The Turning Point

I’m on a mid-term break in my annual Unplug&Recharge effort, and am taking stock of what’s changed while I was out of cell phone range, and therefore blissfully ignorant of everything from CNN to Fox to Facebook to the Journal. The loudest development in my opinion seems to be what I’ll refer to as the Scaramucci Interregnum. Before I left for backpacking in Wyoming on July 13 Sean Spicer was the White House Communications Director, and Reince Priebus was the Trump administration’s chief of staff. While I was gone, Anthony Scaramucci rode into town, Spicer and Priebus left, and Scaramucci himself was dismissed shortly thereafter. Trump now has a new chief of staff in John Kelly, who served previously as the Secretary of Homeland Security.

Let’s break down what this all means.

First, an in-your-face personality like Anthony Scaramucci (aka “The Mooch”) was a horrible choice for a position that is all about smoothing ruffled feathers and keeping people – including  those hostile to the administration’s views and policies – informed. But his presence did present us with something very useful. His profanity-laden tirades demonstrated that Donald Trump has opinions on how much is too much. Considering the president’s own, shall we say, disinterest in self-censoring, this in and of itself is a notable discovery.

Second, the Interregnum has signposted a sharp change in the administration’s domestic political capacity. The departure of Spicer and Priebus removes two of the three “mainstream” domestically-focused Republican personalities from the administration. The only one remaining is Vice President Mike Pence. While the Veep is hardly a wilting flower, historically the Vice Presidency is only as powerful as the Presidency enables it to be. Trump may be many things, but “enabler” isn’t the word I typically reach for when I try to describe him.

Without any “establishment” personalities left, the leading advisor to Trump on all things domestic is now Steve Bannon, a nationalistic populist who has some rather… eclectic and non-standard views on how everything should be. Many were critical of the “adults” in the Trump administration for their mixed record on guiding the president to a more conventional path. On domestic politics, there are no longer any adults left. Expect things to get lively.

Third, expect them to get chaotic too. John Kelly was a fine Marine general and seemed quite capable and at home in Homeland Security. I have no problem with senior military personnel serving in civilian administrations and have written before about my support of and respect for people like Defense Secretary James Mattis and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster. In foreign and strategic affairs, the top-down model of management that is typical of military minds works. After all, you don’t want some low-level bureaucrat making strategic policy without supervision, or even with much wiggle room on the specifics of implementation.

But chief of staff is a political job. It is about balancing dozens of competing players, many of whom by design are attempting to manipulate or deceive the president, and yet still must be considered. It is a position that is a combination of gatekeeper, ego juggler, reality-checker, cat-herder, and selective censor. The military isn’t exactly known for cranking out such people. Solid chiefs of staff have broad exposure, deep expertise and/or cut-throat political instincts: Jim Baker, Josh Bolten, Rahm Emanuel. Kelly is smart as a whip and good at what he knows, but this isn’t the job for him. Which leaves Trump both under the influence of Bannon and lacking someone who can capably manage the chief executive’s affairs. Get ready for not just press reports by Twitter, but policy by Twitter.

Speaking of Twitter, a Twitter follower recently asked me for confirmation that despite all the… activity in the White House these days, does a functional plan still exist to promulgate American power in the long run? It’s a reasonable question. I’ve long taken the view that American power will grow in both absolute and relative terms for at least the rest of this century. That, in a nutshell, is the theme of The Accidental Superpower.

Let me be clear: there is no plan. The Americans have hardly ever had a plan. From an international and strategic viewpoint, America’s strengths are not and never have been in its governing system in general or any administration in specific. Instead, America’s strengths come from a balance of factors which exist entirely outside of the political realm:

  • Geography: The United States occupies the world’s best lands interlaced with the world’s best naturally-occurring transport system, the Greater Mississippi system. In addition, any potential invaders are separated from the United States by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. That leaves the Americans free to develop without fear of outside interference, yet gives them the capacity to intervene across the world at times and places of their choosing. And should things get dicey, the Americans can always just head home. For them – and them alone – defeat doesn’t mean someone is parking their tanks in your lawn.
  • Demography: Countries that survive in the long-term have a population balance between mature workers to invest and pay taxes, and young workers to raise children and whose consumption powers the economy. Most of the world’s countries have run out of young workers already: Germany, Japan and Italy are the worst – all are rapidly aging into national oblivion – while Russia, China and Brazil aren’t far behind. The United States is one of the (very) few advanced countries where the balance is even remotely stable and sustainable.
  • Energy: Love it or hate it, energy is a requirement of modern life. For the last several decades, global politics was heavily colored by the need to bring energy from far-flung locations in the Middle East and Siberia to East Asia, Europe and the United States. No more. America’s shale revolution has already transformed the United States into a net energy exporter, and by 2020 it will likely even be an oil exporter in absolute terms. And if you’re of the Green persuasion, the United States is the First World power closest to the equator, making it the only one that can actually harness solar energy in meaningful volumes.

These are things that no president can screw up. The United States survived Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The ride may often be wild, but the United States will survive post-Interregnum Donald Trump as well.

Other countries, not so much.

