Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot.

Call the National Guard if your insurrection lasts more than four hours.

What fresh hell is this?

The math demands it!

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Good luck with your asparagus.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

We can agree to disagree, but i’m right.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Wetsuit optional.

Militantly superior in their own minds…

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Shelter in place is one thing. shelter in pants is quite another.

We still have time to mess this up!

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Consistently wrong since 2002

They are all Michael Cohen now.

Reality always wins in the end.

This is all too absurd to be reality, right?

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

There will be lawyers.

Naturally gregarious and alpha

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Biden’s Foreign Policy – Human Rights

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A quick post with tweets.

It looks like the Biden State Department plans to emphasize human rights. Their human rights report came out this week, and a quick survey of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent tweets shows a great many on human rights.

Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner

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Biden’s Foreign Policy

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[The Biden adminstration’s foreign policy is surprising in many ways. I’ve been thinking it out. The posts summarized here set up a background for development of that foreign policy. In later posts, I’ll look at specifics relating to various countries.]

Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Asia and Europe the past two weeks, rebuilding relationships with allies. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin accompanied him to Asia. He and Jake Sullivan also met with their Chinese counterparts in Asia last week, with rhetorical fireworks.

The administration faces five big foreign policy challenges:

  • The relationship with China
  • The relationship with Russia
  • Dealing with Trump’s promise of withdrawal from Afghanistan by May 1
  • Rejoining the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear agreement with Iran
  • North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programs

Afghanistan is the most time-urgent, and it looks like the administration is leaning toward delaying the deadline.

Rejoining the JCPOA also has a time-dependent aspect. Iran threatened to end cooperation with International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, but Director General Raphael Rossi persuaded Iran to extend cooperation for three months, one of which has passed. Additionally, Iran has a presidential election coming up on June 18.

The other three are less time-urgent but not standing still.

None, however, can be adequately addressed without America’s allies. Donald Trump made no secret of his contempt for NATO and the European Union and picked fights with Japan and South Korea. Mending those relationships is essential to dealing with the challenges, and that is what Blinken has been doing the past two weeks.

The administration is setting expectations and positioning for negotiations. American policies must be developed in place of the previous administration’s whim-driven actions. Although many of the Biden appointees were in the Obama administration, four hard years have passed, and the world situation has changed, along with perceptions of the United States by other countries.

There was no foreign policy under Trump. There were several centers of activity – Secretaries of State, National Security Advisors, trade and arms control officials, and, of course, Trump himself. The players changed rapidly, as did positions that might have been called policy if they had been more connected. Positions were often at odds both between players and over time.

Biden’s appointees have been preparing to start anew since the campaign. Full development of policies had to wait until they could learn the status of America’s relations with the rest of the world. Trump made that as slow and difficult as possible during the transition. Blinken has said that Iran and North Korea policy are under review. Conferring with allies would be a part of that review.

Not everything revolves around the United States and its actions. Russia has experienced sporadic protests; its neighbor Belarus is in an almost continuous state of protest over a stolen election; its economy is going nowhere. China is trying to expand its influence while presenting a hostile face in diplomacy. North Korea continues its secrecy on Covid-19 (no cases in the Hermit Kingdom, they say) and pours its resources into developing missiles and nuclear weapons. Iran has an election coming up in June and is engaged in a proxy war with Saudi Arabia in Yemen.

The administration needs to define its priorities in the context of the “foreign policy for Americans” that they have put forth. Past practices, like threats of war for the defense industry and actions taken to please special interest groups like limiting relations with Cuba, could be said to be foreign policy for Americans, but Biden’s people have a larger view.

As bad as the continuing effects of Trump actions may be, changing them does not make sense until a clear plan is in place with buy-in from relevant parties. Improvisation is what brought us to where we are.

Photo: Bloomberg

Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner

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Kazakhstan Cleans Up

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In the 1990s, the United States and other countries helped the newly independent states that had been part of the Soviet Union to deal with their nuclear weapons and materials. It’s a story that has been almost completely forgotten, but it contains a number of lessons that might be helpful today.

David Frum reminds us of that effort. I was involved in it. A few additional thoughts.

It wasn’t just the United States that helped. Although Senators Sam Nunn (D-GA) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) started the funding, the International Science and Technology Committee, funded by the European Union, Japan, and Norway, in addition to the United States, also helped to support nuclear weapons scientists suddenly without jobs.

