical political issues:
Right wing Democrats are furious Turner is pivoting from Cold War hysteria to jobs and real issues that affect ordinary people https://t.co/Wt2iaqpZMh
Max in those tweets is addressing a dispute that is currently center-stage within the Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton and the corporate Dems are emphasizing the importance of the Trump-Russia scandal.
The New Deal wing of the party generally thinks the Trump-Russia scandal is very important and needs to be thoroughly investigated. But they also wanted to see the party pivot away from neoliberal economic policies and start building a more aggressive, prolabor economic policy and political appeal.
Nomiki Konst states her position from the progressive side this way:
Russia should not be a rallying cry. Potential interference is a serious issue to investigate, but not to excite working people to vote
Robert Perry and his website Consortium News have expressed serious concerns about for foreign policy implications of the Trump-Russia scandal and how it can be instrumentalized to support a neocon/humanitarian-hawk position. In the 1990s, the neocons and humanitarian hawks had overlapping positions. In the 2010s, it's hard to tell the difference between the two.
Alastair Crooke makes a case at Consortium News for the Administration having a consistent, well-thought-out Trump and the ‘Management of Allies’ 05/26/2017. It's an admirable attempt and worth reading. But he hasn't convinced me. He seems to have signed up with Saudi Arabia for a jihad against Iran and Shi'a Muslims. At the same time, he prioritizes defeating/destroying the Sunni terrorist group, the Islamic State/ISIS. There is some real reason to let the Russians be the outside power to get itself entangled in yet another disaster in the Middle East with Syria if they insist on doing so. But Russia is allied with both the Shi'a government of Iran and the Allawite (more-or-less Shi'a) government of Syria. Does the Trump Family Business Administration have a three-dimensional-chess approach of how to manage improving relations with Russia, a more distant relationship to the NATO allies, a war against the Sunni Islamic State, and a broader front against Iran and other Shi'a in the Middle East.
To say I'm skeptical would be putting it mildly!
Other perspectives are also available at Consortium News. Daniel Lazare, for instance, writes:
With astounding precision, Donald Trump zeroed in on the worst possible Middle East policy option in his recent trip to Saudi Arabia and made it his own. He rebuffed the efforts of Iran’s newly elected moderate government to open up communications with the West and instead deepened America’s alliances with decrepit autocratic regimes across the Persian Gulf. [my emphasis]
Paul Pillar, who also posts at Consortium News, doesn't have a lot of confidence in the practical realism of the Trump Family Business Administration in foreign policy, observing that "slapping away any interest in democracy and human rights does not define realism. And we certainly have enough experience now with Trump to realize that his declaring he is doing something may have little relationship to what he actually is doing." (Trump Is No RealistNational Interest 05/27/2017). And he uses the examples of Saudi Arabia and NATO to illustrate his point:
In addition to a basic respect for truth and reality, realism as an approach to foreign policy is centered on the concept of all states constantly competing for influence and pursuing interests that partly conflict with, and partly parallel, one’s own interests. Realists strive to harness the interests of others to advance their own nation’s interests. Realists utilize alliances while playing this game of nations but avoid being side-tracked by any fixed images of good versus bad or virtue versus evil, or by traditional habits of affinity or repulsion. Trump may seem to be practicing this facet of realism when he denigrates America’s most traditional circle of friendship and affinity, the North Atlantic alliance of Western liberal democracies. We saw this pattern at Trump’s recent meetings in Europe, with his refusal to reiterate the Article Five commitment of the North Atlantic Treaty, his physically shoving aside the prime minister of the newest NATO member, and his statement in a multilateral meeting that “the Germans are bad, very bad.”
But far from practicing the realist discipline of eschewing good-versus-evil side-taking and being willing to do business with anyone in order to uphold and advance one’s own nation’s interests, Trump already has sunk deeply into such side-taking, as he did at earlier stops on his trip. In Riyadh his visit was all about going all in with the Saudis, declaring that he was doing so as a matter of good confronting evil, and totally taking the Sunni side against Shia and the Arab side against Persians while ruling out doing any business with the other side. In Israel, where he made no mention of a Palestinian state or the effects of Israeli colonization of occupied territory, there was barely a hint of dispassionately following U.S. interests rather than succumbing to the passions of his hosts. [my emphasis]
And he concludes, "It is not clear yet whether Donald Trump’s foreign policy has enough coherence to merit the label of any 'ism', with or without capital letters. But it certainly isn’t realism."
