By request: Trump's America First

Dangerous (a regular commenter) sent me this email:

...I thought you might post something about Trump’s invocation of “America First” as a guiding principle of his foreign policy. 

I knew a little about that particular slogan – which is completely consistent with both Donald Trump’s personal brand and his affinity for the movement which created it – and there’s not a lot there to like, despite it sounding good to a lot of people. This is, of course, why the racist, anti-Semitic demagogues deployed it as an early form of deceptive spin on their intentions... 

So I thought this topic in particularly would be right up your alley for research and analysis because it thematically hits on everything you talk about – history, politics, truth, reason. Of course our government should put American interests first, but the problem has always been to accurately determine what those interests are in a complex world, and how exactly to protect or promote those interests without all those nasty unforeseen consequences. Hence it’s easy to question our recent policy decisions in Libya or Syria or Iraq and propose all sorts of un-provable but also impossible to disprove cause and effect (or blame / credit) assertions either. 

This process in the hands of a Donald Trump will probably see our interests as matching his personal interests – looking and acting tough and seem to be “winning” – when that will rarely be the case and will likely damage our long-term interests and standing. Similarly, he would never intervene in a humanitarian crisis in, say, central African because what possible interests would it serve to help dark people half way around the world with no payback. In the hands of Hillary Clinton, America’s interests first would mean roughly equal shares of immediate interests and political consequences, long-term interests and doctrine setting, and all of the other chess moves her experienced team would weigh for any action or choice not to act. Bernie would probably err on the opposite side of Trump’s impulsive me-and-now approach, assuming any action would result in awful consequences while not recognizing that action might actually reduce those consequences. For this reason, lots of people she Hillary as a hawk simply because she will consider use of military and/or aggressive diplomatic actions (e.g. economic sanctions) with domestic politics in mind and the recognition that failure to act will be spun as weakness. 

Europe and the rest of the U.S.-allied world should pay more for its own defense, but it makes no sense to talk about increasing military spending to be the biggest bad-ass when we already spend more than the next 10 countries combined. Why should they bother? And they do pay in accepting the U.S. dollar as the exchange currency, and giving us all sorts of breaks that aren’t as obvious, but allow us to have gas at half the price of the rest of the developed world. It makes no sense to talk about non-intervention when we would also go around making all sort of demands on both allies and foes which would not be in their interests. 

I’ll be interested in reading what you think about this.

So, what I think... Trump always goes for the simplistic slogans, so "America First" fits that pattern. But I actually didn't pay much attention to the discussion of his foreign policy speech on April 27. Now, to answer the question, I'm forced to.

As usual, Trump is short on specifics. One key policy is that he won't let US jobs go overseas. Instead, he'll strengthen the economy here and reduce the trade deficit. But how, exactly? Will he pull the US out of many of the trade agreements, or maybe renegotiate them? He doesn't say. 

He'll also get rid of ISIS, and very quickly. He doesn't say how because he's not going to give ISIS that information. If his anti-ISIS plan is anything like his plan for Mideast oil, it's a total incoherent hodge-podge.

He's clearer that he won't destabilize any regimes that are stable. So he won't repeat our policies in Iraq and Libya. Well, I don't think many candidates are going to repeat those policies anyway. But, if he needs to use troops, he will and he'll win... if you believe Trump will miraculously avoid all past and future mistakes that seem to attend most of our Mideast policy. Yeah, sure, Donald will somehow thread that needle.

He'll negotiate a great agreement with Russia or walk away... but exactly what issues are we negotiating over? Oops, he doesn't say.

Trump has some reasonable points about loss of prestige, poor policy decisions, loss of jobs, the importance of military strength, etc. He's not a total liar about those problems. However, it's a big leap of faith to think Trump can change all of that. Unfortunately, we don't get a trial run with presidents, with a redo option when a president turns out to be horrible. I can understand why people want Trump to have a chance to carry out his ideas. But it's a big risk that I wouldn't take on his say-so.

Dangerous, I'm sorry if this didn't focus on his slogan "America First." I think it's more important to try to figure what he would do than analyze if a slogan appeals to certain groups and why.

Image: scribol.com

Extras. The NY Times critique of the speech. Snarky comments about the speech.

Downed Russian plane cools cries for war

After the attacks in Paris, conservatives were complaining how lackadaisical Obama is in fighting ISIS. So what did the conservatives say after the Russian bomber was shot down? Did any of them walk back their calls to increase our involvement? Did any of them say that maybe involvement isn't such a good thing?

