Will Trump Accomplish Anything In Vietnam? - Probably Not!

(Image was found on Facebook. The originator is unknown.)

Donald Trump is in Vietnam for a second meeting with North Korea's Kim Jong-Un. The last time they met (in Singapore), Trump got nothing except an agreement that didn't oblige North Korea to do anything.

In spite of that, Trump claimed that he had made the world safe, and North Korea had agreed to give up their nuclear weapons. It was not true. North Korea continues to make nuclear bombs and missiles capable of carrying them -- and the world knows that. Note in the chart below (from the Pew Research Center) that both Americans and people in other countries are still concerned about the danger of North Korea having nuclear weapons.

Since then, he has scaled his claims back, since his own intelligence agencies have said the North Koreans have done nothing to disarm. Now Trump claims that his visit caused North Korea to stop testing nuclear bombs and missiles. That's another disingenuous claim. They have tested both enough to know they work.

Will Trump be played for a fool again this time? It's likely. No one believes that North Korea will give up their nuclear weapons. Even many in the White House are nervous that Trump will give up too much for spurious promises from North Korea -- promises they have no intention of keeping.

The meetings start Wednesday, and the world holds its breath -- hoping that Trump doesn't blow it too bad this time. Sadly, that's probably a vain hope.

N. Korea Pegged Trump As A Fool And They Played Him

That was Donald Trump's tweet as he returned from meeting with Kim Jong-Un in Singapore. He was convinced (or at least tried to convince us) that he had saved the United States (and the world) from the threat of North Korean nuclear missiles.

But only a fool could believe that. Although an "agreement" was signed, it was not binding. And North Korea continues to do just what it always intended to do -- keep building missiles and nuclear weapons. The U.S. got nothing out of the Singapore summit. North Korea got a lot. They got the U.S. off their backs while they continue to arm themselves with nuclear missiles. In short, they played Trump for a fool -- appealing to his narcissism and taking advantage of his ignorance.

This is how Paul Waldman puts it in The Washington Post:

About six months ago, attendees at a Trump rally were so giddy about the president’s masterly diplomatic maneuvering in supposedly convincing North Korea to suspend testing of nuclear weapons that they began to chant “Nobel! Nobel!,” taking even President Trump by surprise (though he later claimed that “everyone thinks” he deserved one). Not long after, Trump met with Kim Jong Un and returned to declare that he had achieved what presidents had tried and failed to do for decades.

Well, about that …

North Korea is moving ahead with its ballistic missile program at 16 hidden bases that have been identified in new commercial satellite images, a network long known to American intelligence agencies but left undiscussed as President Trump claims to have neutralized the North’s nuclear threat.

The satellite images suggest that the North has been engaged in a great deception: It has offered to dismantle a major launching site — a step it began, then halted — while continuing to make improvements at more than a dozen others that would bolster launches of conventional and nuclear warheads.

The existence of the ballistic missile bases, which North Korea has never acknowledged, contradicts Mr. Trump’s assertion that his landmark diplomacy is leading to the elimination of a nuclear and missile program that the North had warned could devastate the United States.

Who could have predicted something like this would happen? Pretty much everyone. Except, apparently, the president of the United States. In fact, it’s precisely Trump’s naive view of foreign policy that brought us to this point.

Let’s recall what happened at that summit in June, when the two leaders signed an agreement under which the North Koreans promised to “work toward” denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. That pledge was almost completely meaningless; as Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told me at the time, “It’s important to note that that is a weaker commitment to denuclearization than the regime has made in the past.”

But the president naturally declared victory. “He’s de-nuking, I mean he’s de-nuking the whole place,” Trump said, an assertion that was obviously false. One can only hope Trump was lying and didn’t actually believe that was what was happening.

So that summit, which seemed so dramatic at the time, turned out to be a failure. Why? Because Trump is gripped by a fundamental misconception about foreign policy.

For Trump, everything is personal and everything is about him. He doesn’t need to understand the history of our relationships with other nations, the forces acting on an an adversary or the incentives its leadership faces. He’s the world’s greatest dealmaker! He’ll get in a room with the guy, employ the same skills he uses to drive down the price on gold-leaf wallpaper for one of his buildings and, bada boom bada bing, we’ve got ourselves a historic bilateral agreement.