Über-Realist Stephen Walt endorsed Pillar's take with this tweet:
Was going to write about this myself, but Paul Pillar said it all. Fine piece. Trump Is No Realist https://t.co/5xpfb7vuXZ via @lobelog
"[Trump's] genius was to promote his clownishness, so that the headlines fed to the New York Post consisting of makebelieve quotes from his then mistress Marla Maples (‘Best Sex I’ve Ever Had’) became a PR platform for the licensing of his celebrated name to murky investors from Russia, China and Saudi Arabia who were looking for an American frontman." - Sidney Blumenthal, A Short History of the Trump FamilyLondon Review of Books 02/16/2017
The outline of a Trump foreign policy is coming into shape, for better or worse. He's talking up a friendlier policy with Russia. He got along well with his Saudi friends on this current trip, promising them massive arms sales to encourage them to escalate armed conflict in the Middle East, and signing up for their Sunni front against Iran and the Shi'a. He's been backing off his campaign threats against China.
He's not being so friendly to the formal allies of the United States in Europe. Maybe if Angela Merkel had kicked in another $100 million to Ivanka's foundation like their Saudi friends did, this week's meetings in Europe might have gone more smoothly.
It seems that Trump is pushing forward with the goal of weakening the EU and NATO, a goal he shares with the Russian government of Vladimir Putin. As Josh Marshall writes, "Trump’s comments clearly envision a transformed and debilitated NATO, one that is one half protection racket, one half high-dollar membership golf resort. You pay your dues or you’re out. It’s a service, not a commitment." (The Fix Is In; Nato Is OutTPM 05/25/2017)
And he recalls:
... the line the Trump braintrust was pushing last December and January, which was that they intended to pursue a plan of breaking up the EU, using a newly Brexited UK as their tool to tear it apart. This was clearly back in a period of maximal Trumpite triumphalism, when they fantasize about rolling the whole world before their ‘revolution.’
Times change; reality intrudes; compromised advisors are tossed aside.
But this cluster of signs and provocations suggests strongly that we are still in the same place, still in a position where the President of the United States is actively seeking to undermine NATO and – through different modalities and for slightly different reasons – the EU as well.
Donald Trump had some tough words for the Germans at the NATO summit in Belgium on Thursday. “The Germans are bad, very bad,” he reportedly told Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Union. “Look at the millions of cars that they’re selling in the USA. Horrible. We’re gonna stop that.”
It is certainly true that Germany runs a big trade surplus with the world and with the United States. (Last year, the U.S. trade deficit with Germany was nearly $65 billion.) But Trump can’t stop the German cars from coming in to the U.S. because, to a large degree, they’re already here. See, it turns out that many “foreign” cars are actually made in the U.S. while many “American” cars are made in Canada and Mexico. That’s how globalization works today.
Some antiwar advocates are looking at the Trump Administration still for hopeful signs of less interventionist inclinations. And we may see some actions by Trump that actually are conducive to a more peaceful world. As Trump's current Secretary of Energy Rick Perry famously said of Trump, even a stopped clock is right once a day. (More literally: Rick Perry: ‘A Broken Clock Is Right Once A Day’ TPM 09/03/2015)
In discussing Trump’s approach to Syria, Clinton said she supported the recent U.S. missile strike targeting a Syrian airfield, but nevertheless complained that it was too limited in scope and perhaps may have even been coordinated with Russia in order to keep East-West tensions under control.
“I am not convinced that it really made much of a difference, and I don’t know what kind of potentially backroom deals were made with the Russians,” Clinton told Amanpour. “There’s a lot that we don’t really yet fully know about what was part of that strike. And if after all it was a one-off effort, it’s not going to have much of an effect.”
In other words, Trump erred not by firing 59 cruise missiles against Syria, which violated international law and resulted in numerous civilian casualties, but by limiting the scope of this attack. The clear implication is that if Clinton were president, it would not have been “a one-off effort,” and probably would not have been done in consultation with Russia.
Instead, Clinton would likely be making U.S. intervention in Syria a centerpiece of her foreign policy, and would show little concern over how this might spiral out of control in terms of ratcheting up tensions – or all-out military confrontation – with nuclear-armed Russia.
