RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-case-for-restraint-in-the-gulf-11560813331

The latest crisis with Iran illustrates an important but widely neglected point about world politics: Amid all the talk about American decline, American power in the international system has actually grown. Even five years ago the U.S. could not force Iran out of world oil markets without causing a devastating spike in oil and gas prices that would destabilize the world economy. Today, world energy markets are so robust that Brent crude prices have fallen since the first set of attacks on oil tankers in May.

Simultaneously, the U.S. has developed the ability to globalize unilateral sanctions. Washington doesn’t need the support of its allies to isolate Tehran economically, because “secondary sanctions” can effectively compel other countries to comply with the U.S. effort. That the administration has accomplished this while also engaged in trade battles with nearly every important American trading partner underscores the magnitude of U.S. economic power and the administration’s determination to bring it fully to bear on Iran.

As the shades of Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy can testify, however, great power does not automatically confer wisdom. Having demonstrated an impressive ability to squeeze Iran, North Korea and Venezuela, the Trump administration now needs to translate raw power into policy success. This goal remains elusive with all three countries so far, and the path forward is anything but clear.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/americans-arent-ready-for-cold-war-ii-11560207604

A series of conversations with Trump administration officials at every level as well as leading Democrats points to two clear and disturbing conclusions. First, the U.S. is increasingly committed to a historic turn in its relations with China as opinion hardens on both sides of the aisle. Second, we aren’t ready for what is coming.

In some ways the situation is comparable to the mid-1940s, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union moved quickly from wartime alliance to Cold War. President Truman and a handful of State Department and War Department officials saw the clash coming early, but public opinion was slower to move. Winston Churchill’s now-famous “Iron Curtain” speech in March 1946 was widely criticized as too hawkish; Truman, who sat through the speech and applauded it, had to distance himself from Churchill’s hard line. It took the communist coup in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, the start of the Berlin Airlift in June, and the reinstitution of the draft in July to bring the reality of the Cold War home to the American public.

Today both Washington and Beijing are maneuvering themselves for some kind of long-term competition—but just as few observers in 1946 could imagine a four-decade global standoff, neither we nor the Chinese can predict the scale, scope or consequences of the emerging rivalry. It is likely both to echo the Cold War in some ways and to diverge radically from it in others.

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/447235-more-us-talks-with-iran-are-doomed-to-fail

The latest U.S. offer of negotiations with Iran prompts the same question with which every administration of recent decades has grappled: Is behavioral change in Tehran possible without regime change?

We Americans want to think so, but the evidence of four decades suggests otherwise. Consequently, President Donald Trump and his team may be headed toward another fruitless U.S. effort to create a better Iran.

With the president concerned that growing tensions between Washington and Tehran were setting the stage for war, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said this week that the administration is ready to talk with “no preconditions.”

That came days after the president himself sought to ease tensions by deriding National Security Advisor John Bolton’s enthusiasm for regime change. Of the Islamic Republic, Trump told reporters in Tokyo, “It has a chance to be a great country with the same leadership. We’re not looking for regime change. I just want to make that clear. We’re looking for no nuclear weapons.”

The new U.S. offer of talks marked a dramatic change of direction for an administration that, as Pompeo announced a year ago, said it wouldn’t talk to Tehran until the regime satisfied a list of sweeping demands that included an end to its ballistic missile tests and its support of militants in Syria and Yemen.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-case-against-europe-11559602940

“Why does he hate us?” is the question American foreign-policy types often hear from European friends and colleagues when the subject of Donald Trump comes up—as it often does. With Mr. Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Europe this week, it seems an auspicious time to attempt an answer.

The news isn’t all bad. When Mr. Trump and senior administration officials talk about China, they attack it for abusing the international system in a ruthless quest for global hegemony. Their reading of Europe is different: that a mix of dysfunctional policies, unrealistic ideas about world politics, and poor institutional arrangements has locked the Continent on a trajectory of decline. As Mr. Trump’s team sees it, they aren’t trying to weaken Europe; they are trying to save Europe from itself.