You can see it in the way Trump talks about foreign relations. He never tries to understand where other countries are coming from or what they are seeking; it’s all about whether they’re screwing us over and whether he’ll “get along” with another country’s leader, as though a friendly personal relationship will make anything possible. “I hope we get along well. I think we get along well,” he said about Russian President Vladimir Putin. “We had a great chemistry, not good, but great,” he said about Chinese President Xi Jinping. “I liked him and he liked me a lot.” A few weeks ago he described his relationship with Kim this way: “I was really being tough, and so was he, and we’d go back and forth. And then we fell in love. Okay? No, really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”

But alas, love can be fleeting. The problem is that no matter how many beautiful letters Kim sends to Trump, the North Korean leader still sees nuclear weapons as the key to his survival. As far as he’s concerned, his weapons mean that no great power would dare to invade his country and destroy his regime; without them, he could wind up like Saddam Hussein or Moammar Gaddafi, i.e., deposed and dead.

It’s vital to understand that while Kim is a brutal dictator, that’s an absolutely rational position for him to take. Which means that getting him to give up those nuclear weapons is difficult and complicated. In fact, it’s possible that there’s nothing we can offer him in exchange that would be sufficiently enticing.

Trump is hardly the first U.S. president to struggle with North Korea’s willingness to deceive and break its promises, nor is he the first who failed to find something compelling enough to offer North Korea in exchange for denuclearization. But no president before him was so naive as to proclaim victory after having accomplished so little. I suppose that makes Trump’s foreign policy just the same as everything else he does.

Evidence Emerges That Trump Got Played By Kim

That's the tweet Trump published after his meeting with Kim Jong-Un in Singapore. He claimed that there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea, because Kim Jong-Un had agreed to give up his nuclear weapons. He repeated that claim to journalists in the days following the summit.

Unfortunately, his bold claims were premature. The agreement he signed with the North Korea leader was not a binding agreement for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, and provided for no kind of verification that they would do so. It was just a feel-good moment for both leaders that meant nothing.

Has North Korea taken steps to give up those weapons? Have they even stopped production of nuclear weapons and missiles? NO! In fact, they have done just the opposite. Our intelligence agencies have now verified that North Korea has taken steps to increase their ability to produce nuclear weapons and the missiles to carry those weapons.

Consider this from military.com:

U.S. intelligence officials believe North Korea has been "deceiving" the U.S., saying the Hermit Kingdom was bolstering production for nuclear weapons at "multiple secret sites" in the past few months, a report stated.

Officials from the CIA and other intelligence agencies told NBC News the regime has increased its production of enriched uranium for the weapons despite the historic summit earlier this month between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump. Kim and Trump both signed a document on June 12 stating that Pyongyang would work toward "complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.". . .

However, the officials believed North Korea was "positioning itself to extract every concession it can from the Trump administration -- while clinging to nuclear weapons it believes are essential to survival." 

And this from time.com:

The Middlebury Institute of International Studies report found that North Korea has recently expanded a factory complex in the eastern city of Hamhung that produces key engines for solid-fuel ballistic missiles. The factory also makes other missile components, including re-entry vehicles for warheads that could be used on longer-range missiles capable of reaching the U.S.

“The expansion suggests that, despite hopes for denuclearization, Kim Jong Un is committed to increasing North Korea’s stockpile of nuclear-armed missiles,” the report’s authors David Schmerler and Jeffrey Lewis wrote.

Donald Trump got played by the North Korean leader. Kim just wanted his moment on the world stage, and Trump was dumb enough to give it to him. Nothing has changed about the North Korean nuclear threat.

Americans didn't really believe Trump's bragging anyway. Only 24% of Americans said in a recent poll that they believed North Korea had agreed to give up nuclear weapons, and that included less than half of Republicans (49%). It seems that the U.S. public was smarter than Trump

The chart below is from the latest Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between June 24th and 26th of a national sample of 1,500 adults, with a margin of error of 3.1 points.

