Left’s War of Attrition Bears Fruit: Trump Stumbling – Three Topical Mistakes

The destructive subversion by the united political left, the bulk of the media outlets, and the GOP's neoconservative conspirators finally impact the President's policies. President Trump, surrounded by bad advisors and let down by his party, is stumbling, and erroneous policy decisions and bad 'deals' have amassed. 

It is hard to assess whether bad advice and improper counseling or the weakening of Mr. Trump's leadership instincts and deal-making capabilities are to blame. But the fact is that the constant resistance to any of President Trump's policy decisions and the unyielding hatred and negativity by which his opponents harass him show effect. His judgment appears to be clouded and generates wrong choices and failed policies. Attempts to euphemistically sell them as successful can't deceive over their inherent weaknesses. 

Here a brief analysis of the most striking failures and disappointments of recent months. 

First: Government Shutdown and Emergency Declaration. 

This issue was overall poorly planned and untimely scheduled. When Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer adamantly refused to allocate a single additional dollar for the wall, it was void and meaningless to subjecting the country to a week-long government shutdown. It was clear beforehand that nothing was going to change. 

Pelosi's stubborn declaration – in apparent antagonism to her party's recent stance on border security – laid bare that the Democrat Party and the majority in the newly elected House of Representatives had abdicated their responsibility. It was no longer about efficiently governing the country and cooperating with the President; it was about denying him any policy success whatsoever and assuring his presidency's failure. 

Speaker Pelosi's apodictic refusal to collaborate on the border wall/immigration control issue was exclusively motivated by spiteful ad hominem-hostility toward the President. The conspiracy of Democrats, Never-Trumpers, and most of the media made evident again that they constitute the real emergency in U.S. politics. 

The U.S. Constitution does not allow for the dissolution of the House of Representatives – which would have been the only appropriate measure when the lower chamber of the house ultimately rejected any collaboration whatsoever with the President on the issue of a border wall. Had he received sound advice, Mr. Trump should have designated the complete rejection of cooperation from the part of the house of representatives a situation of political distress that endangered the governability if not, in the longer run, the nation's existence. 

On these grounds, he should have declared an immediate national security emergency and unleash, by Executive Order, necessary measures to resolve the crisis at the border, including allocating funds for the border wall. Instead, subjecting the nation to the most extended government shutdown and procrastinating the crisis's resolution for several weeks was inappropriate and must be considered lousy leadership. 

Second: Breakup of Trump-Un Hanoi Summit

There is substantial evidence that the Trump administration's neocons were intentionally planning to upset the Hanoi summit. A few days before the conference, unknown forces carried out a raid on the North Korean Embassy in Madrid, Spain.

The ten masked attackers were looking for documents and information on Kim Hyok Chol, a former ambassador to Spain and close confidant of Chairman Kim Jong Un. He played a vital role in preparing the nuclear talks with the U.S. Besides, on the day of the Summit, a cyber attack was carried out on the Korean American National Coordinating Council (KANCC) in New York (for more details: Wayne Madsen @ https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/03/18/trump-cia-now-unbound-and-back-traditional-hijinks.html)

Not granting North Korea a gesture of goodwill and easing up on the sanctions sure was bad deal-making. Breaking up the talks between President Trump and Leader Kim Jong Un and letting the Summit fail because of North Korea's unwillingness to denuclearize without getting sanctions lifted or at least lightened has to be designated an utter folly. 

How can a superpower demand total denuclearization and the termination of a decade-long policy without proposing any serious incentives? How easily could sanctions be reinstated, aside from the fact that they barely affect and are highly problematic if not to say unethical? Predicting the North Koreans a 'bright economic future,' as John Bolton put it, will hopefully materialize, but is indeed not enough to cut the deal.

I have explained in my blog essay of September 9, 2017, https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2017/09/why-my-north-korea-resolve-could-have.html that the crux of the negotiations with North Korea is about the issue of guarantees for non-intervention and national sovereignty. Aware that only a minimal nuclear capability serves as the great equalizer and deters even supreme powers from intervention, North Korea justifiably demands reliable and trustworthy guarantees for protecting her national sovereignty and against regime-change intervention. In the essay mentioned above, I refer to and explain Libya's case in 2011 as one of the recent and most striking examples of how a country was betrayed by the United States and "rewarded" for its unilateral denuclearization. 

I have repeatedly addressed the damage the neoconservative influence did to U.S. foreign affairs policies in previous blog entries. The breakup of President Trump's talks with the North Korean leader over upholding the entire sanctions regime is now apparently the next big blunder neoconservatism has caused, this time around perpetrated by the usual suspect warmongers Mike Pompeo and John Bolton. 

