As pretty much anyone who has been paying any attention to the news today is aware it appears that the DPRK has tested a much larger nuclear device. With estimates of yield around the 100 kiloton range. I’m going to leave the technical write up to Cheryl as this is her area of expertise (no pressure…), but I want to talk about some of the strategic issues that we are now facing because of the test. Specifically those involved with trade relations with South Korea.
As I wrote about in regard to NATO and the EU, their real value isn’t at the tactical level, but at the strategic. Yes, the tactical and operational effects of deterring the Soviet Union and post 9-11 anti and counter-terrorism operations are very important. Especially the role they play in running NATO Training Mission Afghanistan. As is the role they’re playing today in attempting to deter Putin’s revanchism. But it is the geo-strategic effect of breaking the cycle of a major war on the European continent every 35 years that demonstrates NATO’s and the EU’s true value. While the US may not always get the best out of the NATO Alliance at the tactical end – though the only time Article V was invoked was after 9-11 on behalf of the US – nor from our trade agreement with the EU, both institutions and our arrangements/agreements with them are strategically priceless. Significant amounts of Americans have not had to go and die on the European continent since 1945. Nor have we had to spend significant financial resources to rebuild the continent a second time.
These important strategic effects are in the US’s interest, and they benefit the US, because the US is either the primary rule maker involved with them or one of the principle rule makers within the global system. This is why, for all its warts – and there were plenty – the Trans-Pacific Partnership made strategic sense. Yes, at the nickel and dime (tactical) level the US, and more specifically Americans, may not have done as well as the other signatories. And yes there were significant challenges to state sovereignty, such as the horrible corporate arbitration rules, but at the strategic level the effect was significant. The US would not only have reinforced its role as primary rule maker within the Asia-Pacific region, but also have blocked the PRC from emerging as a rival rule maker for the foreseeable future. While pulling the US out of the TPP may have made for a good photo-op and good messaging when playing to the domestic political base in the US, it was terrible strategic decision making. The result of the US just walking away from the Trans Pacific Partnership, the Peoples Republic of China has begun to assemble its own Asia-Pacific free trade agreement without the US. The US has ceded the strategic power of economic rule making in the Asia-Pacific region to China because of the President’s America First focused tactical thinking. Which will, in time, have both a negative strategic and tactical effect on the US economy. And other American interests as well.
This is important because the President is considering pulling the US out of another trade agreement this week. Specifically the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement.
On Saturday, before the nuclear test, senior administration officials confirmed that they were considering withdrawing from a major trade agreement with South Korea over what they believe is Seoul’s pursuit of unfair protectionist policies that have led to huge United States trade deficits.
On trade, the president’s top economic advisers remain deeply divided over a possible withdrawal from the United States-Korea Free Trade Agreement, as negotiators from both countries struggle to rewrite the five-year-old deal.
In recent days, a frustrated Mr. Trump has pushed his staff to take bold action against a host of governments, including the one in Seoul, that he has accused of unfair trade practices. But many of his more moderate advisers, including the chairman of the National Economic Council, Gary D. Cohn, believe that such a move could prompt a trade war that could hurt the United States economy.
The possibility of abandoning the agreement has alarmed economists and some members of the president’s own party who fear that such a move would force South Korea to block American manufacturers and farmers from a lucrative market.
While the NY Times and other reporting about what may happen with the US-Korean Trade Agreement largely focuses on the economic issues, specifically the tactical effects felt in both countries’ economies, the bigger concern here is the strategic. The Republic of Korea has a new President who was elected on a platform that included attempting new diplomatic talks with the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. This morning part of the President’s initial flurry of communications about the DPRK’s latest test was to slam President Moon for appeasing Kim Jung-Un.
