KOREA, CUBA AND THE WRONG KIND OF CONSISTENCY

[From June 13, 2018]

The President seems to go out of his way to embarrass and undermine some of our closest allies, while at the same time embracing a tyrant whose family has oppressed their country for decades while stifling human rights and spewing torrents of anti-American propaganda.

Trump? Of course.

Obama? Oh yeah, him too.

This is NOT a false equivalence. Rather a call for consistency that I see too little of these days. I will be accused for "whatabout-ism" or trying to distractions. That's a disingenuous, selective reading of facts.

This isn't an attempt to bolster or defend either awful administration. Both were, and are, unmitigated foreign policy disasters and we're facing 12 (maybe 16) years of American absenteeism on the world stage. In the end, we will reap a world that will not be kind to us. I just see the events of the last week, and it reminds me that we've been disengaged since 2009 and nothing good is coming of it.

My major problem with the DPRK meeting is that we demanded nothing for it. For 75 years, the top item on the Kim's Christmas list was to stand alone on a stage next to a U.S. President. Legitimacy for the regime in one swing. Everyone knew better than to give them that, even Clinton and Obama, who both salivated at the alter of "foreign policy as photo-op." And Trump gave it to them for free. He didn't even demand a hollow promise to stop popping off nukes. Those that say, "Well, nothing was achieved at the summit" miss this point entirely. The DPRK achieved the one overriding goal they've had since Eisenhower was President. They are very happy about this. That's why I drew the comparison to Cuba. Obama gave the Castro's the one thing they wanted, and got nothing in return.

The issue isn't how insignificant the event is to us, it's realizing how very significant it is to them. If we can extract real concessions in exchange for something that we perceive as worthless, that's what we should have done. I personally think that this shouldn't have done this in response to nuclear provocation, but if Trump disagrees, send the undersecretary of state to Pyongyang and give them a list of tangible, verifiable demands and tell them that this is price for that photo op. Don't give away your best chip and get nothing in return.

I don't want to get into which-is-the-worst-regime checklist for Cuba and North Korea. They're both tiny, awful places that have a history of punching above their weight class. It's a case of recency bias, really. Allowing the Soviets to station nukes in your country and then repeatedly and strongly urging Khrushchev to use them places you pretty high on the list of America-haters, and just because it was before 60 years ago, the regime shouldn't get a pass. The Kennedy Administration was a long time ago here but it’s the same gang in Havana., and they’re the same guys that Obama sat with at a ballgame. By fomenting "revolution" in Africa and Latin America up until around 2000 the Castros did far more to directly confront the US than the Kims did over the same period. It's just that what the North Koreans have done happened more recently.

By rattling off the awful things that Trump has done doesn't absolve Obama. Obama accommodated Putin, which I understand we now consider to be treason per se. He single-handily created the mess in Syria. He botched Libya. Those last two resulted in more civilian misery than "war criminals" Bush and Cheney can be accused of. He stood by (twice) while Russia (Putin again) took chunks of a country whose sovereignty they were treaty bound to respect. He freed dozens of jihadists from Guantanamo against the recommendation of the intelligence community. He abandoned friendly governments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and with that any progress at stability, thereby clearing the table for ISIS. But he told us not to worry about ISIS because they were the "JV team." He marginalized and dismissed solid allies like Israel and the Saudis to curry favor with Iran. Personally insulted Netanyahu in terms just as bad as anything Trump said about Trudeau. NATO allies? He pulled ABM sites out to keep Putin (him again) happy. He crippled the Cameron government by encouraging the Brits to support domestically unpopular action in Syria that Obama then backed away from when the Russians (we just can't shake that Putin guy) promised him that Assad would be good (spoiler alert, he wasn't). He left the French and British in the wind again when he "led from behind" into Libya and then didn't provide the logistic support they needed. (But at least he didn't bash the alliance.) He mocked Mitt Romney for calling Russia a strategic threat (last time I mention Putin, I promise). Pardoned Manning and traded terrorists for Bergdahl. I won't say anything about the Iran deal, which is awful in every single way, except to say that he sold it as a deal to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons, but by the treaty's (oops, not a treaty) very terms, it permits Iran to acquire them in 10 years. So even if they didn't cheat (which they are), in 10 years we have North Korea redux. So anyone can list a bunch of things that "at least Obama didn't do this or that," but what he did do was ruinous. So I'm supposed to think he's OK because he was a free trader? Well done, Obama - that makes you as smart as every President since Truman.

Trump maybe wrong, and is more often than not. But that, unfortunately, is just par for the course since 2009.