These hawkish counselors' bad advice found its immediate continuation with the third failure Mr. Trump had himself talked into – the policy toward Venezuela. 

Third: Interventionist policies vis-à-vis Venezuela

No doubt, the domestic situation in Venezuela and the country's economic demise is alarming. While the desire to help is understandable, we must not forget that the U.S.'s economic sanctions and embargos contributed to the malaise. 

As much as a conservative U.S. administration might deride the Socialist President of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, and wants to see him gone, the premature support of the opposition candidate Juan Guaido was a failure. Guaido dared to declare himself the rightful President, and Washington's blessing sets another awful precedent in the long history of illegitimate U.S. interventions. 

Unfortunately, the regime-change operation is in line with the U.S.' unilateral interventionist policies dominating three decades since the end of the Cold War. With overt and covert interventionist policies (i.e., Kosovo, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine), U.S. administrations have compromised the U.S.' reputation within the international community. While this interventionist imperialism ended in horrible failures, no lessons seem to be drawn by the American foreign policy establishment. 

On the occasion of Libya's intervention, I explained why all nations' equal sovereignty and the ensuing non-intervention principle is not only a meaningful stipulation of international law (Article 2/4 of the UN Charter and U.N. Resolution 2131 of December 21, 1965). It is, even more, a morally valid norm for the interactions within the global society and its members (https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2011/03/us-and-european-foreign-policy-blunder.html).

 

Although candidate Trump in his presidential campaign promised to end such policies, this dangerous course of U.S. foreign affairs continues under the pressure of neoconservative elements in the U.S. government. 

We will soon find out if President Trump will override the adversarial influence and fulfill his promise to retreat the U.S. from the disastrous policy of waging interventionist wars. Interventions in foreign countries that neither directly impact U.S. strategic interests nor represent a national security threat. 

President Trump's domestic policies (economic, regulatory, cultural, legal) are undeniably successful. It is now high time to align U.S. foreign affairs and national security with this path of achievement.

Why My North Korea Resolve Could Have Made President Trump 'Famous' at the UN!

Had the advisors to President Trump read my blog essay on "How to Resolve the North Korea Crisis" of August 10, 2017 (https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2017/08/how-to-resolve-north-korea-crisis.html), could they have made him 'famous' at the United Nations? If Mr. Trump had presented my two-tier approach to resolving this crisis, which is not only politically sound but also morally legitimate, they would hail him as a statesman by now. Does this sound conceited or arrogant? It might seem at the beginning of this brief essay, but hopefully will no longer at the end.

 

Imagine Mr. Trump, heeding the advice I proposed in my blog essay, saying something like the following in his speech at the United Nations Assembly: "I assure the world public that the U.S. will never use nuclear force against North Korea first. I guarantee the North Korean regime that the U.S. and its allies will not forcefully implement regime change in North Korea. My political administration will pursue the establishment of a peace treaty to that effect. While this process is ongoing and until we achieve a satisfying result, the U.S. will observe the principle of 'deterrence by denial.' It will implement missile defense capabilities and civil defense measures to protect itself and its allies if North Korea decides to abandon this proposal for resolving the crisis between our nations peacefully. However, I assure the world community of nations that if North Korea should strike or attempt to hit the U.S. or its allies with weapons of mass destruction first, the United States will strike back with all its might at whatever cost this might entail for the North Korean people."

 

This statement would have not only been prudent to say in the sense of putting the U.S. on the moral high ground in this conflict. It would also acknowledge that the experts in Washington D. C. had finally understood what North Korea's aggressive posture and its constant missile and nuclear testing is all about: to generate some atomic capacity to deter the United States from regime-change intervention! As mentioned previously, only the nuclear capability can be the big "equalizer" and dissuade potential imperialist intentions even on a conventional military level.

 

Did the world not watch or forget about what happened not long ago, i.e., in Libya, in 2011, at the Obama/Clinton cabinet's hands, when U.S. and NATO forces launched an air campaign to support dubious insurgent groups against the Libyan military and government forces? Such was the reward Libya's leader Muammar Gadhafi, murdered in the streets, received for his retreat from pursuing nuclear weapons and his trust and handshake with Obama and incumbent European heads of state at the time. And have we not observed what the U.S. did to Syria in the misguided and failed regime-change attempt to oust President Assad, arming terrorists and insurgents, supporting al-Qaeda and ISIS and other groups in the region, causing unspeakable and unnecessary mayhem? Now the Russians had to restore stability and prop Assad, and at this point, it is not hard to predict that the Syrian intervention attempt will end up as a massive embarrassment for the United States. Aside from that: What about all the waste of human life and treasure on both sides? Were some military-industrial profit and the satisfaction of Mr. Obama's ideological arrogance indeed worth the chaos, the cost of lives, and the unleashing of refugees and displaced people onto the shores of Europe?