South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2017
Unlike the vast majority of the US, until/unless Kim’s engineers and scientists resolve their outstanding missile development technology issues, the ROK is directly threatened by the DPRK’s conventional forces. President Moon’s intent to try to keep a military response from becoming necessary is born out of the very real concern for survival. For all that Kim has threatened Guam or even LA, it is Seoul that is within spitting distance of the Demilitarized Zone. And it is Seoul, the ROK’s military and civilians, the bulk of US Forces Korea, and hundreds of thousands of American and other expatriates working and living in Seoul that would initially bear the brunt and pay the price for military escalation with the DPRK.
The President’s tactical focus, whether it is on the nickels and dimes gained or lost through free trade agreements or resources to be taken during military operations, even if that is a strategically and realistically foolish position to hold, is actually heightening the strategic threat. Right now we need the ROK, as well as Japan, the PRC, and our other regional allies and partners to be pulling together. Instead we seem to be actively pulling them apart because the current National Command Authority has lost sight of, or doesn’t understand, the strategically important components of the free trade and security agreements the US enters into (being the rule setter within the global system) while focusing on the tactical minutiae of the financial bottom line. Bellicosity and intimidation may have worked when the President was driving deals, but they don’t work for international diplomacy. And regardless of what the President may think of diplomacy, trying to get one’s allies, partners, and peer competitors to do what you want is diplomacy.
Right now the US needs strategic leadership. As in leadership that understands what is strategically important, clearly articulates the necessary policies, and develops effective strategy to achieve the effects and objectives of those policies. The President and everyone else needs to realize that the DPRK is a nuclear weapon state. Non-proliferation has failed. The US policy, and that of our allies, partners, and peer competitors with whom we have common cause on this issue, such as the PRC, need to shift their focus to containment and deterrence of the DPRK in regard to its potential use of nuclear weapons. How to do this is the strategically important discussion that needs to be had now.
Now more than ever the US needs to live up to its post World War II role as the global rule maker and enforcer, not down to the nativist, isolationist tendencies that seem to seize it every so often. To do that we need a President who thinks strategically, not tactically. And who understands that sometimes one must cede tactical advantage to achieve strategic victory.
tybee
donnie needs to stfu
(((CassandraLeo)))
@tybee: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h6oxvm9Q68Q
rikyrah
@tybee:
Ya think?
JGabriel
Adam, a minor typo/grammar quibble. I suspect the following sentence:
should read as:
It’s just easier to read that way. I’m guessing that using a comma in place of the second dash was probably just a typo.
p.a.
I’m more likely to hit powerball…
Lapassionara
Thanks, Adam. Illuminating post. Someone needs to take away Trumps phone. His crazy ideas about South Korea and trade only suggest to North Korea that their testing is having the desired effect.
efgoldman
Bad enough that the stupid fat bastard and his acolytes have no fucking idea at all what they’re doing, and why. Half the fucking country would just as soon join him in metaphorically and physically vaporizing some of our most lucrative trading partnerships.
I know if he was asked outright to define a trade deficit he couldn’t do it with a blade to his throat.
Adam, I know your post isn’t about this, but it deserves to be bolded or maybe it’s own post.
People my age or younger (which means almost everybody) at least on this side of the Atlantic, take this for granted:
Felonius Monk
FTFY.
burnspbesq
I dunno, this may be overly simplistic and insufficiently nuanced for polite company, but it occurs to me that the US has a trade deficit with South Korea because Korean companies make stuff that American consumers want and can afford, and the reverse, not so much. Yeah, I know, they may be guilty of dumping steel, but that’s why we have countervailing tariffs, and if that system doesn’t work, fix it. But there is a grown-ass baby in that bath water.
schrodingers_cat
Apparently T wants a trade embargo on countries trading with North Korea, that’s India, China and Pakistan.
schrodingers_cat
a sequel to T’s biography.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@burnspbesq: “You should know how to swim already, you fucking moron.”
Felonius Monk
@schrodingers_cat: How can he lose friends? He’s never had any.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
One word, Adam: neoliberal
schrodingers_cat
@Felonius Monk: He is losing the United States its allies, I don’t much care about his personal life.
?BillinGlendaleCA
It’s a pity that no one in national politics back in the last election didn’t have these strategic chops.