And it wasn’t just Kazakhstan. Most of the former Soviet republics had leftovers from the Soviet nuclear weapons programs – from mining through production plants to the weapons stationed in Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. Help was needed in materials accountability and in moving the weapons back to Russia, which inherited the USSR’s status as a nuclear weapons power.

I am pretty sure that I have seen the site pictured in Frum’s article. The caption is “The destruction of a Soviet-era nuclear testing site in Kazakhstan in 2000.” It looks like the sealing of one of the tunnels in the Degelen Mountain testing area. Nuclear tests were carried out in the tunnels. Some of them left metallic plutonium behind.

Frum article

When I saw in 2001 that the tunnels had been sealed, I realized that they would have to be opened up again. They were, in the recovery of plutonium during 2005-2007. It probably was a good idea to seal them early, though, because scavengers were at the test site, removing copper wire that had been used for the tests.

My photo, 2001

The Soviet Union formally ended December 25, 1991. In early February, the three directors of the American weapons laboratories – Los Alamos, Livermore, and Sandia – were on their way to Sarov, Russia’s equivalent of Los Alamos. Scientists and engineers from those laboratories and others followed. As Frum notes, Vladimir Putin ended the cooperation in 2012. Kazakhstan now has removed its weapons-related nuclear material. The Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site and other nuclear operations left a great many things to clean up.

President George H. W. Bush eliminated a large number American nuclear weapons in a unilateral gesture intended to show Mikhail Gorbachev that the US would not take advantage of Russia in its disarray. Frum emphasizes that Soviet weapons were eliminated, but weapons were eliminated on both sides.

Those of us who were part of it made new friends and spent time in countries we never imagined would be open to us. It felt like making the world a better place. It was the best thing I did in my career.

Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner.

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The Biden Doctrine

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The first week of March, the Biden administration rolled out a speech by Antony Blinken and an interim national security strategy. Those documents overlap significantly with each other and with a report led by Jake Sullivan, now Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor, when he was at the Carnegie Endowment last year.

Any number of authors have shared the 35 things they want Biden to do in his first week and specific solutions to numerous foreign and domestic policy problems, including would-be George Kennans penning their own long telegrams. None seem to have read the administration’s documents. The Carnegie report has been available since last September.

Much of the commentary has leaned on the previous actions of Blinken and other Biden appointees to predict how they will perform in this administration. Many appointees were in the Obama administration, and Biden has known some for longer than that. The past is often a good guide to the future. A devastating pandemic and the destruction of much of the government by office-holding vandals, however, suggest that change is necessary.

The three documents not only acknowledge that change is necessary, they propose numerous changes to how things have been done. Their content overlaps significantly, into what might be called a Biden Doctrine. Here’s my attempt at that formulation.

…

We are living in a time of change. The pandemic has changed everything in our interactions, from friendly gatherings through how we shop to foreign policy. After the pandemic is over, the world will be different. We can choose some of the ways in which it will be different. But even before the pandemic, the world was changing. Climate change, extreme income inequalities, the forever wars, and other problems cannot be ignored. We must build back better.

Our primary national security threats cannot be addressed by military means. The pandemic has killed more than a half-million Americans and disabled others. Climate change threatens coastal cities with inundation and other parts of the country with severe storms. Income inequality and police brutality threaten American citizens. Poor immigration policies have led to a non-citizen population who can be brutalized and a crisis on the southern border. Rightwing terrorism is only now being recognized, after an assault on the US Capitol on January 6.

To engage the rest of the world, we must get our house in order.

For conventional military threats, diplomacy must be pursued before military might is used. Iraq has never recovered from the 2003 war. An attempt to withdraw the US military from Afghanistan is ongoing. US involvement in the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran presents a number of problems. Russia continues its involvement in eastern Ukraine and illegally occupies Crimea.

Nuclear weapons are a danger to all, which nuclear materials security and nonproliferation policies can help to damp down. North Korea’s nuclear arms are a danger to the United States. The United States must rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which helps to maintain Iran’s non-nuclear-weapons status.

China is in a category of its own. Trade between the US and China took a hit with the trade war, which damaged American farmers. China holds large amounts of American debt. As China’s economy enlarges, so does the Chinese military and China’s activity in its neighborhood. That activity can threaten American interests in the area.

Issues are often interrelated. For example, Japan, an American ally, is also threatened by North Korean nuclear missiles and Chinese military activity. Insecurity in Japan could lead to their proliferating a nuclear force of their own. At home, different groups may benefit or lose in foreign policy interactions. Every decision is a balance among contradictory factors that we will try to make in favor of the interests of the American people.