This is an important point. But it's also notable that he's criticizing Clinton for supporting something that Trump has done.
And however desirable big shifts in policy may be, like a less confrontational posture toward Russia, or some large change in NATO, are also difficult to pull off. And Donald Trump and his foreign policy team has yet to show they can do far less difficult things right.
As Paul Pillar writes of the Trump-Saudi anti-Iran stance, "Coming to believe one’s own rhetoric is a common fault. To the extent that the Trump administration starts making policy based on the belief that Iran really is the root of all security problems in the Middle East, the result will be policy that is misinformed and thus misdirected and ineffective." (Costs of the Clenched FistThe National Interest 05/24/2017) And the same is likely to be true in Trump's foreign policy across the board.
California Gov. Jerry Brown's press release today on the Trump/Republican austerity budget (except for the wealthy and arms manufacturers):
Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today issued the following statement on President Donald J. Trump's 2018 Proposed Budget:
"This budget proposal is based on utterly bogus economic assumptions. It gives a massive tax break to the wealthiest, while imposing painful and debilitating burdens on tens of millions of decent and hard-working people. It's unconscionable and un-American." [my emphasis]
The opening portion on Trump's current international tour show has not been encouraging.
Fred Kaplan writes of the President's speech on Islam while he was in Saudi Arabia (Trump’s Sunni StrategySlate 05/22/2017):
... read closely, without a grading curve, the speech was by turns shallow, clichéd, and repellent. Even the few times when its authors approached a bold theme, they veered away, lest it soften the visit’s three main missions: to assure the region’s Sunni leaders that they can run their countries and oppress their critics with no finger-wagging from Washington; to wrap up a massive $110 billion sale of American weapons; and to declare war on Iran, or at least unabashed hostility toward its regime.
Trump praised Saudi Arabia while denouncing Iran, even as millions of Iranians participated in an election which makes that country more democratic, at least, than almost any of the countries that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council. A speech that began ostensibly with a message of peace and love ended by arguing for the isolation and demonization of Iran.
Far from actually fighting terrorism, Trump’s speech promises to make conditions in the Middle East worse for everyone.
Trump professed love, the common roots of the Abrahamic faiths, and called us the children of God. Unless, of course, you’re a refugee, in which case Trump wants to slam the door shut in your face. He made no mention of banning citizens of Muslim-majority nations from traveling to the United States, either.
Terrorism is not a cause of the Middle East’s backwardness. It is a symptom. Terrorism is a non-state response to overly centralized states, which leave no room for political, religious or social diversity.
That Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric was not merely campaign bluster is clear in the policies he’s proposed and supported: Islamophobic, homophobic, misogynistic, xenophobic, anti-immigrant and anti-science.
... we are doubling down on an historic American-Saudi partnership that has not only prevented the rise of extremism, but has been unable to prevent the fracture of the Middle East.
This is where somebody says, "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?"
Trump seems to think that pumping $110 bn in new shiny weapons into a volatile Middle East will lead to peace! If there is any sure correlate of war, it is massive purchases by one regional power of new armaments. You have to use them while you have the advantage or your rivals also acquire them.
The American Right is deeply implicated in radicalizing Muslims. Afghan Islam was radicalized by the Reagan jihad against the Soviet Union. Eisenhower and Reagan both attempted to enlist Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabism against Communism. Most Palestinians were secular or mainstream until the Israelis cultivated Hamas as an alternative to the PLO.
Part 1 of this pair of posts discussed what can be considered a "soft coup." This one is about left and right versions of the idea that Trump is facing one.
Many people who detest Trump view Russia-gate as the most likely path to achieve Trump’s impeachment, so this desirable end justifies whatever means.
Some people have told me that they even believe that it is the responsibility of the major news media, the law enforcement and intelligence communities, and members of Congress to engage in a “soft coup” against Trump – also known as a “constitutional coup” or “deep state coup” – for the “good of the country.”
The argument is that it sometimes falls to these Establishment institutions to “correct” a mistake made by the American voters, in this case, the election of a largely unqualified individual as U.S. president. It is even viewed by some anti-Trump activists as a responsibility of “responsible” journalists, government officials and others to play this “guardian” role, to not simply “resist” Trump but to remove him.