JGabriel
@schrodingers_cat:
That’s close to 3 billion people, out of 7.5 billion globally – or approximately 40% of the world’s population.
But I’m sure, Donnie, that cutting 40% of the world’s population out of our markets won’t impact our economy at all …
schrodingers_cat
@JGabriel: I am sure an exception can be made for those ugly hats made in China.
JGabriel
@schrodingers_cat: Heh.
efgoldman
@schrodingers_cat:
Some things aren’t all bad. Since it was clear by the inauguration who and what Henna Hairball is, and every world and national leader can see it clearly (even if they deny it), nobody takes him seriously. Least of all young Kim. But young Kim is apparently an expert troll.
Zelma
A most impressive and scary description of the lack of strategic (or any) thinking in the Trump administration. Do they realize that South Korea is right next to North Korea? I’m not sure they do. Ignorance all the way down. Putin must be pleased to watch the US throw away its position of leadership so blithely.
Cermet
Yes: containment of them so they do not sell the technology for much needed cash but prevent these weapons use?! Are you serious or just as off-the-wall as the right wingers? North Korea is no more likely to use a nuke against anyone than China or Russia. That isn’t even an issue that needs to be raised at all. What desperately needs to be achieved is to get a working treaty to end the “war” and finally, limit their further testing of missiles with active warheads … wait, that is impossible since they have no way to detonate a warhead after launch ie. a place the missile can impact and explode the bomb. So, exactly why even bother with this aspect of a treaty at all and anyone can prefect missile technology for satellite use … so, that also is an agreement that cannot really be achieved. I think that the a$$wipe bush had the only real opportunity to stop those programs and that boat has sailed.
?BillinGlendaleCA
I guess we need to send Dense back over and project his, this time steely, resolve over the DMZ.
Hunter Gathers
Stupid White Trash POTUS elected by Stupid White Trash acts like Stupid White Trash.
Film at 11.
The Dangerman
How about a President who doesn’t think at all? Will that work?
ETA: Felonius got there first and better.
Hunter Gathers
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
That wasn’t resolve.
That was his come face.
And the only person frightened by it was Mother.
Major Major Major Major
Thanks Adam. This is a great explanation of the current situation and the strategic value of trade deals, I’ll be sharing it.
Felonius Monk
@efgoldman:
Yes, he is. He’s also a very fine violin player because he plays Trump like a fine Stradivarius.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
Most average Americans are too stupid, selfish, and entitled to do any of that. Last election proved that. Though more of us voted for the better candidate it didn’t matter because enough in the right states didn’t. And most people who live here didn’t vote at all.
How fucked up is it when largely empty states can overrule what a majority wants? “B-b-but without California Trump would have won the popular vote!” So? Do those people who live in California’s votes matter less than the votes of those who live in Kansas? Because that’s what the Electoral College does and did in 2016. People vote, not empty acres of land. Is it right for a minority to trample and dominate a majority?
Here’s to 2018 and 2020. Hopefully things will be turned around.
sharl
@Hunter Gathers: Yeah…for a political science grad student with stare-into-the-abyss proclivities, a working thesis title might be: “Synergistic factors contributing to the political impact of scaling up Cleek’s Law.”
?☹️?
father pussbucket
Which is one more thing than Trump understands.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
WASF
Deadbeat Donnie has been squandering soft power like it is the decorating budget for an “owner’s” residential and office suite at a Trump casino. He doesn’t give a shit how much of it he allows to evaporate – his image and whims are all that matter. As a result, his only leverage with allies and neutral trading partners is the cost of American collapse in a given market.
NK is alleged to currently have delivery systems for 90-110 weapons in the form of basic, non-MIRVed ICBMs. That inventory is lousy for counterforce (eliminating offensive capability, including second strike) but is absolutely perfect for countervalue (destroying cities, industrial centers and port facilities). If I’m looking at nuclear weapons game theory, NK wins if it has adopted a “launch on warning” status. Their leadership dies in the retaliation, but the extension of the American nuclear umbrella results in the destruction of millions of lives (20-30 mil, my guess) and the complete collapse of our national energy and food distribution structure. Bonus points to NK if they pull off a successful EMP attack in the process. We’d have essentially a third world economy – subsistence farming, barter in what would be left of cities.