Well, no, the conservatives didn't say that. Hardly anyone in politics or punditry admits a mistake, so it's no surprise. But it did mute their cries for the US to get further involved, especially as a strong man dictating what should happen. Maybe it also paused their admiration for Putin as a strong man who gets the job done.

The downing of the Russian plane should give everyone pause. Russia may want to respond by shooting down some Turkish planes or destroying something in Turkey, but there would be a high price for doing that. Turkey is in the NATO alliance, and you can't just start a war with a NATO country without bringing much of NATO down on you. Because of that, I think Turkey isn't going to suffer any major consequences for downing the plane, and Putin is going to have to take his lumps on it.

Charles Krauthammer, a supreme neocon, is backing down somewhat. He said these unexpected words:

"I give Obama credit for this..."

The credit being that Obama doesn't want Russia in the coalition fighting ISIS--the coalition having 65 member countries. Krauthammer was singing a different tune just 6 weeks earlier;

"And he said, oh yes, ‘the community of nations’ will take it on. The community of nations doesn’t exist."

I agree with Obama's limits on involvement. The Syrian conflict is amazingly messy, and no side is going to get a clean win, no matter how much money and troops they commit. If that's true, that there can't be a clean win, what should our strategy be? Does military history provide us with an answer?

Not that I know of. It doesn't look like anyone else has the answer either, no matter know loud they shouted a week ago.

 Image: mirror.co.uk

Extras. HotAir has little analysis of what it means to the US role in Syria. Marco Rubio thinks Russia got what it deserved. Paleoconservatives, being a different breed from neocons, say that this clearly shows what a mess Syria is. Weird theories from the internet here and here. Much more sober analysis here, including a reminder that this would be much more common with a no-fly zone. Hillary will want to rethink her support for a no-fly zone if she's elected. Finally, a round-up of crazy courtesy our presidential candidates.

Mideast policy proposals: many kinds of stupid

What have we learned about the Mideast?

Top of the list would have to be that there isn't an easy way in and back out. If we try to limit our engagement, the situation on the ground quickly spins out of control (see Libya and Syria). If we put in more resources, we're sucked in for more than we counted on (see Iraq).

The only proven winning strategy is (drum roll) ... non-existent.

That's tempering what Obama is currently doing in the Mideast, but not what some of the GOP candidates are declaring. Joke-candidate Donald Trump says that we can bomb the hell out of the oilfields, encircle them, and then send in Mobil to extract the oil to pay for the mission. This would be the best way to get rid of ISIS, according to him.

Great plan! I don't see anything wrong with it, since it obviously worked for Russia when they wanted Crimea. No one in the whole world will complain and make it stick if we do it. We won't have to worry about the drip-drip-drip of IED warfare because, um, well Donald's not worried about that.

Moving from the laughable to the merely deluded, we have Jeb Bush praising the surge and pretending everything would have been peachy if only Obama had kept troops in Iraq. This strategy worked so well in Afghanistan that we didn't need a surge there, or did we? For some reason, keeping troops in Iraq would have made everything turn out fine in Syria, would have prevented ISIS from invading Iraq, and other magical stuff. Back in the real world, perhaps ISIS wouldn't have taken over as much of Iraq as it did, but assuming better outcomes than that is quite a stretch.

Jeb Bush, of course, isn't deterred from engaging in such fantasy. He declares that by defeating Assad, we'll also defeat ISIS, "but we have to make sure that his regime is not replaced by something as bad or worse." Unfortunately, there weren't any hints on just how we "make sure."

Is anyone falling for that? I doubt it. I don't even think GOP supporters believe it. How could they, after the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, the Syrian civil war (ongoing), Vietnam, and Korea? They may pretend that they believe, just like Trump and Jeb Bush pretend, but that's a whole different thing from actually believing.

 Image: politicususa.com

Extra. One war Trump definitely could win (funny).

The crazy debate about which Americans caused the rise of ISIS

Which stupid American or Americans are responsible for the rise of that murder/torture group extraordinaire called ISIS?

The usual conservative story is that it's Obama's fault. He took all the troops out of Iraq, and that's why we have ISIS. (Examples: typical versus more intelligent than usual.) The usual Dem counterpoint is that Bush destabilized the region.

