Dad and I got to watch Elizabeth Warren on Meet the Press this morning when I dropped by. We both loved that she stuck to her guns on going after Democrats that backed banking deregulation. ‘Nobody is tougher on the banks’ my dad said. She then began criticizing President Trump for being willing to meet face to face with Kim Jong Un. She was specifically worried he would be ‘taken advantage of’.
She went on to modify her initially strong criticism by saying she favors diplomacy, that Trump should not have gutted the State Department, and that his military threats made the situation worse. That said, I was initially dumbfounded that one of the smarter moves Trump has made on foreign policy was treated with such skepticism by someone as smart as Elizabeth Warren.
I was also struck that otherwise sensible liberals like David Ignatius were calling on Trump to do more in Syria. The logic that America needs to do more in the Middle East despite our nearly two decade record of failure in influencing the region for the better is lost on me. It is lost on most of America, particularly the parts of the country outside the Acela Corridor that due the bulk of the fighting and dying for Washington’s wars. Wars that always seem to have more bipartisan cheerleaders than regulating Wall Street or reforming the American health care system.
Warren’s remarks on the North Korea gambit seemed to fall into that same camp. A view that diplomacy and peaceful solutions are naive, and only sanctions (which the UN Charter considers an act of economic warfare) backed by the threat of military force are the mark of a serious American foreign policy. The reality is, America can live with North Korean nuclear weapons. The 60 or so bombs the regime is bankrupting and starving itself to produce are no match for the 7,200 or so warheads our country commands at it’s disposal. A system about to undergo a half a trillion dollar modernization program started under President Obama and doubled by President Trump.
The Kims are evil, but they are not suicidal. Their nuclear weapons are purely an insurance policy against American regime change. Rather than the work of an evil mad man, as even mainstream media outlets and liberal opinion makers make him out to be, they are the work of a calculating politician who recognizes that America rewarded Iraq and Libyan disarmament with unilateral regime change. That the Iranian regime has to rely on an unreliable American partner to live up to its ever changing word on their nuclear disarmament deal.
It is in this climate that the prospect of Trump cutting a deal actually makes some sense. Kim wants international legitimacy, which he got through the joint Olympic moves and will get from a summit. He wants Western investment in his starving country, which he could get from an Iran style disarmament agreement. He has a cooperative South willing to come to a deal. A Japan more focused on Chinese aggression than his regime. A China that is increasingly impatient with subsidizing its junior partner. A Russia more focused on Europe and the Near East than its East Asian backyard. The American left should be cheerleading this overture to realism and common sense, rather than embracing the skepticism of the failed Washington establishment that force is always preferable to engagement.
Charley on the MTA says
“Diplomacy” … that implies the work of professional diplomats, not the freelancing of an unhinged, ignorant narcissist.
“Talking to N Korea” can sound reasonable until you remember it’s Trump doing it. You are addressing the issue on substantive grounds, but the substance to which Trump agrees, or doesn’t agree, changes by the hour, or minute.
No.
jconway says
In case I was not clear, I agreed with Warren when she added that this President gutted the State Department and has not even appointed an ambassador to the R.O.K. This strategy is not ready for prime time under this President, but the strategy of one on one engagement is not the automatic blunder Warren and the Washington press corps is making it out to be.
Engaging with Kim is not legitimizing or rewarding him, but enduring he can either disarm peacefully or have his arsenal peacefully contained. Had Obama done this it would have been lambasted as appeasement by the right and center, but a diplomatic coup on par with his successful Cuba opening and the Iran deal. Even with the risks for Trump, I will take talking over tweeting.
SomervilleTom says
I would like Mr. Trump to stay as far away from North Korea as possible.
Our government needs to remove Mr. Trump and his Collaborators from power as soon as possible. The notion of Mr. Trump in the same room as Mr. Kim is absolutely terrifying to me.
My negative reaction to this announcement has nothing to with legitimizing or rewarding Mr. Kim. My negative reaction is a gut-level terror and panic response to putting an unbalanced, unstable, and dangerously insecure man with the nuclear football in the same room as Mr. Kim.
This scenario is the canonical nightmare that faced us during the 2016 campaign. It is a nightmare. It was a nightmarish vision then, and it is a nightmare now.
In my view, this could well presage the end of world as we know it.
Christopher says
I’ve long wanted more action in Syria and more talk in Korea, but I don’t trust the current President to wade into either one without making a bigger mess.
SomervilleTom says
Agreed.
In my view, the completely unforced blunder of removing Saddam Hussein in 2003 made quandaries like this inevitable. There is no good or even “ok” US military strategy in Syria. None. It is far too late for us to do anything constructive there. The current regime has already driven out or killed all but the most rabid of partisans — and those are all intensely opposed to the very existence of Israel.
I see only two reasons to care about Syria:
1. Stop ISIS
2. Stop the murder of civilians by Assad
It looks to me as though Russia is already committed there and will only become more so. It looks to me as though the best outcome is one where Assad is replaced by another power figure who is also friendly to Russia.
I think that when the dust settles, Russia will solve item 1 by sheer force, and will solve item 2 by replacing Assad with a less brutal friend of Putin.
There is absolutely NOTHING for the US to gain by increased military involvement in Syria and an enormous amount to lose. Russia is already doing what needs to be done. Syria has been a Russian satellite for decades and will remain so. Syria is a Russian problem and Russia is solving it.
Any suggestion that the US become more involved in Syria is suicidal lunacy.