Now for the real nightmare fuel (if that wasn’t bad enough) – a solid Russian war game position would be to do their own counterforce strike so as to attempt to limit widening after the first NK strikes land.
About the only option I see (now that nitwit has completely wrecked consensus and diplomacy) is American abandonment of SK and demilitarization, with SK security to be guaranteed by Chinese peacekeepers.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
WASF
Deadbeat Donnie has been squandering soft power like it is the decorating budget for an “owner’s” residential and office suite at a Trump cas!no. He doesn’t give a shit how much of it he allows to evaporate – his image and whims are all that matter. As a result, his only leverage with allies and neutral trading partners is the cost of American collapse in a given market.
NK is alleged to currently have delivery systems for 90-110 weapons in the form of basic, non-MIRVed ICBMs. That inventory is lousy for counterforce (eliminating offensive capability, including second strike) but is absolutely perfect for countervalue (destroying cities, industrial centers and port facilities). If I’m looking at nuclear weapons game theory, NK wins if it has adopted a “launch on warning” status. Their leadership dies in the retaliation, but the extension of the American nuclear umbrella results in the destruction of millions of lives (20-30 mil, my guess) and the complete collapse of our national energy and food distribution structure. Bonus points to NK if they pull off a successful EMP attack in the process. We’d have essentially a third world economy – subsistence farming, barter in what would be left of cities.
Now for the real nightmare fuel (if that wasn’t bad enough) – a solid Russian war game position would be to do their own counterforce strike so as to attempt to limit widening after the first NK strikes land.
About the only option I see (now that nitwit has completely wrecked consensus and diplomacy) is American abandonment of SK and demilitarization, with SK security to be guaranteed by Chinese peacekeepers.
karlb
@Felonius Monk: Trump is a cheap, bulbous bass fiddle with a frayed strings and a foghorn attached to the neck, at best, but Kim does play him masterfully.
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
I would recommend spending less time around the people who say and write such things.
debbie
@tybee:
After Trump does stfu, he needs to sit down and be schooled on the differences between diplomacy and appeasement. They are not interchangeable.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: You must be a joy at dinner parties.
AdamK
I’m so reluctant to Grammar Nazi on a fine writer, a better writer than me, but “ex-patriot” is what you’d call Benedict Arnold. An expatriate is someone who lives “out of” (ex-) their “homeland” (patria.)
Cheryl Rofer
I agree that Trump is all tactics and no strategy. But it’s worse than that. He doesn’t understand balance of payments. He thinks it’s a real estate deal. The other day he said something about wanting more investment in the US from some country. THAT WOULD MAKE THE BALANCE OF PAYMENTS MORE NEGATIVE FOR THE US.
He is also unable to think about more than one issue with one country at a time. He tweeted that one way to deal with North Korea is to put sanctions on all countries that have commerce with North Korea. THAT INCLUDES CHINA. His daughter’s business depends on Chinese manufacturing, not to mention much of the rest of the US economy.
As to the network of treaties, agreements, and yes, free riding that the US has built since World War II to stabilize the world, all he knows about them is what he hears on Fox. And he brings his real-estate-deal mentality to those too, hence the nonstop griping about NATO members “paying their own way.”
It’s clear that those around him know better, but he seems unable to learn from them.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Hmmm, fighter jets just flew over the cave. Oh right, UCLA’s season opener at the Rose Bowl.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
At least Trump and much of the GOP would die in that scenario.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Major Major Major Major:
Yeah I know. I just know if it were the reverse and Clinton had won via the EC, there would have been much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the right; the EC would have been abolished before 1/20/2017
?BillinGlendaleCA
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Not a chance, you’d never get the states to ratify it. NONE of the lower population states would do it.