Why isn't someone pointing to players in the Middle East? I doubt that Obama was involved in financing and developing the recruiting strategies. So who was?

This story fits into the narrative that the US is so strong it can do anything or prevent anything, if only we were cognizant and had the will to act. Any failure in the world can be laid at our feet because of something we did wrong or something we should have done right but didn't.

In the case of ISIS, I reject that thinking. The Sunni paymasters have put together jihadi force after jihadi force. I'm not sure how we're supposed to prevent that, short of taking over the oil-rich Gulf states. A bunch of rich Saudi/Gulf guys support jihadis in Afghanistan, and that's good, Then they support a bunch called Al Queda, and that's bad. Then they support a bunch called ISIS and it's bad. However, the pattern time after time is A BUNCH OF SAUDI/GULF GUYS SUPPORTING JIHADIS. Doesn't that tell us how this happens?

It's true that maybe we should have foreseen that the 'Arab spring' uprising in Syria against Assad was going to be an opportunity for the rich Gulf guys to raise another jihadi army. Maybe we became too enamored of the Arab spring idea, and the many brave Syrians fighting for freedom. Maybe we missed all the signs that it was a civil war that would attract outside money that would mushroom beyond Syria. Or maybe there were hopeful, optimistic reasons why we didn't foresee it. Not every Arab spring uprising has turned into a jihadi murder-fest. Tunisia didn't (not yet, at least). Egypt didn't. So we had hope for Syria, and we were wrong. Does that make it our fault?

I don't think so. There were Syrians fighting against Assad. Money and fighters were flowing into Syria, and hardly any of it was from the US. So why is it our fault? Assad wasn't our puppet. The rebels weren't our proxy fighters, dependent on the US. No, the conflict would have developed the same way, regardless of what the US did .. unless we chose to level the entire country. Then it might have gone differently.

But bombing a country out of existence isn't a good tactical or strategic choice. Well, it isn't the usual choice. Has any government tried it and found that it works? Not that I know of. I don't particularly want the US to be the trailblazer of that strategy, do you?

Your donation (or ransom) hard at work buying violence

Image: mirror.co.uk

Extras. Rand Paul is offering a different story. NYT brief on ISIS's hearty finances.

Update 7/27/16. Detailed, frightening story about the beginning of ISIS.

Short: Radicals sowing civil conflict

This idea makes lots of sense: radicals like to create conflict. They thrive at times of disruption, and they often aim to create extra disruption, not just take advantage of disruption already occurring.

It's strange then that I saw only one article that applied this idea to the islamist-inspired killing rampage at the French magazine Charlie Hebdo. What's the real reason for that attack?

"Al Qaeda wants to mentally colonize French Muslims, but faces a wall of disinterest. But if it can get non-Muslim French to be beastly to ethnic Muslims on the grounds that they are Muslims, it can start creating a common political identity around grievance against discrimination."

Sow a bunch of hate and violence, and then feed off of the result. This might be a successful strategy for radical groups like Al-Queda and ISIS. So far, however, the French don't seem to be taking the bait, at least not in substantial numbers. The goal of turning the French violently against their Muslim population may not be achieved.

That's a good reflection on France, that they won't meet violence with revenge against those not involved. If only that idea would spread to the Middle East, then the sectarian bombings and wars might cease.

Coming together, not splitting apart

 Image: abcnews.go.com

Did you notice we survived 2014?

 Image: gopixpic.com

According to conservatives, the world was almost certainly going to end in 2014. The Russians were overrunning Ukraine (due to Obama's incompetence), ISIS was going to take over the Middle East and launch massive attacks on western countries (due to Obama's incompetence), and Ebola was going to decimate the US (due to Obama's incompetence).

If these things didn't happen, does that mean that Obama isn't as incompetent as portrayed? According to classic symbolic logic (if X, then Y), yes, it means Obama isn't as incompetent as stated. But, honestly, 1) conservatives aren't interested in logic and 2) classic symbolic logic is so limited as to be pretty useless. Here's a little known fact--logic doesn't deal with actual causation. 'If then' isn't necessarily a causal statement in classic logic. This is deeply disappointing.