The three factors of geography, demography and energy enabled the United States to impose a global Order during the Cold War that, in essence, outlawed conflict among the allied powers. Maintaining that Order was difficult – it required constant consultation and coordination. Falling from Order to Disorder, in contrast, is eeeeeasy. The Cold War is over, and the American president no longer has a functional executive staff that is capable of consulting and coordinating. All it requires is not a goddam thing.

Since America’s strengths are natural and apolitical, the United States will broadly be fine. For countries that lack geographic strength and isolation, demographic heft and stability, and energy access or independence, however, life outside of the Order is looking mighty scary.

Which makes it absolutely critical for other countries to have their own plans if they are to survive the Disorder to come. Unfortunately, most of them are slipping into narcissistic populism, bald denial, deer-in-the-headlights panic, or some terrifying combination of the three. There are exceedingly few countries that boast the combination of factors required to even attempt to chart their own destinies in a sustainable manner.

I’m certain that in a few years domestic pundits will (correctly) use the Scaramucci Interregnum to signpost the beginning of a (more) volatile and unpredictable Trump White House, but there’s more at stake than that. The real issue of the day is that the transition from global Order to Disorder just accelerated from a slide into a free-fall.

And now we get to see what happens next: Now we can begin to witness the rise of the New Orders. The – ultimately successful – efforts of four specific countries to reshape their neighborhoods in the wake of the American withdrawal from the world.

As for who those four countries are, how they’ll do it – and above all else – why they’ll be the only four to succeed, you’ll have to wait a bit. You see, the next book isn’t done yet.

But I do have a cover to share…

Qatar, PACOM, and the Absence of US Foreign Policy

So, two things that happened in the past week that were of interest to me.

First, Saudi Arabia issued its official demands that the Qatari government would need to meet for the Saudis and their allies to end their diplomatic, political and economic blockade. With deep conditions ranging from the shuttering of the al Jazeera news service to a complete realignment of the country’s foreign policy from one of independent stances to something more appropriate to a province of Saudi Arabia.

Second, I spoke at PACOM in Hawaii about the changing nature of American power. The subsequent discussion focused heavily on the evolving role of the U.S. military as the country’s geopolitical priorities shift. The two neatly dovetail and highlight one of the deepening challenges the U.S. government faces in the next few years.

Let’s start with the background.

Near the end of World War II at the Bretton Woods conference the United States struck a deal with the allies. In the post-war order, the United States will defend not just your countries, but all your trade. You will no longer need to fight one another to access raw materials or markets. Furthermore, the American market — the only one of size to survive the war — will be open to you. All you have to do is side with America against the Soviets. Put simply, the United States pledged its military and economy to subsidize history’s largest alliance network.

By 1992, however, the Cold War had ended and — caught up in the transition from the Bush Sr administration to Clinton — the Americans neglected to craft a replacement strategy. The world changed, but U.S. strategic overwatch and subsidization of the alliance did not. All the various Cold War allies — ranging from the Germans to the Koreans to the Chinese to the Greeks — continued to benefit economically, but the Americans no longer received the strategic deference that was part of the original Bretton Woods deal.

Twenty-five years later, the economic cost of such an outdated strategy has led to the perception in many Americans’ minds that the world is freeloading on American security commitments. This isn’t intolerance or a fit of pique, it is a reasonable response to Washington’s inability to craft a replacement for a security policy that is a generation out of date. Such perceptions heavily colored the populist nature of the 2016 presidential election, and of course the election of Donald Trump — and now the American retrenchment is in full swing.

Yet it hardly started with Trump. American strategic policy has been on autopilot since 1992. The Clinton, W Bush and Obama administrations were too distracted, disinterested and/or unaware of the intricacies of the international system to meaningfully update the original Bretton Woods deal. In Donald Trump the Americans now have a leader just as distracted, disinterested and/or unaware as his three immediate predecessors. What is different about Trump is that as a populist he feels no attachment to the Bretton Woods system, so there is no natural inclination to just let-it-ride. Consequently, there are a growing number of breaches as the freshmen president, by action and inaction, peels away bits of the old system — but doesn’t replace them with anything new.

Such peeling is on full display with U.S. policy to the Persian Gulf. Trump’s first overseas visit wasn’t to traditional partners like Canada or Mexico or traditional allies like the United Kingdom or Japan, but instead to Saudi Arabia where Trump was quickly sucked into a gilded flattery fest of Trumpian proportions. The Saudis emerged from the visit-glow thinking they had the White House’s stamp of approval to restructure their region in whatever way they saw fit. Their first act wasn’t to move against ISIS or Iran, but Qatar — a tiny country the Saudis have long viewed as unnecessarily close to Iran, unnecessarily promiscuous when it comes to sponsoring political groups opposed to Saudi goals, and in general unnecessarily free-willed.

Qatar, however, didn’t buckle — and that brings us to PACOM.

The U.S. military apparatus is charged with dispensing and enforcing U.S. strategic policy. As part of such duties, the military must constantly interact with allies and rivals around the world. That takes soldiers. Sailors. Marines. Airmen. Bases — and those bases require commitments to local and regional security concerns. That takes engagement, reliability, consistency. Every. Single. Day. By far the Americans’ largest overseas base these days is in Doha…the capital of Qatar. The CENTCOM base there has been the nerve-center for all US operations in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan for some 15 years now.