 

As unfortunate as the most likely acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by North Korea is, it comes for good reasons and a clear rationale that the North Korean regime hides behind its seemingly erratic behavior. The U.S.' policy failures nourished this rationale.

 

The U.S. and the international community should further pursue containment and denuclearization of the Korean peninsula; however, they should not make it a condition for peace. The probable possession of specific nuclear capabilities of North Korea does not and must not justify a preemptive strike.

 

Instead of further pursuing hypocritical foreign affairs policies that cause more trouble than resolving issues, it is high time to arrive at some collective realization of past follies in foreign affairs among Washington's elites and to change course.

 

This nation and its leader need to eliminate the war-mongering neoliberal and neoconservative nomenclature in the U.S. State Department and among the advisory bodies to the White House. Leaders of nations cannot know everything, but we expect them to have an excellent and pragmatic judgment that enables them to choose wisely among policy proposals. Without wise choice offered, they will most likely fail.

How to Resolve the North Korea Crisis!

When back in the days of President Jimmy Carter, the U.S. gave North Korea technology for nuclear reactors and a few billion bucks on top of it, only gullible liberals believed that the regime would use atomic capability only for peaceful purposes.

Every serious scholar and student of international relations, then as well as today, knows that nuclear armament – even when it’s only a few warheads – is the big equalizer in terms of national security. It balances out any inferiority in terms of conventional armed forces, size of the country, demographics, and economic capacity. During the roughly forty years of the Cold War, it was the paradox of nuclear deterrence and the so aptly abbreviated (MAD) Mutually Assured Destruction that prevented any severe conventional wars from breaking out. The likelihood of any conflict escalating to the level of nuclear warfare reduced the chances for a conventional war on a larger scale.

Given the historically burdened ideological antagonism toward the West, it was to expect that North Korea would strive to become a nuclear power at all cost – even at the expense of lying to treaty partners and the international community and making pledges it never intended to keep. After all the leniency and unsuccessful attempts at appeasement under Carter in the 1970ies, Clinton in the 1990ies, and the do-nothing strategy of so-called strategic patience under Obama, it is now too late to prevent North Korea from becoming a nuclear power, albeit it a minor one.

It appears that we have somehow returned to the conditions that dominated a particular dimension of international relations during the Cold War, which means the hysteria on the part of the Strategic Community in the U.S. is unwarranted – and so is President Trump’s martial rhetoric.

Against the backdrop of the U.S.’ unmatched military means in terms of global power projection and nuclear capabilities, I propose a two-tier solution to resolve the conflict with North Korea. These measures would allow avoiding further escalation and avert unnecessary distress for international relations and potentially affected populations:

1. The stratagem of ‘Deterrence by Denial’ has to be applied by implementing all capabilities for missile defense and interception on the Korean peninsula and all other potential target areas for North Korean ballistic missiles, be it the west coast of the U.S., Guam, or other regions and locales. These aggressive military steps have to join hands with civil defense measures for the protection of populations and vital military and civilian infrastructure that help minimize any damage in the unlikely event of being impacted by the use of weapons of mass destruction.

2. The promise of ‘Annihilation upon 1st Strike’ has to be plausibly and assuredly threatened to the regime in North Korea. The U.S. must unmistakably convey through diplomatic channels and public discourse that it does not intend to use nuclear weapons against North Korea first. However, it will annihilate North Korea if North Korea uses nuclear weapons against the U.S. or any of its allies. Despite its seemingly irrational rhetoric, the regime of Kim Jong Un will not invite destruction upon themselves and their country.

There is no need for preemptive strikes to take out North Korean weaponry or delivery systems. The cost in human lives would be too high, total success uncertain, and retaliation most probable. If it comes to this, the U.S. and the rest of the world would be able to live with the fact that North Korea and its autocratic regime avail over some nuclear armament and feel powerful and on level par with other nuclear-armed nations around the world. However, like all the others, it will be condemned never to use them unless they want to bring Armageddon over their people.

While implementing this strategy and defusing the danger of thermonuclear, all diplomatic and other means of conflict resolution and appeasement can and should be used to keep the radical North Korean regime in check and further neutralize the threat.

Dealing with North Korea in the proposed way should usher the United States into a long-overdue new era of measured foreign affairs and national security policy that relinquishes the overly self-centered geostrategic arrogance and hubris of the past two decades.