Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Trump leaves the Biden administration with a laundry list of foreign policy headaches

 

The European Union is currently threatening additional sanctions on Russia after the attempted poisoning and imprisoning of opposition leader Alexey Navalny upon his return to Russia following his treatment in Germany, as well as for other incidents of anti-democratic behavior by the Russian government. Navalny was apparently poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok, and he is just the latest in a long line of Russian politicians and journalists who have suffered poisoning or have been assassinated during Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship. 

Recent anti-Kremlin protests led to 10,000 arrests, largely as a result of Russia’s so-called parliament passing a dozen laws this past December which expanded Putin’s power and limited freedom of speech and access to information; this latter only involves government agencies, after the FSB agents suspected of poisoning Navalny were named. On the other hand, antigovernment protests must disclose the sources of their funding, which obviously is meant to intimidate donors with the threat of imprisonment.

The laws would also label single-line pickets as illegal “mass rallies,” and prohibit demonstrations in front of law enforcement and security buildings. Reporters who cover such events must show their press badges, which given the number of journalists murdered in Russia is meant to intimidate them from covering such events. At least 20 journalists have been killed since 2000 in which there was a too obvious link to their work, but dozens more have been murdered who worked for independent, human rights or opposition media for whom a direct link to their work allegedly could not be “proven.”

This is the kind of anti-democratic and media “enemies of the people” brutality that is the kind of thing that Donald Trump no doubt wished he could emulate.  In its final report card on the Trump administration, the journal Foreign Policy observed that while in 2016 he promised that  “we are going to have a great relationship with Putin and Russia,”

Trump’s steadfast deference toward Russian President Vladimir Putin remains something of a mystery…Trump never made a serious effort to improve relations or drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing, even though doing so would have made good geopolitical sense. Apart from sanctioning a few more Russian officials, however, Trump didn’t do very much to challenge Russia either. Instead, Trump got himself impeached for trying to bolster his reelection prospects by withholding U.S. aid to Ukraine until Kyiv dug up some dirt on the Biden family.

The result? Russia is still interfering in Ukraine today, still supporting the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria and warlord Khalifa Haftar in Libya, and still conducting murderous attacks on perceived threats at home and abroad.  Moscow is also the likely perpetrator of the massive cyber-breach that compromised U.S. government computer networks, including the Defense Department, State Department, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the National Security Agency. Can you imagine what Trump might have said had this happened on Obama’s watch?

Trump of course questioned the veracity of intelligence data that pointed the finger at Russia—just as he denied the intelligence and the Mueller report that proved that the Russian government and its foreign intelligence agencies had interfered in the election; when Putin told Trump that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 election, that is all Trump wanted to hear, never once considering that Putin would naturally lie about such a thing.

China will be another headache that Trump has left the Biden administration. People will no doubt be under the impression that Trump was “tough” with China, although the only thing he really did was impose tariffs on Chinese imports and restrict its smartphone technology, while doing literally nothing to counter Chinese global threats. We should recall that up until 2020,  while Trump was insulting our allies, he actually referred to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping as “my good friend,” typical Trump “schmoozing” that he mistakenly thought could replace actual diplomacy. 

Even as the Covid-19 pandemic was underway, Trump was praising China’s response to it: “He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. Great discipline is taking place in China, as Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation”; it is worth noting, of course, that Trump himself wasn't "disciplined" enough to engage in a similar "counterattack" on the virus in this country. This was all before the pandemic became a political annoyance for Trump, after which it became the “China virus.” We might also add that China’s coronavirus numbers are for domestic propaganda consumption, and to be taken by the world community with a large grain of salt.

As with everything else, if Trump couldn’t  quickly “persuade” anyone to do his bidding, he lost all interest. The U.S. continues to have a massive trade deficit with China, and Foreign Policy grades Trump's China antics as follows:

He tried to get Chinese President Xi Jinping to put more pressure on North Korea; Xi refused. He tried to get China to make major structural reforms and end its predatory trade and investment practices, and he eventually launched a costly trade war in an attempt to force Beijing to comply. That didn’t work either, because China retaliated and adapted; U.S. businesses, consumers, and farmers bore most of the costs of Trump’s tariffs; and Trump chose to pressure China unilaterally instead of lining up other countries alongside the United States. The administration’s escalating campaign against Huawei, ZTE, TikTok, and other Chinese technology firms has hurt these firms in the short term, but it has also spurred Chinese efforts to reduce its dependence on U.S. technology and may eventually cost U.S. firms a lot of future earnings. Not surprisingly, relations with China have spiraled steadily downward over the past four years.

And that is not all. Trump’s military braggadocio about being tough has not impressed China either, and he did nothing to counter its military ambitions. The Department of Defense released a report on the subject last year, in which it states

DoD’s first annual report to Congress in 2000 assessed the PRC’s armed forces at that time to be a sizable but mostly archaic military that was poorly suited to the CCP’s long-term ambitions. The report recognized the CCP’s objective was for the PRC to become a “strong, modernized, unified, and wealthy nation.” Despite these great power aspirations, the PLA lacked the capabilities, organization, and readiness for modern warfare. Yet the CCP understood these deficiencies and set long-term goals to strengthen and transform its armed forces in a manner commensurate with its aspirations to strengthen and transform China.

