It’s an open question how serious President-elect Donald Trump is about policies that he’s advocated – such as saying sayonara to Japan and South Korea if the two countries don’t contribute more resources to their own defense, or abandoning the nonproliferation policy by giving them the green light to develop their own nuclear weapons to counter those that North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is developing.
Trump, after all, like the late Kim Jong-il of North Korea, is mainly a showman. If he’s a policy wonk, reading books and think tank reports on difficult international questions, we haven’t heard about it. Clearly he admires his self-image of a tough negotiator who shakes things up. But would he persist single-mindedly in carrying out policies that, so far, are no more substantial than marketing slogans?
Since we’re not in a position to answer definitively, the first signals to look for are the names and backgrounds and views of the top people he taps to run, day to day, the US political/military relationship with the rest of the world. But even there, we may not learn much since many of the most prominent names in foreign/defense policy – those names that we can associate with particular policies – are not likely to be part of his hiring pool.
Notable during his campaign was the fact that relatively few prominent people endorsed him. Pretty near the entire Republican senior foreign policy establishment publicly dissed him.
In August Chris Nelson of Washington’s Nelson Report came up with a list of three people described as Trump’s Asia policy brain trust. Focusing as I do on Pyongyang, I emailed the one who was most identified with North Korea policy, William C. Triplett II, a retired aide to the late Senator Jesse Helms. Triplett never replied and I’ve heard no more about his chances to land a cushy White House, State or Pentagon job. (His book on North Korea, for whatever the fact is worth, doesn’t minimize the North Korea threat. Its title: Rogue State: How a Nuclear North Korea Threatens America.)
Although Trump’s victory speech included the words, “I am reaching out to you for your guidance and your help” to unify the country, the president-elect is not known to be the forgiving sort. Don’t hold your breath waiting for him to beg his many public detractors – especially those Republican foreign affairs specialists who signed a manifesto opposing his candidacy – to let bygones be bygones, now that he’s won, and offer their expertise to him.
For the top jobs he may well pick from his tiny band of loyalists: a one-time presidential contender like former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, say, for secretary of state. If Trump especially wants to endear himself to the most conservative congressional Republicans he may go for a hardliner such as former Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, who wants the job and has supported him vocally.
Beyond that, there’s still a wide bench of career professionals in the State Department Foreign Service and in the military who are in the habit of carrying out presidential orders.
For example, a whole generation of rookie diplomats came of age working in and on the Vietnam War – even though not a few of them privately opposed the war. They saw their role as carrying out policy, not making it.
Soldiers, to an even greater extent perhaps, are trained to leave to politicians the decision on when, where and whom to fight. There should be plenty of buzz-cut warriors ready to put on suits and ties and do Trump’s bidding, considering that pre-election polls showed they widely favored him.
So if Trump pursues unsound policies, are we doomed to watch helplessly as some previously anonymous subordinates help him trash the current world system?
Here’s the good thing about career professionals, if indeed that’s where Trump looks for more of his personnel than is typical for new administrations. Such appointees would follow the boss’s lead – unless and until he ordered something a lot of them saw as truly stupid, in which case they might use the relationship they’d built up with him through their previous obedience to try to persuade him to rethink.
The most notable such case in recent memory happens to involve Korea. Democrat Jimmy Carter during his 1976 presidential campaign voiced his determination to bring US troops home from South Korea, which then was ruled by a former general turned dictator and human rights abuser.
Military and State Department veterans, seeing South Korea as a political and economic work in progress and fearing that US troop withdrawal would permit North Korea to swallow up the South, hunkered down and thwarted Carter at every turn. Eventually, in 1979, in a face-saving maneuver he agreed to “postpone” carrying out his plan.
The next year Carter ran for a second term – and lost.
Wishful thinking by a typically brain washed and programmed Bradley Martin of the West pointing his tainted fingers toward Asia! Go back to the history books and read who and how did what to the rest of the world through their Western "cilivized Christian world" colonization in Asia and Africa in last 300 or so years! It’s the "black animals of Africa" the "dark men of Africa", the "African peasants" who did not kill the white man in millions upon achieving their hundreds of years old tyrincal Christian colonization of South Africa and let thm live instead of torching their mansions with their worthless clonial familes in them! So who is civilized? Yes one man named Nelson Mendella "dismantled time tested policies" and let live the Whites! Trump may that unimaginable and unacceptable wild card! So get used to it!