Adam L Silverman
@JGabriel: Actually I’ve decided to go completely freestyle with punctuation. Just!, Go,ing- to? star!!!t u()sin.g I:t fo:r d!e?c,o.r’a”t”i(o)n
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: I’ve done at least two, if not three posts on this. One of which was linked to in the post up top at the beginning of the paragraph you quoted from.
frosty
@AdamK: Ah, yes, thanks. I stumbled over that word when I read it and then just moved on. Expatriate makes much more sense.
Adam L Silverman
@burnspbesq: This is correct, but another part of it is that we oftentimes let the states we’re negotiating with get the better deal because for us getting the free trade agreement and therefore being the rulemaker on the issue is not just our best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA), but also the minimum we are willing to accept. The problem we have now is that the President, unlike his predecessors, understands the purpose of negotiations to lead to a zero sum outcome. One party must clearly win and the other party must clearly lose. This is not what we teach to either our military or diplomatic personnel, but it is how the President understands the world.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: Yep. Couldn’t quite figure out where to fit that in with the point I was trying to make.
piratedan
so in short, you’re saying that Trump (and the GOP as an extension of Trump) are a bunch of myopicly stupid motherfuckers?
Adam L Silverman
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: If joking: well played. If serious, then you’ve missed the point.
MomSense
@Adam L Silverman:
I endorse this approach. We’re all about to die so to hell with grammar.
Mary G
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
I am toying with the idea of fighting fire with fire by doing a little personal gerrymandering if it looks like the 2020 election is going to be close. I could rent out my house near the beach, “move” to Ohio or Florida in April or May, rent a furnished place and register to vote, then decide the culture shock is too much and get back before winter sets in. The difference in housing costs means I might even make a small profit. Only the need to vote against Darrell Issa, who’s campaigning up a storm already, holds me back.
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I apologize for failing to run. It was an oversight on my part.//
Adam L Silverman
@JGabriel: @schrodingers_cat: This is a major issue that he hasn’t seem to grasped: his clothing line for men is manufactured in China. As are the $3.00 hats he’s selling for $40 on his campaign website.
Boussinesque
Adam, thanks so much for this post–it’s nice to have a succinct-yet-authoritative piece about the strategic fail that is the US government in the Trump era for sharing with friends and family. Really appreciate the time you take writing all of these.
clay
@Cheryl Rofer:
I don’t even think that’s true, because I seriously doubt even Fox News would advocate this:
This is so extraordinarily stupid and short-sighted, it must have come from his own brain. (Or possibly, the brain of Stephen “why should I pick up my own trash if we pay janitors?” Miller.)
lgerard
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Nor would any of the traditional “swing states” as they benefit mightily from the status quo
Adam L Silverman
@Zelma: Maps at the link:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/14/upshot/if-americans-can-find-north-korea-on-a-map-theyre-more-likely-to-prefer-diplomacy.html?mcubz=0
Here it is as a twitter embed. The map is from the link above:
It is sad and depressing.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: Right Oh! Don’t let the Punctuation Man rule you.
schrodingers_cat
@efgoldman: I am afraid people are going to take America less seriously, because a buffoon is our elected head of state, even after he leaves.
Adam L Silverman
@Cermet: I’m clearly delusional. Right now I’m juggling chain saw that I’ve doused in kerosene, have lit on fire, and later I’m going to take them to my neighbors house and make chili Texas Chainsaw Massacre style…//
More seriously: I do not believe that Kim is irrational in any sense. I think he’s pushed his program this far, and will push it a bit farther, so that he has as strong position as he can have to negotiate. Which is what I think he really wants. However, I am not always so sanguine about the President and his approach to this problem set. That said you plan for capabilities, then consider intentions or, rather, what is known or can be discerned of intentions. So you plan for both containment and deterrence. Even if the latter is really something that is not necessary.
schrodingers_cat
@?BillinGlendaleCA: How do you know that its a man. In my nightmares, the punctuation police is stern Sr. Lucia, my eighth grade English teacher.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: There was that woman with the email server…
Frank Wilhoit
Some points:
If (I say if) the “…post World War II role [of the US] as the global rule maker and enforcer…” had been a mistake to begin with, then this would be a prime example of the sunk-cost fallacy.