And he makes the argument to consider this a "soft coup" in his own words:
The New York Times and The Washington Post, in particular, have made it clear that they view Trump as a clear and present danger to the American system and thus have cast aside any pretense of neutrality.
The Times justifies its open hostility to the President as part of its duty to protect “the truth”; the Post has adopted a slogan aimed at Trump, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” In other words, America’s two most influential political newspapers are effectively pushing for a “soft coup” under the guise of defending “democracy” and “truth.”
But the obvious problem with a “soft coup” is that America’s democratic process, as imperfect as it has been and still is, has held this diverse country together since 1788 with the notable exception of the Civil War.
If Americans believe that the Washington elites are removing an elected president – even one as buffoonish as Donald Trump – it could tear apart the fabric of national unity, which is already under extraordinary stress from intense partisanship.
That means that the “soft coup” would have to be carried out under the guise of a serious investigation into something grave enough to justify the President’s removal, a removal that could be accomplished by congressional impeachment, his forced resignation, or the application of Twenty-fifth Amendment, which allows the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet to judge a President incapable of continuing in office (although that could require two-thirds votes by both houses of Congress if the President fights the maneuver).
Perry is a solid researcher whose reporting has taught him to be highly skeptical of intelligence agency claims and the Establishment and/or Beltway Village consensus on issues. His article does raise some relevant questions about civil liberties concerns and about some of the ways that Trump associates Carter Page and Paul Manafort are being characterized as "pro-Russian."
And he has an entirely legitimate concern about what he describes this way, "the larger political problem confronting the United States is that the neoconservatives and their junior partners, the liberal interventionists, now control nearly all the levers of U.S. foreign policy. That means they can essentially dictate how events around the world will be perceived by most Americans." The uncritical and sometimes careless reporting on Russia-Russia-Russia is obviously of benefit to those who for whatever reason - including serious concerns about how Russian actions may affect US and European security - favor a policy of aggressive confrontation toward Russia.
There's a strange sideline phenomenon going on, an anti-Trump stream of "fake news" that careless liberals sometimes find attractive. The current leading light in this corner of the information ecosystem is Louise Mensch. (Zack Beauchamp, Democrats are falling for fake news about RussiaVox 05/19/2017) Beauchamp describes the perspective involved as "a general sense that Russian influence in the United States is pervasive and undercovered by the mainstream media. Everything that happens in US politics is understood through this lens — especially actions taken by the Trump administration, which is seen as Kremlin-occupied territory." The kind of items Beauchamp discuss are examples of what Perry warns about, deceptive reports aimed to take advantage of an exacerbate anti-Russian fears and hatreds.
Facts do matter.
And there is enough in the public record now to justify serious impeachment proceedings.
Michael Tracey of TYT Politics discusses what might be called a soft version of the "soft coup" narrative with Mollie Hemingway, a senior editor of The Federalist, Media's Trump Obsession: Are They Overreacting? 05/19/2017
Michael mostly lets Mollie keep the conversation at a high level of generalization, though they do discuss some of the specific accusations against Trump that might be involved in impeachment. They discuss it in terms of the Deep State, the various intelligence, military and bureaucratic interests within the executive and the larger military-industrial complex. I've never gotten completely comfortable with the "Deep State" term. Because its usage in practice seems always to be too fuzzy for my taste.
James Downton of The Federalist outlines a conservative version of the "soft coup" theory, although he doesn't use that exact phrase, in We Are Watching A Slow-Motion Coup D’etat 05/19/2017. One of the most popular narratives about President Nixon's resignation under the threat of impeachment among conservatives is that it was a purely partisan-political action, i.e., an illegitimate one. Facilitated by Republicans of the times now regarded by conservative partisans as squishes and phony Republicans. So there is a ready-made conservative template for regarding a removal of Trump from office as an illegitimate partisan event. So it's worth paying at least some attention to this preliminary version tailored to Trump.
Downton also forgoes the Deep State term. But he describes the collective agent of the supposed coup against Trump as "forces within the U.S. government, media, and partisan opposition have aligned to overthrow the Electoral College winner, Donald Trump." He does apply the term recently popularized by Steve Bannon, "the administrative state." But he declines to anoint particular individuals as masterminds of this plan:
Unlike the coup d’etat that sees a military or popular figure lead a minority resistance or majority force into power over the legitimate government, this coup d’etat is leaderless and exposes some of the deepest fissures in our system of government. This coup d’etat represents not the rule of one man or even many, but by the multitude of our elites.