The wisdom and practical understanding necessary to execute these policies can come only with inclusion and diversity.

…

Biden’s transmittal letter for the interim national security strategy begins with change and continues to emphasize change throughout.

In my inaugural address, I committed to engage with the world once again, not to meet yesterday’s challenges, but today’s and tomorrow’s.

Our world is at an inflection point. Global dynamics have shifted. New crises demand our attention. And in this moment of accelerating global challenges — from the pandemic to the climate crisis to nuclear proliferation to the fourth industrial revolution — one thing is certain: we will only succeed in advancing American interests and upholding our universal values by working in common cause with our closest allies and partners, and by renewing our own enduring sources of national strength.

The pandemic is also mentioned early and throughout. Although we have tried through the past year to emulate normal life, the pandemic has changed everything we do – how we work, how children go to school, simply going to the store. It has changed how the government and military carry out their duties. Although the military has said little about its response to the pandemic, the early disabling of the USS Theodore Roosevelt due to crew illness surely led to precautionary measures.

The pandemic is worldwide, with differential national effects and responses. Both allies and adversaries are affected to different degrees. Predicting their political and military positions in a year is difficult to impossible.

On January 20, the disease was out of control in the US. It still is, although the government is beginning to look at strategies that depend on some control. A sharp decrease began before January 20 and continues. The economy is in tatters, with estimates of unemployment at 10% and more, and people quite reasonably unwilling to particpate in events that involve large groups or enclosed spaces, despite the rhetoric of some governors about “opening up.”

The illness, death, and economic damage must stop before life can get back to anything resembling normal. The American Recovery Plan will help get vaccines out and provide financial support to those out of work and others. By summer we are likely to be in a much better situation than we are now, but many effects, including the emotional, will last longer than that.

Although the United States established a disastrous record on deaths, the vaccine rollout looks good. Russia and China seem to be prioritizing sales of their vaccines over availability at home, and Europe has experienced a number of difficulties. Some countries are doing well: India is seeing far fewer infections and deaths than have been seen in the US and Europe.

Controlling the pandemic is Job One.

We don’t know how other countries will come out of the pandemic, which makes it hard to predict what foreign policy should be. Biden has inherited a number of crises in progress. Withdrawal of American and NATO troops was set for May 1, but it looks like that deadline will not be met. The US and Iran are trying to find a way to discuss the US’s re-entry into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which limited Iran’s nuclear activities in return for lifting of sanctions. North Korea continues to build nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them.

The actions of the past four years have damaged our relations with our allies, and we need those allies to deal with those ongoing crises. Relationships must be rebuilt and clarified. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken are on their way to visit Japan and South Korea. They explain that visit in terms similar to those used in the interim national security strategy. Biden met with the “Quad,” the leaders of Japan, Australia, and India. Phonecalls continue with the governments of allies at all levels.

If the old adage is true – Friends come and go, but enemies remain –  it makes sense to restore relations with allies before trying to deal with the more difficult situations. Additionally, the agencies are not fully staffed up because of the previous administration’s malicious handling of the transition and the Republican Senate’s slow-walking of confirmations.

Passing the American Recovery Act was a priority. Passing HR 1, on voting rights, is also a priority; it will require much more work because it cannot be passed under reconciliation.

By and large, the public agrees with the way Biden is handling foreign policy. I find it surprising that so few commentators have read or referred to the three documents. The uniformity of themes across agencies and strong personalities within the government is unusual. Austin and Blinken’s op-ed echoes those themes.

I have seen only one analysis that looks at the Biden policies as a whole, by Hal Brands at the American Enterprise Institute, and he does not explicitly reference the documents. It’s a good summary worth reading. Other analyses focus on particular interests, like the Sierra Club on environment, Dan Drezner on economics, or my many nuclear friends on the two paragraphs in the interim national security strategy on nuclear weapons.

That type of analysis worked for standard government documents, but the uniformity of these documents is the primary fact. It is the whole that is central, and the parts follow from that.

Foreign policy is likely to be aimed at the pandemic, reassuring allies, and not making things worse until the pandemic is under control. We will not see bold initiatives in, for example, declaratory nuclear policy, until much later in the year if then. The administration has said that North Korea and Iran policy are under review.