There are five elements of the Trump critique of the European Union. First, some of the “new nationalists” believe multinational entities like the EU are much weaker and less effective than the governments of nation-states—so much so that the development of the EU has weakened the Western alliance as a whole. In this view, cooperation between nation-states is good and through it countries can achieve things they couldn’t achieve on their own. But trying to overinstitutionalize that cooperation is a mistake. The resulting bureaucratic structures and Byzantine politics and decision-making processes paralyze policy, alienate public opinion, and create a whole significantly less than the sum of its parts.

A second concern—in the Trump view—is that the European Union is too German. As some on the president’s team see it, German preferences mean the Continent is too hawkish when it comes to monetary and fiscal policy, and too dovish when it comes to defense. A fiscal and monetary straitjacket has cramped Europe’s growth, while the refusal of Germany to live up to its NATO commitments weakens the alliance as a whole.

A third concern is that the EU is too liberal—in the American meaning of the term, which is to say too statist on economics and too progressive on social issues. Besides the common American conservative view that statist economic policy undermines European dynamism and growth, Mr. Trump seems to believe European migration policy—especially Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2015 decision to welcome more than a million mostly Muslim migrants to Germany—is a tragic mistake.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-puts-trump-to-the-test-11559507350

President Trump’s Iran policy has so far been effective at keeping the regime off balance. He especially distinguished himself by defying conventional opinion and withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, and imposing painful economic sanctions, which have undercut Tehran’s finances and exacerbated internal pressures.

But American reliance on sanctions, which Iran has weathered in the past, signals an unwillingness for confrontation. Tehran is pushing back. First, it announced it would stop abiding by certain JCPOA restrictions on its nuclear program. Second, despite Mr. Trump’s warnings and swift deployment of U.S. assets to the region, Iran-backed forces sabotaged oil tankers off the Emirati coast and a Saudi pipeline, and launched a rocket that landed near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Third, Iran followed up with defiant rhetoric. Mr. Trump warned, “If Iran wants to fight, that will be the end of Iran”—but eight days later he played down any chance of conflict, clarifying that “we’re not looking for regime change.” Tehran acted as if it had succeeded in calling the president’s bluff. “The Americans are unwilling and unable to carry out military action against us,” a military aide to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei asserted.

Deterrence requires Mr. Trump to maintain U.S. credibility. Otherwise, Iran will intensify its aggressive behavior and ratchet up its nuclear effort, making conflict likelier. Most immediately, the U.S. must retaliate with precise military action against critical Iranian assets. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14268/global-zero-nuclear-modernization

As it turns out, the modernization of America’s nuclear deterrent would require, at most, only around 3% of the annual defense budget.

“International arms control relies on adherence to reciprocal obligations and nations should not be required to subject themselves to unilateral observance of them. Arms control more generally is undermined by violations going unchallenged.” — Forces Network, UK, April 4, 2019.

“Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping continue to expand and modernize their nuclear arsenals. Future arms-control agreements must take into account both the Russian and Chinese threats, while ensuring we don’t place one-sided nuclear restrictions on ourselves.” — Senator Tom Cotton; May 13, 2019.

“We must… realize that America will not be able to achieve the necessary changes to New START unless it is negotiating from a position of strength. That means Congress must invest in the modernization of our nuclear triad and the additional low-yield capabilities called for in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review. These investments are critical to America’s ability to rein in China and Russia.” — Representative Liz Cheney; May 13, 2019.

Two narratives that provided justification for cutting America’s defense budget in the 1970s and 1990s — détente and the “end of history” — had a key component in common: Both were based on the assumption that existential national-security threats to the United States were either exaggerated or a thing of the past.

In each narrative, this assumption proved to be false.

Détente favored the Soviet Union so markedly in terms of its “correlation of forces” — the balance of conventional and nuclear power — that victory over the U.S. was in sight. Détente also fueled U.S.S.R. expansionism. More than 20 countries were subjected to Soviet aggression, coups, revolutions or wars of national liberation.