Crisis contained - Russia and Ukraine

I think Obama did pretty well in each of these crises, mostly by not flipping out. Instead of starting a war with heavily armed Russians, he encouraged the Ukrainians to stand up for themselves, which is a VERY GOOD THING. More countries should do this instead of whining for the US to intervene and also conveniently bear most of the costs. The sanctions have hurt, but what's even better is that Obama has let the Russians show their true nature--militaristic liars. If we had gone to war, the narrative could have been that the US is the world-wide bully, and the Russians are heroes making a stand against the US. Instead, the Russians are the local bully, and the Ukrainians are the heroes. Other countries around Europe are seeing that you can make a stand against Russia. (At least I hope this analysis is correct. World affairs isn't my strength.)

(As an aside: This also bolsters the first lesson I learned that disproved a liberal tenet. Liberals said that demilitarization was good and morally superior. I learned, by observation, that being strong enough to defend your country was much more important, and the supposed moral superiority of demilitarization was hogwash. Liberals are so stupid sometimes that it boggles my mind.)

Crisis tested - ISIS

The surge of ISIS definitely was a crisis instead of being a faux-crisis trumped up by opponents. Obama reacted in way we haven't seen before--turning the crisis into a teaching moment. That may sound ridiculous--that you would allow a deadly crisis to play out instead of ending it as soon as possible. But I think this was the right approach.

In the Mideast, as in much of the world, too many people want the US to swoop in and save them (while also conveniently bearing most of the costs). It's a VERY GOOD THING for countries to get a reality check that the US might not be willing to do this, so they better be ready to defend themselves. Plus, they may want to identify threats early and do their best to avoid them.

Perhaps some people in Iraq finally learned the lesson this time. If you oppress large numbers of Sunnis, you create an angry insurgency that will try to take over the country. So don't oppress them. That's a relatively simple lesson that Iraq government under Nouri al-Maliki refused to learn. (Another aside--much of the Mideast, having been locked into strong-man dictatorships for so long, is now learning a lot of lessons. The learning process is important, so we shouldn't short-circuit it by swooping in like a helicopter parent.)

Crisis wildly overestimated - Ebola

The last threat that we survived was Ebola. The conservative response was so stereotypical as to be laughable. Talk about people not learning lessons--the conservatives really don't seem to understand science, and that the US response was going to be scientifically sound and based on evidence. So we brought a few infected citizens back to the US for treatment, and we learned from doing it. When we made mistakes, we learned and didn't repeat those mistakes. It is so incredibly simple, but partisan politicians seem not to know how to learn from mistakes. This is very strange, and I'll have to research why reality doesn't force politicians to learn.

Crisis for dollars - Underage immigrants

While we're reviewing crises that didn't pan out, there was one liberal crisis that didn't end up nearly as horrible as predicted. The crisis of immigrant minors crossing the US-Mexico borders supposedly required an infusion of $3.7 billlion. Not surprising, but the House did not dutifully comply with the request. Somehow, the Obama administration managed to deal with the crisis without the cash, so perhaps they didn't need the money after all.

Congratulations, everyone, we survived! Well, to be more specific, congratulations everyone except:

• Militaristic Russians
• ISIS and their sugar daddies
• Stubborn Iraqi politicians
• Overheated American conservatives
• Pollyanna American liberals

Trust whom?

Image: craftymcclever.wordpress.com

Short: ISIS is profitable terrorism

Here is a moderately long article about the financing of ISIS. Does that sound boring? To me it doesn't, but maybe to other people. I always wonder how it is that there seems to be bottomless funding for Islamic terrorist groups. At least for ISIS, this article contains some answers.

In Muslim countries, the problem with funding of terrorists groups isn't well addressed. It seems that enough wealthy people feel that their money is well-spent on armed thugs, as long as they have the right religious persuasion. I imagine that donors hold these views when they aren't personally subject to the thuggish behavior. So I'm left hoping that they either wise up or get a taste of their own medicine (preferably the former).

The financing of ISIS reminds me that some Somali pirates were also well-financed, but with the clear aim of turning a profit. Who would have known that the pirates would be replaced with an even bloodier threat. I hate to think about what's next.

Image:dw.de

Extra. Another article focuses on ground-level operations--extracting protection money and controlling financial hubs.

Tiptoe around the War Powers Act

The US is bombing quite a bit of Iraq these days, targeting the forces of the Islamic State, or whichever name they're using today. (It used to be ISIS for Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, then changed to ISIL, referring to Levant in place of Syria.)

Obama sent a letter to Congress on August 8 in compliance with the War Powers Act, which requires the president to notify Congress of military intervention, and conduct it for no more than 60 days without congressional authorization. So if the US continues bombing beyond Oct. 7, Congress needs to authorize it.