Mission Accomplished? Who Were The Real Winners?

That was Trump's tweet after 105 Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired at Syria -- 76 fired at a research facility, 22 fired at a storage facility, and 7 fired at a chemical weapons bunker. The U.S. is claiming it has destroyed Syria's ability to make and use chemical weapons. That's doubtful. While some buildings were destroyed, the Russians and Syrians had several days to prepare for the strike. It looks a lot like the previous missile strike against Syria -- when they were warned it would happen and moved their planes out of the way, and only a few buildings were damaged.

If anything was accomplished, it was only a public relations effort. The U.S., Great Britain, and  France were able to make a statement against the use of chemical weapons. And Donald Trump got to feed his narcissism and pose as a strongman willing to use military power.

There were some winners after the missile strike, but it wasn't the United States, Great Britain, or France. It was Syria, Russia, and Iran. They were winners because the strike did nothing to degrade their military power in Syria.

Syria can continue its war against its own people, which they are winning. Soon, Assad will be able to once again impose his brutal regime on all Syrians.

Russia can continue to aid Assad. They will be rewarded with a client state in the Middle East that is friendly to them -- and a warm water port on the Mediterranean.

Iran, who once stood alone in that area of the world, will have a friend now (and likely another in Iraq, since they are also helping their with troops on the ground).

And there is one more winner -- an American corporation (Raytheon). They will now get to replace those 105 cruise missiles at a cost of about $1.87 million each.

We Are Now Living In A Much More Dangerous World

(This photo of North Korean ICBM Is from the Los Angeles Times - photo by Wong Maye-E / AP)

When he was campaigning for president, Donald Trump assured Americans that North Korea would never have an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead. That has turned out to be just another of his empty promises. We now know that the North Koreans do have ICBM's capable of reaching the U.S. mainland, and that they have succeeded in making a nuclear warhead small enough to be delivered by that missile. And if they haven't already, they will soon solve the problems of accuracy and re-entry.

I don't give Trump the blame for this. The two presidents before him didn't do much to prevent North Korea from developing nuclear weapons either. The sad fact is that North Korea was (and still is) determined to become a nuclear power. I think they view that as a self-defense measure (after seeing what has happened to other non-nuclear nations (like Iraq and Afghanistan).

The U.S. convinced the U.N. Security Council to impose new economic sanctions on North Korea, and even got China and Russia to go along with that. That won't stop the North Koreans from continuing to develop long-range nuclear missiles. If they can't buy and sell on the open market, they'll do it on the black market (and China will allow that).

So, the question now is -- what can the United States do? There are options, but none of them are good ones. Here is how I see it:

* I heard one talking head on cable news say we should put a total embargo on North Korea -- an embargo so strict that they won't be able to buy or sell anything. That won't happen. If such a measure is introduced in the U.N., it will be vetoed by China (and probably Russia also). The Chinese don't want a North Korea so desperate to feed its people and meet its other needs that they would be willing to invade South Korea to get those needs met. Such a total embargo would just be a delayed path to war.

* Others want to do a military strike to destroy North Korea's missile capability. Unfortunately, even if we knew where to strike, many sites are probably underground and could not be destroyed by a single strike. This would also result in a retaliation by North Korea's leader -- and even if he did noting but use his artillery against Seoul, many thousands of innocent people would die. This is really not a viable option.

* Another option put forward by the most insane, would be to attack North Korea to cause a regime change. Vietnam and Afghanistan should have convinced us that is a bad option, but it would also result in a real shooting war on the Korean peninsula -- and if it looked like North Korea was losing, the Chinese would once again enter the war. And the U.N. would not help this time (because China and Russia would veto any effort toward that). This is actually the worst of all options, and could result in a world war.

* That leaves only one real option -- the same option that we used with Russia and China when they became nuclear powers. We make it clear that any attack on the U.S. (or its allies) with a nuclear weapon would be met by an even larger reaction -- a reaction that would make North Korea a nuclear wasteland.