He does show a probably unintentional humorous side when the talks about "the Democratic Party’s scorched-earth campaign against the political nominations of the Trump White House." The Democrats managed to keep that ferocious campaign well concealed from the Democratic base. He argues that "what has been branded as 'The Resistance' ... in actuality is the totalitarian might of the administrative state and their partisan allies." He illustrates that with a quote from the liberal magazine Mother Jones.
Downton tells us that the shadowy instigators of this Administrative State coup attempt see their role this way: "In their minds they are but a guardian of the people, albeit one that must stand up to and ultimately negate the will of that very same people." This is just another dull variation on the unending condemnation of those Mean Librul elitists that supposedly run the world, despite the desperate resistance of the embattled billionaire rugged individualists suffering horribly under the unbearable pain of having to pay taxes to support their country.
The rest of his article is largely made up of various repetitions of the general charge that all known embarrassing reports on the conduct of Trump and his team generated by "collusion between the various elements of the partisan Left, the media, and the administrative state." He doesn't engage seriously with even the best-grounded and disturbing reports, like Michael Flynn acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Turkey and the various clandestine contacts between the Trump campaign and transition teams with Russian officials.
Ironically, the reader learns at the end of the piece, "James Downton is the pen name of a Federalist contributor who is contractually prohibited from writing publicly about politics under his real name."
I'm reluctant to include the move to oust Trump, which the Democrats are pursuing fairly timidly from my point of view, as an instance of a "soft coup." For one thing, quite unlike the cases of Paraguay and Brazil, a removal of Trump from office would not represent a change in the governing party or any major changes in direction of policy. Mike Pence can be assumed to wish to carry forward most of Trump policies, although he could conceivably pursuing a more New Cold War type policy towards Russia than Trump may favor. Pence was elected on the same party ticket and platform as Trump. So even if he were impeached and removed from office for politically or ethically illegitimate reasons, the question would remain whether it could be considered a coup.
Because even the most legitimate and clearly proven of causes for impeachment and removal would proceed by the same Constitutional procedure. And, with the current office-holders, the party holding the Presidency would not change. The official line of succession to the Presidency has never gone beyond the Vice President in practice. Wikipedia's United States presidential line of succession as of this writing has the following table showing the current line of succession:
Numbers 6, 16 and 17 are Independents, number 6 being Defense Secretary James "Mad Dog" Mattis. The rest are Republicans.
I first recall coming across the term "soft coup" (golpe suave or golpe blando) in connection with the impeachment of Paraguay's President Fernando Lugo in 2012. This report from Aljazeera gives an account of the outster of Lugo, Paraguay's Forgotten Coup 12/26/2013. The article is accompanied by this video report, People & Power - Paraguay's Forgotten Coup 12/25/2013:
An earlier report closer to the event from Aljazeera's Inside Story also describes the ouster and whether it should be considered a coup, Paraguay: Impeachment or political coup? 06/25/2016:
Sharp is a political scientist whose name is not so well-known in the United States as it seems to be in Latin America, where the left generally regards him as the designer of a regime change strategy commonly used by the United States to undermine governments it considers inconvenient or otherwise undesirable by using means other than overt force. This CNN reports celebrates him, Gene Sharp: A dictator's worst nightmare by By Mairi Mackay 06/25/2012.
I've seen the term "soft coup" also applied to the overthrow of the Honduran government in 2009. But that one also had military involvement: "In 2009, a group of Honduran politicians and military officers staged a coup and removed then-President Manuel Zelaya from office and from the country." (Tracy Wilkinson, A Honduran coup comes full circleLos Angeles Times 04/27/2017)
The circumstances of Rousseff's ouster fully justify Genaro Oliveira's characterization, "From whatever side it's viewed, the impeachment process was never about seeking justice or upholding democracy. It has always been a judicial farce masking a nasty power dispute between elite political factions."
I don't have a problem using the "soft coup" term to describes Lugo's removal from office in Paraguay in 2012 and Rousseff's in Brazil in 2016. Because both were politically and democratically illegitimate actions that nevertheless took place within established legal procedures. The actions resulted in a significant change in the national government leadership and its policies in a way that fairly obviously ran contrary to the democratic decision of free elections.