If trump & his supporters can control Media,Hollywood & Academic universities then he has a chance to revive America….if he loses control over them he cannot do much as the elitist will block him.
Well, these time tested policies has dragged USA down and make many enemies. That is why Trump won. ‘Nuff said.
A lots of nonsense. It suggests that outside of the "experts" that have crafted the timeless policies that will stand the test of time — no intelligence exists. I would argue that the best thing that happened was the self-identified lists of foreign policy "experts" — to insure that their kind of experience does not like a virus, infect any chance of change.
Aside from the fact that these are the people that got us into the mess all over the globe, Trump needs money to come good on his promises to the country left abandoned at the altar of global domination quest. To come up with the money, the only trove of cash is available in the arena of world-stradling network of non-governmental groups, thousands upon thousands that are littering the globe for over a quater of century. And bases strawn accross the globe with very little to no impact on US interests. But Trump will have to cut some deals in order to get out of the hot messes, such as Libya, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. There, he needs to act fast, in a manner to protect the state at the expense of various non-state actors. In Syria, this means cutting a deal with Russia and Turkey, to get the last pockets of Al-Qaeda and ISIS out, stop the program of arming the "rebels" in Jordan, stopping Saudi Arabia from funding any groups — with some credible threat. And in Iraq, in order to get out as soon as possible, insure that Turkey and Bagdhad speak with the same language, and the liberation of any ISIS territory must be coupled with a credible occupation by a well-received force, In Sunni areas of Iraq that role can be played only by Turkey. Just as in Syria’s ISIS occupied Sunni areas. The nationbudilding project by Kurds should be stopped in its tracks — costly and requiring permanent babysitting. In Iraq, Kurds and Baghdad are on good terms, and US should stop supporting PKK Kurds in places like Sinjar. With Iran, Turkey and Russia, guaranteeing and occupying parts of terror stricken countries, it is important to open political process — so that upon sucessfull completion and the restoration of peace, Turkey can leave the area, leaving only smaller contingents to work with authoriites. US can stay as political presence, but no military assistance. Regional solutions can last, the only ones that will last. With Libya, Egypt might be the country to tap for support. It has large and well managed military, and as such capable to stabilize the country’s plethoras of political forces. US can try to find a way to disassociate itself with the direct military action, and pull back into the support needed for Egypt. Again, it is necessary that somebody from the region is guarantor of peace, as European countries — being former colonial masters — cannot fill that role.
Afghanistan is almost a no brainer. India, Pakistan, Iran and China need — as neighbors, to come up with a regional plan of peace in Afghanistan. Foreign armed presence only perpetuates the violence.
If Trump then pulls out many useless military bases all around the globe, he will find plenty of seed money to put into the Mid West, until other financing is put in place, and states engaged, to move into the infrastructure. From water in Flynt, to crumbling other infrastructure.
He needs the money, and he can lean on other countries, Russia and China included, to chip in — and provide some form of Marshall plan for the reconstruction of Middle East, strenghtening their state institutions, so that business and life can return to the region. The more business, and the stronger the governments — the better for Us. Totally opposite from the "time tested" recepies for wars, sanctions, and assorted bombings and failures of all types.
Obama did.
A lot of nonsense in this article. I do not see N. Korea having the ability to invade S. Korea. One nuke from USA will solve the problem…and delivered from USA with Love.
The tiny force that USA has in S. Korea cannot be of any strategic importance anyway. S. Korean forces are no push-overs either. They will reduce Pyongyang to rubble.
N. Korea has repeatedly said that USA should stop the war games if they want peace. China is also capable of deterring any military adventure of S. Korea.
Using Carter, the peanut president, as an example is just nonsense. Trump is a billionaire businessman who fought his way to wealth, with his brains and his ruthless business acumen. No successful businessman is a wimp…so keep to your research and just leave Trump to do is thing.