Donald Trump has long believed that he could eliminate nuclear weapons from the world. He is the greatest negotiator ever, and he doesn’t understand why those wimpy diplomats can’t just heave a hearty “Fuck You” across the conference table and walk out, which would induce the other party to come around.
The administration’s approach to foreign policy is driven by Trump’s ignorance and greed, but with an inertial component of conventional policy development by the permanent government employees who remain at lower levels, and a layering of political appointees with their own agendas, some of which dovetail with Trump’s, some of which are more or less conventional foreign policy, and some that are quite idiosyncratic.
Trump’s impulsiveness and desire to be the center of attention lead to statements of policy unexpected by other components of the government. “They were informed by tweet” is a statement that often appears in news stories. After an initial surprise, the impulsive statements may be modified or suppressed, but some work their way into official policy.
Conventional foreign policy analysis is still useful in looking at other countries. North Korea’s response to Trump, for example, is pretty much what you would expect. Russia isn’t too far off, although the relationship between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, whatever it may be, can be a confounding factor. But in order to understand America’s actions today, we have to look at Trump’s motivations.
North Korea has again launched some missiles. They are not ICBMs that could reach the United States. Trump tweeted that he is willing to wait it out, although it was earlier reported that he was angry about the launch. And Trump’s tweet says that “Anything in this very interesting world is possible,” which may be a threat.
Trump wants big wins, and he seems to be holding out for a total surrender of all of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program before removing any sanctions at all. North Korea is operating on a more normal timeline, in which small moves on each side gradually build confidence toward a goal. North Korea has made some token moves, and they feel that it is time for the United States to do the same.
Reliable rumor has it that teams at the State Department and the national laboratories are on call to bring North Korea’s nuclear weapons back when Kim gives the word. Trump and his administration really believe that this will happen.
In Trump’s mind, waiting is easy. The two summits with Kim gave him lavish photo-ops and the ability to say that he is negotiating. He has put his deal on the table. It is up to Kim to accept it.
In Trump’s business life, he probably could walk away from a deal that was going bad after he proclaimed success. The people working for him tied up the loose ends, and he never noticed. He just went on to another deal. Next after North Korea could be a grand arms control deal with Russia and China. He would certainly get a Nobel Prize for that.
The greatest negotiator, with the greatest mind – he’s said that he could master the details of arms control in an hour or so – doesn’t need advisors. He has now gutted much of the advisory structure surrounding the President. The State Department has been cut back. Ambassadors are absent in many countries. The cabinet is composed of people who don’t know what they are doing, many of them in acting positions. His closest advisors in the White House are his children and toadies. Anyone who has disagreed with him has been removed.
So now he can run international relations as he has always believed they should be run. There has been an unfortunate distraction from the Special Counsel and Congress, but now that the Mueller report is out and tied up by Attorney General Bill Barr, that problem has been solved, as Trump and Vladimir Putin argeed.
For Trump, the central consideration is his being able to preen as a great negotiator and claim that he is making important agreements. This week’s North Korean missile test, therefore, is unimportant. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is already playing it down, although the South Koreans, who are within the missiles’ ranges, are not so happy.
Trump’s strategy of ignoring facts that inconveniently undermine his narratives has worked for him as a real estate developer and television personality. Those interactions were managed by his underlings and are likely to disappear if one ignores them. International issues don’t go away. Kim continues to build up his nuclear arsenal and, further, expects continuing negotiations, including reciprocal actions. The missile test is a reminder of that. If Trump continues to ignore Kim’s inconvenient actions, Kim has more.
When and how will Trump react? It appears that he has never been in this kind of situation before, so it’s impossible to predict. So far, “Lalalalalalala I can’t hear you” is working for him.
Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner.
Chyron HR
I thought the Trump doctrine was “nucular bigly proliferation”.
Cheryl Rofer
@Chyron HR: He goes from one to the other. I think his position is that as long as others have them, we have more. But if there is a chance to eliminate them and get all the credit for that (and a Nobel Prize), he’ll do that too.