These statements, and their consistency across the administration, are a new way of governing. Ignoring them leads to faulty analysis, but that is what we see.

My overviews of the documents:

Carnegie report

Blinken speech

Interim national security strategy

Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner

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The Biden Interim National Security Strategy

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Remarkably early, the Biden administration has issued an Interim National Security Strategic Guidance. A full national security strategy document usually takes at least a year or two. The document overlaps significantly with Antony Blinken’s speech of March 3 and a report drawn up earlier by Jake Sullivan and his colleagues at the Carnegie Endowment. But after Donald Trump’s policy carnage, it’s necessary to tell government employees, the public, and other nations how the administration proposes to address national security.

The standard national security strategy focuses on how an administration sees military threats and intends to respond to them. Military equipment will be mentioned. Diplomacy and threats like climate change and pandemics each get a token paragraph or two.

That organization is upended in the Biden interim NSS. The priorities stated are:

  • Defend and nurture the underlying sources of American strength, including our people, our economy, our national defense, and our democracy at home;
  • Promote a favorable distribution of power to deter and prevent adversaries from directly threatening the United States and our allies, inhibiting access to the global commons, or dominating key regions; and
  • Lead and sustain a stable and open international system, underwritten by strong democratic alliances, partnerships, multilateral institutions, and rules.

These words could be interpreted as they have been previously, in terms of international rivalries and weapons development, but those are not the specifics given here. After a tour of the global security landscape, with admonitions that diplomacy comes before military action, specific issues are given in this order:

  • Reinvigorate alliances and partnerships
  • “Move swiftly to earn back our position of leadership in international institutions,” working with the international community on the climate crisis and pandemic
  • Address the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons
  • “Make smart and disciplined choices regarding our national defense and the responsible use of our military, while elevating diplomacy as our tool of first resort”
  • “Our trade and international economic policies must serve all Americans, not just the privileged few”

The public health and economic consequences of the pandemic loom above all. “Our strength abroad requires the United States to build back better at home.” Cybersecurity, revitalizing democracy, and rejecting politically motivated violence are part of that building back better.

The specific challenge of China is mentioned late in the report. The challenge is described as strategic competition rather than enmity or the “great power competition” so popular with neocons. That competition, however, should not preclude working with China “when it is in our mutual interest to do so.”

Change is a major theme throughout the report. Biden’s transmittal letter mentions change multiple times. At least one mention of change in the report alludes to the Obama administration, recognizing that many people in this administration served then.

The report ends with an admonition that we must not overrely on the military and a promise that other parts of the government that engage the world will be more substantially supported. Traditional separation between domestic and foreign policy has become less meaningful, which means that governmental functions must be rethought.

All this is consistent with the Carnegie report and the Blinken speech. The administration has a single foreign policy closely entwined with its domestic policy. The three documents together make a roadmap or checklist with which to monitor the administration’s actions. So far, the focus on controlling the pandemic and the American Recovery Act, expected to pass the House on Wednesday (March 10) and go to Biden for signature, has been job one, as these documents say.

New foreign policy initiatives are likely to take a back seat to rebuilding relationships and dealing with immediate issues, most notably the damage resulting from withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran and the deadline for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. As the pandemic comes under control, we will see more initiatives. That could be as soon as this summer.

Previous posts in this series:

On the Carnegie report

On the Blinken speech

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A Foreign Policy For The American People

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Joe Biden’s foreign policy is evolving before our eyes. It’s refreshing to see a policy and an administration that has confidence enough to show us how they’re thinking.

While he was at the Carnegie Endowment, Jake Sullivan, now Biden’s National Security Advisor, led a study called “Making U.S. Foreign Policy Work Better for the Middle Class.” I summarized that report here. It was published in September 2020, before the election, but Sullivan would have discussed it with Biden.

Wednesday this week (March 3), Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave a speech “A Foreign Policy for the American People.” Comparing the report and this speech give insights into the administration’s policy development.

First is the title. When I was working through the report and discussing it with friends, the strongest and most frequent reaction I got was to the focus on the middle class. Clearly Blinken and others got the same reaction and changed that to “the American People.”

Second is the length. Where the report had 68 pages, Blinken’s speech has a little over 4000 words. It’s a short speech and seemed to me even shorter than my post on the report, although that’s not the case. I think it seems shorter because it’s sharpened up.