Two hundred years ago, it was universally understood that national boundaries were things that neither persons, nor goods, nor money, nor information should routinely cross.
Americans have no credibility as “rule makers”, because they have demonstrated a total inability to work within their own rules, let alone anyone else’s. This predates Trump. It was remarked upon at least as long ago as 1919…
…which, not coincidentally, is right about when the control of national boundaries was made pointless by the development of radio. If information can cross borders, then it does not matter what else can or cannot.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@schrodingers_cat: 60’s reference, “The Man” is trying oppress me…
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: Part of the problem is that most conservatives in the US have a very flawed understanding of what they see as the Ur-example of appeasement:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2013/09/neville_chamberlain_was_right_to_cede_czechoslovakia_to_adolf_hitler_seventy.html
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Spitballing “zero sum” game theory.
Adam L Silverman
@AdamK: Thanks, I always screw that one up. Good catch.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: One has to want to learn.
Dmbeaster
With Trump, we are no longer the leader of the free world. Talk that he will bully others who deign to trade with North Korea is an example of lack of leadership. My way or the highway means tne rest of the world will find its own highway.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Life is NOT “zero sum”, it’s something Republicans fail to understand.
Adam L Silverman
@MomSense: That’s why I’m having cheeseburgers, hot dogs, and a large amount of ice cream for dinner.
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Oh, sorry. Thought you were talking to me. Carry on then.
Adam L Silverman
Time to eat, back in a bit.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: Could be, do you have an email server in your basement?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Adam L Silverman:
He’s not irrational at all – just a product of a hereditary autocracy prone to hyperbole. His odds of success are high – he drew an inside straight flush with Trump.
MomSense
@Adam L Silverman:
I had an extra glass of wine and a second piece of cake!
Cheers!
efgoldman
@AdamK:
:::ahem::: If you’re going to go all grammar pedant nazi on another commenter, it’s probably best that you get your writing correct, first.
“…a better writer than I…“
Frank Wilhoit
@Adam L Silverman: “Negotiation” is usually a euphemism for something else. True negotation occurs between actors with symmetry of power and large overlap between interests. Failing these things, whatever happens is something other than negotiation and might as well be called by its name, it if had one.
With respect to DPRK vs. USA, standoff does not imply symmetry and the overlap of interests is probably zero. Plus which, it cannot matter whether Kim Jong-un “really wants” negotiations, because no one on this side does (except for a few persons who are completely marginalized).
Postmodern strategic and tactical analysis proceeds from the insight that no one wants to win; they only want to make the other side lose.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: The North Korean goal has long been to negotiate a separate deal with the US to get the US out of the ROK.
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
And be capable of learning….
Raven
@schrodingers_cat: Sister Mary Elephant, What i did on my summer vacation!
https://youtu.be/aDaCNA3pink
Raven
@Raven: @?BillinGlendaleCA: He keeps poking South Korea there are going to be a couple of hundred thousand Americans in a world of shit.
Chet Murthy
@Adam L Silverman:
Adam, I’m of two minds on this. On the one hand, yes you’re absolutely right. On the other, whose *fault* is it that the US pulled out? To my mind, it’s the fault of the rich and big corps, who couldn’t resist FOR EVEN ONCE the opportunity to “wet their beaks”. Not even when it was (let’s stipulate) critical for our future and the future of the Western Alliance, could they avoid being greedy bastards.
I feel like all discussion of the TPP lays the blame on either the American People, or liberals, or the Left. And that’s not where it belongs, and it’s wrong to pitch the discussion that way. Not squarely assigning blame confuses the issue, and *specifically* exonerates and obscures the traitorous behaviour of the wealthy in our society. And it’s important to call that out every time.