I have some reservations about how far the usage of the "soft coup" idea can go. On the one hand, it usefully distinguishes between coups accomplished by force and violence and those which achieve an illegitimate change of government without the use or imminent threat of violence. On the other hand, we could have an interesting discussion about the extent to which the implicit or explicit threat of violence is at work even in the case of the "soft coups." And while it's arguably preferable to achieve illegitimate aims through nonviolent means, the consequences of a "soft coup" could be every bit as destructive as a more traditional version in which the military rolls tanks into the street and demands that the legal government resign.
Whether or not we consider Honduras 2009 as "soft" or not, the change of government took place without armed clashes between pro- and anti-government forces. But this description makes it sound a lot like the traditional military coup, "In the first military coup in Central America since the end of the cold war, soldiers stormed the presidential palace in the capital, Tegucigalpa, early in the morning, disarming the presidential guard, waking Mr. Zelaya and putting him on a plane to Costa Rica." (Elisabeth Malkin, Honduran President Is Ousted in CoupNew York Times 06/28/2009) But the upshot of the coup in practice has been a vast increase in criminal violence in Honduras, which has increased pressure for Hondurans to flee to Mexico and the United States.
It's also important to remember that military coups typically have major cooperation among civilian politicians and private players. Two examples that come readily to mind are the coup in Chile in 1973 and that in Argentina in 1955.
Eli Stokols uses the term in a seemingly descriptive way to talk about how Trump critics internal to his Administration as well as the press and external political critics are undermining Trump's Presidency over the Trump-Russia scandal. But "coup" obviously carries an implication of illegitimacy.
Legitimacy is a critical factor here. And by any sensible perspective, there are substantial reasons to believe that there are serious instances of wrongdoing that may well amount to the kind of "high crimes and misdemeanors" that would justify impeach of the President under the Constitution.
The drama (and melodrama) of the Trump-Russia scandal has eclipsed the issue of violating the emoluments clause that was much discussed during the transition. (Mark Joseph Stern, High Crimes and MisdemeanorsSlate 01/04/2017) But given how the Trump Family Business Administration approaches the business of the Presidency, that in itself is a substantial problem that should be formally and thoroughly investigated. Just this weekend, we had the odd coincidence of Saudi Arabia committing $100 million to a fund established by First Daughter Ivanka Trump, during the same foreign trip in which Saudi Arabia agreed to a $110 billion arms deal with the US. (Jen Hayden, On same weekend as record-breaking arms deal, Saudis announced $100 million donation to Ivanka fundDaily Kos 05/21/2017) Admittedly, $100 million is less than one percent of the amount of the arms deal. But I'm pretty sure it's big enough to count as an emolument if it otherwise meets the technical requirements of the term. Ivanka's husband also played an important role in arranging the arms deal. (Mark Landler et al, $110 Billion Weapons Sale to Saudis Has Jared Kushner’s Personal TouchNew York Times 05/18/2017)
Trump's defenders insist there is no "evidence" of serious misdeeds by Trump. But that begs the questions of whether there are concerns substantial enough for Congressional and criminal investigation of some of these major incidents. While it's true that we don't have the full documentation for the intelligence community's January report on Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee in the public record, it's hard to see how any government would make every detail of such a finding publicly available. But it's certainly reason for Congress and investigative agencies to understand it thoroughly. And if the four intelligence agencies whose consensus that report represented just concocted the conclusions, that would be something that urgently needs to be uncovered, as well!
And it sounds highly likely from what is in the public record that Trump himself was involved in obstruction of justice in the Trump-Russia investigation, especially with the firing of FBI Director James Comey. And Trump's first National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was working as an unregistered foreign agent for Turkey last year. And given the warnings we know that Trump and his transition team received from senior officials about Michael Flynn before Trump named him as National Security Adviser makes it look reckless at the very best to appoint him to that post with the top-level security clearance that comes with it.
Given Trump's flagrant lack of concern about conflicts of interest, it will not surprise me in the least that we'll eventually learn at lot about dubious financial entanglements of the Trump family business with Russian interests.
In Part 2 tomorrow, I'll look at left and right versions of the "soft coup" framing on Trump's Constitutional problems.