Oh no! Bad timing...

But wait! That's less than a month before the election. Will Congress be willing to take such a vote then? According to this article (and observations of this Congress), Republicans won't want to vote for anything the president requests. But they don't want to vote against military action either when it's action against murderous fundamentalist Muslim forces who are conducting mass shootings, terrifying minority religious groups, beheading high-profile prisoners, and threatening to take over the world. If you're a Republican, you hate Obama, but you hate Muslim extremists more. That still doesn't make it an easy vote, so Republicans will probably want to avoid it.

Dems have their own reasons for wanting to avoid it. They don't like reminders of how many Democrats voted for Bush's Iraq war resolution. If that was a mistake, wouldn't this be a mistake too? That's the easiest way to look at it. They can try to lessen the unease by putting limits on the military actions, but it's unclear that will satisfy wary Dems who'll have to take that vote.

So both Dems and GOP fear making a mistake on this vote. Will Obama force them to take a vote? If history is a guide, he won't. He never forced a vote on Libya. He got a lot of pushback against a vote authorizing bombing of Syria, and the vote never materialized. There's a very good chance that this vote won't happen either.

A Law is a Law

That's not good. We don't need yet another military action where the Congress was too divided to discuss and vote on it. We don't want to add to the precedent of a president and a Congress being too cowardly to follow a perfectly reasonable law... do we?

Maybe we don't mind it. Skirting laws probably happens all the time. The president and Congress don't follow the law, but they get away with it because ... the law is a pain in the ass, and no one that important is going to complain about the breach. Breaking the law is less embarrassing than having to decide which way to vote, so it's tough noogies to the law. Hey, maybe we shouldn't bother having laws at all.

Well, on second thought, laws are generally good, and it's best to abide by them for the most part. The War Powers Act is a reasonable law, and should be followed. Obama shouldn't be such a wuss--he should go to Congress and ask for authorization, a definite yes or a definite no. Then it's on Congress to act. They can authorize, vote against the authorization, or they can wimp out and not vote at all. If the members of Congress can't get a vote, they are the ones who failed to express their will, and Obama should do what he thinks needs to be done. That's still not in compliance with the law, but at least he gave it a chance.

Shoulda, woulda, coulda, but didn't.

Image: cagle.com

Update 4/6/15. We now know how Congress will respond, and it's by wimping out. Obama sent a request to Congress on 2/11/15. For some, it's too limited a request, for some too much, and for some, it's the hated prez asking for something, so the answer is easy.

How to Lose a Country in 3 Years

We, the U.S., left Iraq is reasonably good shape. There was a workable agreement between the central government and the Kurds. There was also the demonstration project (the surge) that showed how to work with the Sunni minority.

All that was lost on a clueless leader.

If you're a GOP partisan, you think the clueless leader is Obama. But I disagree. I think the clueless leader was Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. He pursued policies that shut out the Sunni population as though there would be no repercussions. That was foolish because the Sunnis had already shown a preference for rebellion over submission. 

Now the Iraqi army is deserting its positions without even engaging incoming Sunni forces. They are just running away. al-Maliki wants to declare a state of emergency, but can't get a quorum in the legislative branch to show up. Well, that's what happens when you build your plan on wishful thinking.

I don't know if a different US president could have helped prevent these losses in Iraq. My best guess is that the Iraqi leaders were stubborn in their views that they could do exactly what they wanted, and needn't share power (and spoils), nor make other compromises for the sake of unity. Any other US president also would have failed in negotiating a Status-of-forces agreement and failed to maintain US influence and US-tested moderating policies. 

So I don't think Obama is losing Iraq. Nor it is Bush's fault (for a change). Instead I think it's the short-sightedness of leaders in Iraq. Sometimes, there's no saving people from themselves. Actually, most of the time, you can't save people from themselves. Yet we try because sometimes it works. If only we knew when it was hopeless, or, more importantly, when it's worth the effort, expense, and lives. 

Image: bbc.com

Extra. Recently I was pointed to this column in National Review. It talks about the likely results of the Status-of-Forces agreement of 2008, worked out between Bush and the Iraqis. So much of what has occurred was predicted then, without any idea of what Obama would fuck up do as president. It was predictable based on the Iraqis, the Iranians, and the habits of Islamist fighters.