The overall structure of the speech is similar to that of the report – the order and priority of topics – but much clearer. Blinken begins with a short explanation that Biden’s policy is that foreign policy should serve ordinary Americans. Then he talks about change:

Yes, many of us serving in the Biden administration also proudly served President Obama – including President Biden. And we did a great deal of good work to restore America’s leadership in the world; to achieve hard-won diplomatic breakthroughs, like the deal that stopped Iran from producing a nuclear weapon; and to bring the world together to tackle climate change. Our foreign policy fit the moment, as any good strategy should.

But this is a different time, so our strategy and approach are different. We’re not simply picking up where we left off, as if the past four years didn’t happen. We’re looking at the world with fresh eyes.

He lays out four general principles:

  • American leadership and engagement matter.
  • We need countries to cooperate, now more than ever.
  • President Biden has pledged to lead with diplomacy because it’s the best way to deal with today’s challenges.
  • We’ll look not only to make progress on short-term problems, but also to address their root causes and lay the groundwork for our long-term strength.

He then enumerates eight points, all simultaneously international and domestic:

  • First, we will stop COVID-19 and strengthen global health security.
  • Second, we will turn around the economic crisis and build a more stable, inclusive global economy.
  • Third, we will renew democracy, because it’s under threat.
  • Fourth, we will work to create a humane and effective immigration system.
  • Fifth, we will revitalize our ties with our allies and partners.  
  • Sixth, we will tackle the climate crisis and drive a green energy revolution. 
  • Seventh, we will secure our leadership in technology.
  • And eighth, we will manage the biggest geopolitical test of the 21st century: our relationship with China.

The speech has more detail. Most of the specifics are put similarly to the way they are addressed in the report. Immigration and the climate crisis are given more emphasis than in the report.

Under the second point, Blinken talks about change:

Some of us previously argued for free trade agreements because we believed Americans would broadly share in the economic gains that those – and that those deals would shape the global economy in ways that we wanted.  We had good reasons to think those things.  But we didn’t do enough to understand who would be negatively affected and what would be needed to adequately offset their pain, or to enforce agreements that were already on the books and help more workers and small businesses fully benefit from them.

Our approach now will be different.  We will fight for every American job and for the rights, protections, and interests of all American workers. 

Beating COVID-19 is clearly the first priority, as we’ve seen in Biden’s actions so far. Blinken mentions getting the world immunized so that it doesn’t fester elsewhere and come back to us. Biden’s announcements this week of increased vaccine production and more rapid immunization of Americans point to getting the vaccine out to others. I think that the administration will go slow on foreign policy initiatives until COVID-19 is much more under control.

A few more quotes worth highlighting:

The Biden administration’s foreign policy will reflect our values.

We will stand firm behind our commitments to human rights, democracy, the rule of law.  And we’ll stand up against injustice toward women and girls, LGBTQI people, religious minorities, and people of all races and ethnicities.  Because all human beings are equal in rights and dignity, no matter where they live or who they are.

We will respect science and data, and we will fight misinformation and disinformation, because the truth is the cornerstone of our democracy.

And, perhaps most important:

We will balance humility with confidence.

The whole speech is worth reading, and easy to read. This administration has some great speechwriters.

A small excerpt:

Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner

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Foreign Policy For The Middle Class

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President Joe Biden has said it. Antony Blinken has said it. Jake Sullivan has said it. “Foreign policy for the middle class.” I think I’ve heard Kamala Harris say it too. It comes from a report that Sullivan and others wrote while he was at the Carnegie Endowment.

Yesterday (March 3) Secretary Blinken gave a speech, “A Foreign Policy for the American People.” It looks like that speech is an upgraded version of the report. What I take from the report and the speech is that the Biden administration is bringing a new approach to foreign policy, and, more importantly, that they can change. I’ll work through the speech in a later post, but here’s the report.

 “Foreign policy for the middle class” combines two concepts not usually combined, but the two interact in many ways. The report highlights these interactions and attempts to provide ways to make those interactions more favorable. International trade is an obvious point of contact, but others are addressed in the report as well.

The report has eleven authors, about evenly divided between foreign policy and economic experts, some expert in both. The team is bipartisan, with a tilt towards Democrats. Part of the study was a survey of people in Colorado, Nebraska, and Ohio to determine how they saw the connection between their economic prospects and foreign policy. The three states were chosen to represent different aspects of the American economy: Colorado, resource extraction; Nebraska, farming; and Ohio, industrial. Of course, there is overlap among the categories. The surveys were published separately but are not referenced in the report.

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