Will that work? It has to, since it's the only option available. It is scary though, because both North Korea and the United States have narcissistic megalomaniacs with their fingers on the nuclear button -- and either could launch missiles for no better reason than to feed their own fragile egos. They are already trading threats.

It Was A Publicity Stunt - Not A Foreign Policy Statement

The following post is much of a column by Paul Krugman in the New York Times:

. . . showy actions that win a news cycle or two are no substitute for actual, coherent policies. Indeed, their main lasting effect can be to squander a government’s credibility. Which brings us to last week’s missile strike on Syria.

The attack instantly transformed news coverage of the Trump administration. Suddenly stories about infighting and dysfunction were replaced with screaming headlines about the president’s toughness and footage of Tomahawk launches.

But outside its effect on the news cycle, how much did the strike actually accomplish? A few hours after the attack, Syrian warplanes were taking offfrom the same airfield, and airstrikes resumed on the town where use of poison gas provoked Mr. Trump into action. No doubt the Assad forces took some real losses, but there’s no reason to believe that a one-time action will have any effect on the course of Syria’s civil war.

In fact, if last week’s action was the end of the story, the eventual effect may well be to strengthen the Assad regime — Look, they stood up to a superpower! — and weaken American credibility. To achieve any lasting result, Mr. Trump would have to get involved on a sustained basis in Syria.

Doing what, you ask? Well, that’s the big question — and the lack of good answers to that question is the reason President Barack Obama decided not to start something nobody knew how to finish.

So what have we learned from the Syria attack and its aftermath?

No, we haven’t learned that Mr. Trump is an effective leader. Ordering the U.S. military to fire off some missiles is easy. Doing so in a way that actually serves American interests is the hard part, and we’ve seen no indication whatsoever that Mr. Trump and his advisers have figured that part out.

Actually, what we know of the decision-making process is anything but reassuring. Just days before the strike, the Trump administration seemed to be signaling lack of interest in Syrian regime change.

What changed? The images of poison-gas victims were horrible, but Syria has been an incredible horror story for years. Is Mr. Trump making life-and-death national security decisions based on TV coverage?

One thing is certain: The media reaction to the Syria strike showed that many pundits and news organizations have learned nothing from past failures.

Mr. Trump may like to claim that the media are biased against him, but the truth is that they’ve bent over backward in his favor. They want to seem balanced, even when there is no balance; they have been desperate for excuses to ignore the dubious circumstances of his election and his erratic behavior in office, and start treating him as a normal president.

You may recall how, a month and a half ago, pundits eagerly declared that Mr. Trump “became the president of the United States today” because he managed to read a speech off a teleprompter without going off script. Then he started tweeting again.

One might have expected that experience to serve as a lesson. But no: The U.S. fired off some missiles, and once again Mr. Trump “became president.” Aside from everything else, think about the incentives this creates. The Trump administration now knows that it can always crowd out reporting about its scandals and failures by bombing someone.

So here’s a hint: Real leadership means devising and carrying out sustained policies that make the world a better place. Publicity stunts may generate a few days of favorable media coverage, but they end up making America weaker, not stronger, because they show the world that we have a government that can’t follow through.

And has anyone seen a sign, any sign, that Mr. Trump is ready to provide real leadership in that sense? I haven’t.

Americans Cautiously Support Syrian Bombing

It looks like Trump has fooled a majority of Americans with his missile strike against Syria. About 57% say they approve of Trump's action. But that is a cautious approval, and not a desire for more action in Syria.

A whopping 69% of the public say Trump needs to get congressional approval before taking further military action against Syria -- and only a tiny 18% would support sending ground troops to Syria (which Trump has already done secretly).Americans don't want a bigger war in the Middle East.

These charts are from a new CBS News Poll -- done between April 7th and 9th of a random national sample of 1,006 adults, with a 4 point margin of error.

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The Gallup Poll (done on April 7th and 8th of a random national sample of 1,015 adults, with a 4 point margin of error) puts support for the strike a little lower -- at about 50%. They compared support for the Syrian strike with military actions by other presidents (see chart below) -- and Trump's attack on Syria had less public support than almost all of the others (with the single exception of the March 2011 action against Libya).