Mike in NC
How many more times will the Moron-in-Chief get suckered by Kim? He seems so obtuse that he’ll keep on going to these “summits” indefinitely and no agreement will ever be reached. Hopefully after 2020 it will be a moot point and Kim will revert to being an international pariah.
Jerry
On a related note:
Brachiator
Has he ever had a coherent policy?
It seemed that he wanted to keep Iran and North Korea from having nukes. But the US and its allies could be forever nuclear. And he seemed happy to have a perpetual arms race with Russia and China.
Apparently, India and Pakistan only have shit hole nukes and so are not important.
Cheryl Rofer
@Brachiator: He has a coherent policy. He is the greatest negotiator ever. All facts must be bent to support that policy. Mike Pompeo is with him.
encephalopath
Trump thinks he’s going to out wait North Korea?
He’ll be mouldering in the grave before North Korea budges.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Jerry:
Sanders really wants to lose, doesn’t he?
Brachiator
@Mike in NC:
About as many times as Lucy suckers Charlie Brown into falling on his ass when she pulls the football away.
Another Scott
The DPRK is facing another famine, and they seem to always act out when these things happen. I suspect that the timing of the missile launches has much more to do with that, than thumbing their nose at Donnie (though of course there is some of that as well).
There’s space for a an agreement with Kim about a lot of things, and he needs one to have any hope of feeding his people. If we had sensible diplomats and negotiators then something sensible might be possible. As it stands with Donnie, well…
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Chyron HR
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
If we assume he knows he’s running a con, then yes. He absolutely wants to lose the primary and milk his supporters’ grievances for another four years.
oldgold
Uh oh! We may have a bigly Constitutional Crisis on our hands.
1:03 PM – May 5, 2019
(Emphasis supplied)
Cheryl Rofer
@Mike in NC: @Brachiator: But Trump doesn’t see this as being suckered. Kim is maybe having a bad day, or, you know, you just don’t know what the people below him might be doing. Trump is firm in his demand for North Korea’s unilateral nuclear disarmament, and Kim will come around.
Spanky
This clearly calls for some immediate action.
I think I’ll go vacuum the first floor.
Ruckus
@Jerry:
BS is a doddering old fool, with a soapbox and megaphone.
And I used that vision/words specifically.
Decades ago there were people who would stand on a street corner and rail about something, often an unrecognizable something. Maybe an upturned hat to collect loose change. Possibly a hand lettered signboard and a megaphone. Most often a crank who had nothing else to do but scream and shout about bullshit. Almost certainly unemployable at doing anything productive.
Stop me if any of this sounds familiar and or makes any sense about BS.
Cheryl Rofer
@Another Scott: North Korea’s difficulties with food enter into it, as far as needing sanctions to be lifted. If Trump were negotiating in a normal way, he would be lifting some sanctions in response to North Korea’s moratorium on nuclear and intercontinental missile tests. He might even get something in writing, but that would require him to put something in writing, and he’s said that being unpredictable is part of his negotiating success.
So yes, it’s both. North Korea is not going to give up its nukes, and, in any case, doing everything all at once is not the way international agreements work. But here we are.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
LOL
The moron in chief doesn’t quite have the charm and likability of Charlie Brown though…….
Brachiator
@Cheryl Rofer:
Kim seems to be doing the same thing that he has done with past presidents.
The crazy thing is not just that Trump insists that he knows what he is doing, it’s that Fox News and the right wing media refuse to admit that Trump is stumbling.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
And admit that they were wrong about supporting him at all? NEVER!
Mai Naem mobile
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Sanders is the left’s version of Ron Paul and his little money making machine, with a Russian add on feature.
JimV
It is like the Emperor-without-clothes story, times ten. What a nightmare.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
The right wing is still getting what they want from Trump, even if it jeopardizes the future of the country.
Chyron HR
@oldgold:
“BOB MILLER must never testify that I did the NO COLLUSION! NO COLLUSION!”
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Maybe especially if it does.
Ruckus
@oldgold:
So, let’s review.