OTOH perhaps one might argue that the only way an agreement like the TPP could be made, was to give the rich their unjust rapine and pillage. That that’s just the price of maintaining the international order. But in that case, as Middle America descends to Brazil, I honestly can’t blame them (and liberals/The Left) for saying “to hell with it all”.
germy
Chet Murthy
@burnspbesq: It’s not quite as simple as that. You might want to read _Blowback_ by Chalmers Johnson. It came out just before 9/11, and people who didn’t read it assumed it was related to our Middle East policy. But in fact, it was about -Japan- and our policies there. He covers in some detail the way in which American industry was sacrificed to the end of our Empire.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Adam L Silverman:
Of course joking. Neoliberalism is a real thing and a problem, but most people online who complain about it can’t see the forest for the trees.
Raven
@efgoldman: .Getting ready to watch the Hokies and Eers, I sure you have some annoying comment to make about that.
efgoldman
@germy:
Any one of which will lead to the deaths of tens of millions of people, mostly civilians. Which Mattis would have seen gamed out dozens of times in his various postings. Not to mention the concomitant depression once the trading relationships are broken.
Is craziness kontagious? Have otherwise thoughtful. competent people caught whatever it is that Mango Malignancy goes around with?
efgoldman
@Raven:
Since I know baseball annoys you: I’ll be clicking back and forth. Might click over to the UCLA game if it’s more competitive.
Neener neener annoying enough for you?
Raven
@efgoldman: you can do better than that
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
I was sure you were linking to Obama’s handling of Syria. Trump has called it appeasement a couple times already.
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I do not have an email server at all.
Adam L Silverman
@MomSense: That’ll work too!
oldgold
Who is willing to offer up Taiwan to resolve North Korean threat?
Adam L Silverman
@Chet Murthy: I wasn’t trying to blame liberals or the left or workers. In the case of the President, as in the current one who actually pulled us out of TPP full stop, he was playing to a nativist base that knows very little about how trade works and even less about macroeconomics. Which is why they all think the government’s budgeting should be done like their family budgeting. Because a lot of American families have their own fleet of aircraft carriers. The President had the option, had he chosen to consider it or use it, to go back and try to renegotiate some of those points that you correctly point out.
Adam L Silverman
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: I reckoned. And you are correct, it has become a conjuring word for a specific set of folks who don’t actually understand what it means.
Villago Delenda Est
Assuming that Donald is “thinking” about anything is folly. It looks like tactical thinking, because it’s always short term, but it’s about his ego and pandering to the idiots who make up his base, who also DO NOT THINK, period. It’s all about grievance, revenge, resentment with both Donald and his base. They have no time for thinking at ANY level. They’re not thinking things out tactically, and the certainly have know knowledge of operational or strategic thinking. Their opinons are utterly worthless because they’re not based on fact, or thought, but on lizard brain reaction.
lgerard
@oldgold:
The Chinese have an interest in the status quo. It gives then a buffer state, and there is a very large population of ethnic Koreans in China.
North Korea also has some natural resources that the Koreans cannot develop, leaving them China, as well as the cheapest labor force in the world, which even South Korea has availed itself of.
Not to mention that all the attention on North Korea keeps attention away from Chinese maritime expansion.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: I am aware, but no. Americans in general have learned that appeasement is what happened at Munich. And American conservatives have turned this example, and the term, as a weapon to beat up on anyone and any policy that isn’t as aggressive as they’d like. Unfortunately, as the article (and the book the article is based on) delineates, it isn’t that simple. What Chamberlain did, as horrible as the outcome of his decisions were the Czechs and Slovaks and lots of others, was use the size of the continent for strategic depth and the time it would take Hitler to do what he intended to buy the time for the British military to refit and expand. Time was a major resource that Britain needed. To get it Chamberlain calculatedly sacrificed hundreds of thousands non British. But he understood, as did his ministers, the longer parameters to the conflict.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman:
Not just that, they talk like no family ever carries debt from year to year. I guess they’ve never heard of a home mortgage. Also, last time I checked it was pretty much illegal for me to print up US currency.
oldgold
@lgerard: Precisely why we will have to offer something big to get China to act to disrupt the status quo.