As I said above, the support for the attack on Syria is cautious and tenuous -- and should not be viewed as permission to broaden the Iraq/Syria war.

Press Should Be More Skeptical Of The Syrian Bombing

(Cartoon image is by Darrin Bell at darrinbell.com.)

Dan Rather thinks the mainstream media was too quick to support Trump's cruise missile attack on a Syrian air base. He writes:

The President of the United States is the Commander in Chief. It is an awesome responsibility. Committing the use of force and American men and women in uniform is about as serious as it gets. But the truly great presidents understand that knowing when NOT to act is as important as knowing when to act. 

It is a whole lot easier starting wars than finishing them. And there are many historical examples of where a promise of limited engagement quickly metastasized into something much bigger. 

There is a tendency to rally around the flag, and a President who takes on a war footing can see a boost of support. It is often transitory. There are arguments to be made that President Assad in Syria has crossed a line that demands U.S. military interference. Whether this should have been a unilateral action is something we all must consider. Whether President Trump has a plan for what comes next must be debated. Whether there is a coherence to this missile strike fitting into a larger foreign policy strategy is a question that should give us all pause. 

The role of the press is to ask hard questions. There is ample evidence that this Administration needs to face deep scrutiny. The lies we have heard, the chaos in governance, and the looming questions about ties with Russia - itself a major player in Syria - demand that the press treat this latest action with healthy skepticism. Perhaps it was the right thing to do. Perhaps a strong and wise policy will emerge. But that judgement is still definitely hanging in the balance. 

The number of members of the press who have lauded the actions last night as "presidential" is concerning. War must never be considered a public relations operation. It is not a way for an Administration to gain a narrative. It is a step into a dangerous unknown and its full impact is impossible to predict, especially in the immediate wake of the first strike.

Bombing Of Syria Was Just A Trump Publicity Stunt

(Cartoon image is by Paul Zanetti at cagle.com.)

The Trump administration is trying to pass off its bombing of a Syrian air base as a humanitarian action to prevent Syria from gassing the rebels that oppose them. The more I think about the bombing, the more convinced I am that this is simply not true. The bombing was just a publicity stunt by the Trump administration.

Why do I say that? Consider how the bombing (by cruise missiles) was done. The Trump administration warned the Russians in advance of the bombing, knowing full well that Russia would warn its ally Syria. And that's exactly what happened. Both Russia and Syria used the warning to send both personnel and planes to a safe location. The only planes damaged in the bombing were six that were being repaired (and could not be removed).

The runway for the base was not bombed at all -- and according to observers, was back in operation the next day. How can you take an air base out of commission without bombing and destroying its runways? You can't. This tells me that Trump never intended to destroy the air base (or he would have targeted the runways with at least a few of the 59 missiles fired). It was all just an exercise in political theater (i.e., a publicity stunt). A few buildings were destroyed, but the base is still operational (and Syria has the same military capability it had before the bombing).

Why would Trump waste 59 cruise missiles on a publicity stunt? Because his job approval rating has been falling like a rock -- and currently rests in the mid-thirties (lower than any modern president in his first months in office) -- and that is unacceptable for a narcissist like Trump.

He could straighten out his chaotic White House, or alter his policies to more closely align with the wishes of the general population, but those would take time -- and he would have to admit that he's the architect of his own dismal approval ratings (something he seems incapable of doing).

The far easier way was to take military action against a supposed enemy (even though Syria has done nothing to endanger the United States). By sending Haley to the United Nations to claim the U.S. was acting out of a humanitarian concern, and then firing some missiles at Syria, Trump is able to pose as a warrior president -- a leader who worries about the Syrian people (the same people he is denying entry into the United States as refugees).

When presidents take military action, the country tends to unify behind them -- at least for a while. That was true when Bush I attacked Iraq, when Bush II attacked Afghanistan, and when Obama sent Navy Seals to take out Osama bin Laden. Trump is hoping that his publicity stunt will have the same effect, and that he can get his job approval up (without doing anything to justify it).

