EDITORIAL

Expect the Worst

Nothing good can come of the appointment of Mike Pompeo as secretary of state and John Bolton as President Trump’s national security adviser. Outgoing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster didn’t accomplish much in those roles, but they kept Trump from starting a new war, so that first year might count as the golden era of the Trump Reign.

Now, in Pompeo and Bolton, Trump has foreign policy soulmates who have been pushing for the US to flex its military might to advance national interests. They are a lot less likely to try to talk Trump out of attacking Iran or North Korea. Bolton is a big proponent of pre-emptive war, not excluding nuclear war. In 2009, he said “unless Israel is prepared to use nuclear weapons against Iran’s program, Iran will have nuclear weapons in the very near future.” In February he wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal arguing that it was “perfectly legitimate for the United States to respond to the current ‘necessity’ posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons by striking first.”

We had no confidence in Trump when he announced in early March that he will meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un to discuss denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Ordinarily, we would say engagement of an adversary in face-to-face talks is a good thing, especially when the alternative is escalating name-calling that might lead to a nuclear exchange. But, we ask ourselves, what could go wrong? With Trump, plenty. And Pompeo and Bolton replacing Tillerson and McMaster only makes the prospects worse.

South Korea President Moon Jae-in made overtures toward more normal relations with the North — and to cool off the rhetoric between Kim and Trump. A South Korean emissary, who had met with Kim in North Korea, relayed Kim’s proposal to suspend nuclear and missile testing while talks are ongoing, and Trump surprised his advisers by accepting.

Tillerson was apparently blindsided. “We’re a long way from negotiations. We just need to be very clear-eyed and realistic about it,” he said March 8, just a few hours before the news broke. It wasn’t Tillerson’s last surprise.

Trump is supposed to meet with Kim in May, but the State Department is understaffed and Trump appears to be in no hurray to fill the glaring vacancies. He doesn’t have an ambassador to South Korea, and the State Department’s point person on North Korean issues just retired and hasn’t been replaced. But Trump does not appear inclined to listen to advice when it is offered anyway.

Trump fancies himself a dealmaker, but Kim comes from a family that has been conning Americans since 1994, when his grandfather agreed to stop nuclear weaponization in exchange for energy assistance. Kim is unlikely to give up his nuclear program — he saw what happened to Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi after they gave up their nuclear programs — nor is he likely to submit to international inspectors.

Robert Kuttner wrote, “The best we might hope for would be a series of ‘trust-building’ baby steps: a moratorium on the name-calling; a suspension of tests; and more moves toward rapprochement between South and North, with Washington’s blessing. This might give both Trump and Kim some favorable publicity, but if it did nothing to slow the development of stronger bombs and longer-range missiles, the advantage would be Kim’s.”

I don’t see much trust building under Trump with Bolton at his ear and Pompeo representing our diplomatic efforts. Is Defense Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis our last, best hope for a peacemaker?

Adding to the complications, Trump apparently does not value China’s cooperation in dealing with North Korea, as he has chosen to initiate a trade war with China a few weeks before the engagement with North Korea.

Perhaps the best case for Trump is if he can convince Kim to authorize a Trump hotel in Pyongyang. Maybe that will divert the war Trump intended to bring up his approval rates at home.

But if Trump is spoiling for a military adventure, the more likely target is Iran. Unlike North Korea, Iran has neither a nuclear weapon nor a US ally within easy range of Iranian artillery. And Iran has done nothing to provoke an attack from the US. Instead, UN nuclear inspectors have certified Iran is compliant with the deal it reached with six world powers, including the US, in 2015 to scale back its uranium enrichment with its promise not to pursue nuclear weapons. In return, international sanctions were lifted, allowing Iran to sell its oil and gas worldwide, which has contributed to lower fuel prices. Trump persists in saying, “This is the worst deal. We got nothing.” He may have been referring to American oil companies.

Pompeo has said Trump was right in calling the deal a “disaster.”

Shortly before Trump’s election, Bolton spoke to a right-wing group in California about the spread of “radical Islam” and its threat to the West, and called the 2015 nuclear deal “the worst act of appeasement in American history,” Ted Regencia reported at Al Jazeera.

“The government in Tehran is left with an essentially unimpeded path towards nuclear weapons,” Bolton said, ignoring multiple findings by UN nuclear inspectors that contradict his claim.

Without offering evidence, Bolton told the crowd that Iranian nuclear weapons could be delivered through ballistic missiles, or smuggled by “terrorists” into the US, and detonated “at a time most suitable to them.”

On Jan. 12, Trump announced he was waiving US sanctions for the “last time,” and said if his demands are not met within 120 days, the US will withdraw from the deal. The deadline is May 12.

Iranian officials insist that Tehran will never pursue nuclear weapons despite the expiration of some provisions of the pact, but Iran also rejects Trump’s demands for more inspections of its military sites and an end to its ballistic missile program.

At the CIA, Pompeo backed Trump’s decision to decertify the deal, and has tried to link Iran to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), failing to mention that Iran-backed forces fought against ISIL in Iraq and Syria, Regencia noted.

In 2017, Bolton, who had been blamed for pushing defective intelligence that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, renewed his call for “regime change” in Iran, a country of 80 million people, by 2019. On March 25, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported that he tried to convince Israel to bomb Iran when he was US ambassador to the UN during George W Bush’s administration.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) has questioned if Bolton can obtain a full security clearance after Bolton’s “contacts with foreign governments,” notably in Russia, pointing to a 2013 video for a Russian gun rights group in which Bolton appeared. Bolton also might be questioned about work on behalf of Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group that was on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations for having killed American citizens before Bolton and others successfully lobbied to have the designation removed in 2012, Jason Rezalan reported in the Washington Post March 24.

Rezalan, who was the Post’s Tehran correspondent from 2012 to 2016, including 544 days imprisoned by Iranian authorities, concluded, “The MEK is the type of fringe group that sets up camp across the street from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and hands out fliers filled with unsubstantiated claims. This is America — we let crazy people talk. That’s their right, and I would never suggest that they be prohibited from doing that. But giving the MEK a voice in the White House is a terrible idea.

“In John Bolton they have someone who will do it for them.”

From The Progressive Populist, April 15, 2018

Populist.com