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yep. I had to have that conversation with my barber last week. He means well. He’s a good barber. He’s dumb as a stump and poorly educated too boot.
JGabriel
@Adam L Silverman:
Honestly, I’m not sure Trump can grasp anything but his teeny little penis with his short-fingered hands.
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
FTFY
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Do you all just want to start writing my posts and comments? Just let me know, because if you do I’ll just sit back and relax.
Noncarborundum
down?
Mike in NC
@efgoldman: You are quite correct that Fat Bastard couldn’t locate the Korean Peninsula if he was handed a globe.
Adam L Silverman
@Noncarborundum: Good catch. Thanks. Fixed!
JGabriel
@Adam L Silverman:
Jayne: Yes.
Mal: Well … you can’t.
Adam L Silverman
@JGabriel: Well played.
JGabriel
@Adam L Silverman: Danke.
debbie
@JGabriel:
There’s an uncredited cartoon on my FB page of Trump and Kim Jong Un with their (both very tiny) dicks on a table and holding measuring tapes.
JGabriel
@debbie: I’m surprised they can use measuring tapes to do that, rather than, let’s say, microscopes.
HinTN
Adam, I’m quoting because, coming cold to your post, this struck me
and my immediate thought was, “Why do we leap to the presumption that we must rebuild Europe but we don’t have the same bias to build up every other disadvantaged society/country/tribe that could benefit us by being advantaged into the economic system we value?”
Perhaps this has been addressed; I’ll go read now.
Adam L Silverman
@HinTN: It wasn’t. It is a good question. We tend to rebuild or coordinate rebuilding in the places where we spend significant resources fighting. The Marshall Plan in Europe and its equivalent for Japan after WW II. Significant investment in the ROK after the armistice that suspended the hot portion of the Korean War. We didn’t in the case of Vietnam, but we have in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now as to why we don’t in places that we don’t fight? I think that has a lot to do with domestic politics. We have a very common misunderstanding of how little we spend on foreign aid/assistance. The vast majority of Americans are convinced it is this huge chunk of the budget when in reality it is about 1.2% of discretionary (and less of the overall/entire budget). So there is little to no political pressure or desire to increase it. Where you do see willingness to spend money on reconstruction is where we’ve been fighting. And it is usually justified as part of how we can prevent having to go back and fight there again.
Finally, the real question is whether the success of the Marshall Plan and its Japanese equivalent can actually be recreated in the places we’ve been fighting. That is a different set of issues all themselves.
Matt Mangels
Why though? I feel like this is an unexamined assumption that many of us Americans have. We’re hardly “the good guys”. I don’t see what’s so good about imperialism.
Adam L Silverman
@Matt Mangels: We’re not perfect. We’re not pure. And all to often we have feet of clay. But do you want Russia and China making the rules?
The Pale Scot
@Adam L Silverman:
I don’t think so . Kim is not a national leader, he’s a crime boss. He want’s 20-30 ICBM’s with city buster warheads to threaten anyone who threatens him. Be that kinetically or monetarily.
The only good thing at the moment is that NK (I believe) doesn’t have solid fuel rocket tech. So I can hope that we would spot any attempt to fuel ICBMs even if they’re in silos.
Kim’s endgame is to be able to threaten anyone, including China, that tries to put the screws to him by cutting off his criminal operations that allow him to payoff the operators that keep him in power. “I am a river to my people” as Anthony Quinn once said.
Edit: spelling
TenguPhule
So SK and the rest of us are in big fucking trouble.
TenguPhule
@Cheryl Rofer:
And nobody can imagine it crashing down around our ears because its one of those insane scenarios where WASF.
TenguPhule
@efgoldman:
As has been noted repeatedly, NONE of the people around Trump are thoughtful.
Dennis
A Democratic Party committed to the strategic role that you talk about would have played it straight and not turned TPP into a corporate hog trough. The right for companies to be compensated richly for being refused the right to pollute was a deal breaker for me, but there were many others. Read some Dean Baker on the subject.