If the moron in chief is totally exonerated by the Mueller report, why can’t we see the report in it’s entirety? Is he afraid of the truth maybe……
mrmoshpotato
@oldgold: Nancy SMASH: Shut the fuck up Donny.
mrmoshpotato
@Brachiator:
Well yeah, because the driving force behind the Republican party is to make liberals cry.
Governing? Improving people’s lives? Reducing the national debt? Affordable, useful healthcare? To hell with all that! Those won’t make liberals sad.
The Republican party abandoned trying to actually work for the people long, long, loooooong ago. And they’ll fuck over their own voters too and blame the Democrats.
Brachiator
I didn’t pay much attention in secondary school to the already cursory presentation the teachers gave us about Cinco de Mayo and Mexican history. In fact it was about on par with the slick abbreviated patter we got about the subject at the original Six Flags amusement park. The Mexican army defeated the French Empire which later still was able to install Maximilian I as ruler of Mexico. Blah, blah, blah.
But understanding more about the background to this conflict helped me to understand how the Republicans who back Trump could willingly surrender American sovereignty to Putin.
The conservative Mexican elite preferred a foreign monarchy over a democratically elected government where the elite would have to share power with peasants and people of color.
Very compressed summary from the Wikipedia.
So, sadly, Trump would not just turn us into a banana republic, but into a frightened racist rump country dominated by a foreign power in a desperate attempt to “preserve” whiteness and evangelical tyranny.
RepubAnon
@Brachiator: The right wingers need an enemy – and Iran isn’t scary enough. Thus, they don’t care that Trump is making the world more like it was in the 1930s, where dictators took what they wanted. The right-wingers figure that the US is the supreme superpower and can do whatever it wants.
Kind of how Great Britain felt in the 1930s, when the British Navy ruled the waves…
mrmoshpotato
@Chyron HR:
“MANY PEOPLE are saying the bazillion Angry Democrats did the COLLUSION! NO COLLUSION! NO COLLUSION! My daddy Vladdy says you’re the COLLUSION! SAD!””
Citizen_X
@Another Scott:
Argh! Leaching! Nobody’s attaching leeches to the soil!
Tokyokie
@Ruckus: Bernie is pretty much indistinguishable from the sort of loon one can find on a nice Sunday afternoon at Hyde Park’s Speakers’ Corner.
hells littlest angel
And after, more importantly to him, he had filled his own pockets.
Another Scott
@Citizen_X:
Maybe that’s really what they meant? Dunno.
Otherwise, good catch! :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
MisterForkbeard
@Jerry: Here’s hoping that’s just taken out of context, because fucking wow.
Another Scott
@MisterForkbeard: There was a recent Wilmer tweet (that I reposted here), that I haven’t been able to find again, where he said that he was “disappointed” (or something similar) by some horrible action by Trump. When it comes to being reliably outraged by Donnie’s actions, Wilmer isn’t there.
He’s too nervous about upsetting his white rural voters, apparently.
Cheers,
Scott.
catclub
@Mai Naem mobile:
are you suggesting Ron Paul did not have Russian support?
Jerry
@MisterForkbeard:
Sadly, I don’t think he was. That tweet that I linked to has the video of him saying just that. I’m not sure there could be any other context in which that was said other than it starting with, “Only an idiot would say the following:…”
Dan B
@Citizen_X: Thank you. There their they’re etc.
And Trump vs. Kim. It’s a lesson that negligent rulers combined with an isolated elite can be as destructive as a determined dictator.
waspuppet
Does anyone honestly think Donald Trump is thinking about the ramifications of his actions 50 years down the road? He can’t think ahead 15 minutes.
His top priority isn’t this country. This country isn’t in his top five favorites. Whatever makes him feel better about himself is what he’ll do and say. If only someone had said this for two years before the election—someone other than icky liberals because ewww what fun is it listening to them?
Ruckus
@Tokyokie:
Exactly. They used to be far more common on street corners. Now most have their moms basements to sit in.
Procopius
Even if Trump thought an arms control deal would be good, which I do not believe, the people he’s appointed would never allow it. Just like with the “withdrawal” from Syria. All his appointments have been lunatics dedicated to more war. I would expect the Democrats to strongly and loudly oppose any such deals, too. They are now the War Party.