None of this should surprise us. Trump has always been more about show than substance (or as we say in Texas -- all hat and no cattle). Trump is a poser, and now he's posing as a military leader. I hope most Americans are smart enough to see through it.

Trump Just Made The World A More Dangerous Place

The picture above is of the Sharyat Air Field in Syria. This is the Syrian air base that Trump spent over $80 million to attack (59 missiles at $1.4 million each). Trump used the alleged attack on Syrian rebels using poison gas as the excuse for that attack. I suspect he just needed something to make himself look better (since his job approval is at a record low).

The question now is -- did the attack actually accomplish anything? The Trump administration says it did serious damage to the base and to Syrian war planes -- hurting the ability of Syria to launch more attacks using poison gas. There is no doubt that the base suffered serious damage -- 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles will do that. Far less likely is that any Syrian planes were destroyed, or that their ability to launch further attacks was hurt.

The Russians say only 6 Syrian planes were damaged -- the planes that were being repaired and could not fly. They are probably right about that. We know that the United States warned the Russians (who have planes at that base) that the attack would happen -- and since Russia is a strong ally of Syrian president Assad, it is very likely that they passed that warning on to the Syrians (allowing them to get their planes out before the attack).

But while the attack didn't do much to hurt Syria's ability to fly missions against the rebels, it really wasn't designed to do that. It was designed to make Trump look like a strong president (and improve his approval rating). We'll have to see if that was accomplished in polls to be done in the coming weeks.

One thing was accomplished though. Trump's attack made the world a more dangerous place. That's because the Russians retaliated by stopping the communications program between the American and Russian forces in the area -- designed to keep those forces from accidentally attacking each other or shooting down each others' planes. This was the program used to notify the Russians that the attack was coming.

This makes it much more likely that a Russian plane will be shot down by an American, or that an American plane will be shot down by a Russian. What happens if either of those possibilities occurs? That's a scary thought, since both countries have narcissistic presidents who can't admit they made a mistake and won't want to be seen as backing down. Could the egos of these two men engage both countries in a shooting war between them in Syria/Iraq -- which could then spread to other areas of the world?

Trump did accomplish one thing with his attack. He made the world a more dangerous place.

Are We Already At War With Iran ?

Some of you may be shocked at my title question. After all, hasn't the president done all that he can to avoid war with Iran? Hasn't he joined with the European countries to put economic pressure on Iran, in an effort to avoid attacking them? Well yes, he has done that -- but that may just be a cover for the much more aggressive actions this country has initiated.

We already know about the American rocket that killed civilians in Iran. According to the government, that rocket was meant to explode in Iraq and just went awry. And then there's the matter of the drones we have been sending over Iran. One of them was actually shot down by the Iranians, so we can't deny doing that anymore. Again, the official story is that they just got off course.

But there is another matter that is even more serious -- an intentional attack on Iranian property by the United States government. The attack tool is called "Stuxnet". It's a computer "worm" created by the United States (and Israel) to wreak havoc on the Iranian government's computers. It was first discovered when a screw-up in the program sent the worm around the world instead of just to Iran's computer system. And it's been going on for years now.

The cyber-attacks were started by the Bush administration, but President Obama made the decision to continue, and even increase, them after he took office. The attack was a unilateral one, and another example of the United State's policy of "preventative war" -- a Bush doctrine that seems to have been adopted by President Obama.

This brings up a valid question. Isn't an attack on another country's computer system an act of war? If another country were to attack our own government's computers, you can bet our government would consider it an act of war (just as surely as if they had attacked one of our ships or airplanes or military bases). And we would retaliate.

Ask yourself what the United States would do if Iran killed American citizens with a missile, sent drones over U.S. territory, or launched a cyber-attack on our nation's computer system? You know the answer. At the very least the U.S. would bomb the hell out of Iran, and it very well could lead to all-out war.

Too many Americans will deny it (because they believe the U.S. can do no wrong), but our government has already launched the first strikes against Iran. The only reason we are not already in a shooting war is that Iran is showing remarkable restraint (and good sense). Perhaps they know we are trying hard to prod them into responding, so we'll have an excuse to launch our bombers.