Two decades later, the PLA’s objective is to become a “world-class” military by the end of 2049—a goal first announced by General Secretary Xi Jinping in 2017. Although the CCP has not defined what a “world-class” military means, within the context of the PRC’s national strategy it is likely that Beijing will seek to develop a military by mid-century that is equal to—or in some cases superior to—the U.S. military, or that of any other great power that the PRC views as a threat. As this year’s report details, the PRC has marshalled the resources, technology, and political will over the past two decades to strengthen and modernize the PLA in nearly every respect. Indeed, as this report shows, China is already ahead of the United States in certain areas such as:

Shipbuilding: The PRC has the largest navy in the world, with an overall battle force of approximately 350 ships and submarines including over 130 major surface combatants. In comparison, the U.S. Navy’s battle force is approximately 293 ships as of early 2020.

Land-based conventional ballistic and cruise missiles: The PRC has more than 1,250 ground[1] launched ballistic missiles (GLBMs) and ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCMs) with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. The United States currently fields one type of conventional GLBM with a range of 70 to 300 kilometers and no GLCMs.

Integrated air defense systems: The PRC has one of the world’s largest forces of advanced long range surface-to-air systems—including Russian-built S-400s, S-300s, and domestically produced systems—that constitute part of its robust and redundant integrated air defense system architecture.

More striking than the PLA’s staggering amounts of new military hardware are the recent sweeping efforts taken by CCP leaders that include completely restructuring the PLA into a force better suited for joint operations, improving the PLA’s overall combat readiness, encouraging the PLA to embrace new operational concepts, and expanding the PRC’s overseas military footprint.

Despite the PLA’s progress over the past 20 years, major gaps and shortcomings remain. The PRC’s leaders are aware of these problems, and their strategy envisions the PLA undergoing almost 30 more years of modernization and reform. Of course, the CCP does not intend for the PLA to be merely a showpiece of China’s modernity or to keep it focused solely on regional threats. As this report shows, the CCP desires the PLA to become a practical instrument of its statecraft with an active role in advancing the PRC’s foreign policy, particularly with respect to the PRC’s increasingly global interests and its aims to revise aspects of the international order.

While that is a problem that predated the Trump administration, it was made demonstrably worse by the de facto inaction of the Trump administration, despite all its “tough talk.”

Foreign Policy also called Trump’s handling of North Korea “amateurish” and “inept,” staging what was little more than “reality show” summits  that while they “produced the sort of media attention that Trump craved, they succeeded only in enhancing Kim’s stature and underscoring Trump’s gullibility. The president lost interest in the issue as soon as his PR stunt failed, and North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and missile capabilities have continues to improve ever since.” Trump’s “fire and fury” threats actually did work to bring Kim Jong-un to the table, but he was foolishly persuaded by the exchange of “beautiful” letters, and since they had a “beautiful friendship,” Trump failed to keep the pressure on Kim when the latter needed more convincing to accept a more reality-based agreement.

And then of course the Biden administration inherits the absolute disaster that was Trump’s Iran policy. Trump surrounded himself with anti-Iran militants like John Bolton and pro-Israel lobbyists like Mike Pompeo, and promulgated a “maximum pressure” policy that Slate called an “unmitigated disaster”:

Iran had been in full compliance with the nuclear deal from July 2015, when President Barack Obama and five other national leaders signed it, until May 2018, when Trump withdrew from it for no good reason. Iran remained in compliance for another year-and-a-half, even as Trump reimposed economic sanctions, and as he forced the other signatories to reimpose sanctions as well.

Neither goal was accomplished. Instead, since Trump withdrew from the deal, Iran has increased its stockpile of enriched uranium by eight times,  and has found ways to export a sizable amount of its petroleum as well. Meanwhile, Iran’s hard-line factions have strengthened their grip on Tehran’s politics, with two consequences. First, in the highly unlikely event that the regime buckles, the hard-liners—backed by the elite Revolutionary Guard, which never liked the accord—would likely take power. Second, more immediately, because of this shift in the domestic balance of power, President Hassan Rouhani, who touted the deal and is facing reelection next summer, is unlikely to come back into compliance—even if President-elect Joe Biden seems eager for a return, as he is—without major concessions that Senate Republicans might block Biden from making.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, Trump entered into an “agreement” last year with the Taliban for a phased withdrawal of his “warfighters,” and since then the country has descend back into chaos. The current Kabul government has accused the Taliban of reneging on power-sharing agreements and fomenting violence all over the country. The AP reports that “A Taliban official said the talks stalled after the Taliban demanded the government side accept a new ‘inclusive Islamic system’ that includes all ‘tribes and groups’ in Afghanistan — language that indicates the Taliban seek guarantees that Islamic rule would be in place in post-war Afghanistan,” and opposed to the current government’s demands that the Taliban instead accept at least the fig-leaf of democratically-elected government, which seems unlikely. If the Taliban regains control of the country, will it become a breeding ground for terrorists again? Stay tuned.

Of course we need our “friends”—meaning our Western allies—to get on board with trying to even the balance sheet, which Trump had insured would be impossible as long as he remained president. Australia's The Strategist dryly noted that his "self-aggrandizing boasts mask a record of scant accomplishment." Trump’s so-called “America First” foreign policy “accomplished” only two things: alienating our allies, and strengthening our enemies. The first part of the equation should be a problem that is easy to “fix” for the Biden administration, but the second part is another matter altogether; just don’t expect Fox News to provide any "clarity," let alone “reality,” on that subject.


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