The Qataris believe — correctly — that the U.S. military has their back and so there is no need for them to back down to the Saudis. The Saudis believe — correctly — that the Trump administration has green-lit their desire to restructure their region more to their liking. The Trump administration believes — correctly — that the U.S. strategic policy it inherited needs an overhaul, but has yet to craft that replacement policy.

The result in the U.S. military and diplomatic community is an overriding sense of confusion and frustration. Their standing orders are clear, but the shifts out of the White House are equally clear. And increasingly, the two contradict. The folks at PACOM can’t figure out, for example, whether they are supposed to treat China as a threat, a partner, a rising power who should be engaged…or given space. And mixed messages aren’t the best things when dealing with multiple aircraft carrier battle groups.

The issue is not so much Trump’s tendency to make policy via Twitter (although that obviously doesn’t help), but instead that ever since the Cold War ended the Americans have not had a goal.

Until the Americans select a new one they cannot have a coherent strategy. Until they have the national conversation required to select that goal, these deepening splits between needs and actions will only widen, leaving allies new and old not just in a lurch, but often acting against one another — as Saudi Arabia and Qatar are now.

There are plenty of places where this disconnect between emerging strategic interests and outdated policy will grind. Some of the louder ones include NATO, where it is no longer clearly in America’s interests to defend Europe against Russia. At the DMZ, where North Korea is far more a threat to South Korea, Japan and even China than it is to the United States. In the South China Sea where Chinese aggression is less a threat to American interests than to Taiwanese and Japanese. In Kuwait where America’s lack of oil import needs staggeringly reduces the Americans’ interest while staggeringly increasing Saudi belligerence. America’s use of Turkey’s Incirlik airbase will likely evaporate for a mix of reasons ranging from disenchantment with the evolution of the Turkish political space to a general feeling that the refugee issue is Europe’s problem, while Syria is Turkey’s problem.

Other places generate a lot less heartburn and — even without some new overarching strategy — are likely to keep their current levels of American involvement regardless. The UK, Canada and Australia have been and will remain America’s closest allies under almost any reasonable scenario. Morocco and Algeria are reliable partners in the struggle against Islamic militancy. Proximity and economic centrality will keep the Americans involved in Panamanian affairs for as long as water transport is a thing. Singapore sits on the world’s most strategically located real estate and is likely to be a valued partner until the end of time itself.

Perhaps the quirkiest aspect of all this are the countries likely to suffer the most from the policy discombobulation.

On the surface the Qatari-Saudi spat seems like it would deliver the Persian Gulf to Iran on a silver platter. But no. Within the first week of the argument, Turkey had deployed troops to its airbase in Qatar. Nothing is easy in the Middle East, even (especially!) for powers inhabiting the region. Turkey’s push to support Qatar is a clear indication to Tehran (and Riyadh) that even if US troops left the region tomorrow, Iran gets to look forward to facing off against yet another superior economic and military power. Unlike the United States, however, Turkey has a bevy of permanent regional interests directly opposed to Iran’s own, and occupies prime real estate in the neighborhood.

Trump’s wobbling on NATO seems like it gives the Russians everything they want — a Europe without the American security umbrella. But no. With the Americans out, the Germans have no choice but to rearm — and every time that has happened, it hasn’t turned out well for Moscow.

Loosening security ties with the East Asian rim seems like a dream come true for the Chinese. But no. Not only does that force Japan, Korea and Taiwan to massively bulk up their defense capacities (and perhaps go nuclear), but China’s extensive international economic position is utterly dependent upon the Americans keeping markets open and sea lanes safe on a global scale. Without America, there is no Chinese economic miracle — and most likely a naval war with Japan that China simply cannot win.

What will the Americans decide they want out of all of this? What will their new goal be? No clue. American politics are loud and messy and amped up with righteous indignation at present. Even if Americans could start the national conversation on finding that elusive goal today, I doubt they’d come up with the final answer in this presidency.

Curious About Cuba

Last week President Donald Trump announced a partial revocation of his predecessor’s diplomatic opening to Cuba, reinstating pieces of the decades-long embargo impacting financial transfers, trade and transport.

As a rule, I don’t get too worked up about this or that president’s policies on this or that country. It is a big world. As a massive, domestically-focused economy with immense strategic depth and insulation, the United States has enormous wiggle room to both make mistakes and take the long view. Even presidents as aggressive as FDR during times as tumultuous as World War II can afford to sit back and watch things unfold. The bar for what actually impacts the homeland is pretty high.

Cuba isn’t one of those things – or more to the point, the Caribbean isn’t one of those places.

The reason is movement. Moving things by water is less than one-tenth the cost of moving them by land, making rivers among the most strategic economic assets on the planet. The interconnected rivers of the Greater Mississippi system have more miles of navigable waterway than the rest of the world’s internal waterways combined. That is the core reason the United States is a superpower.

But rivers have one mission-critical downside: they have to end somewhere. If a foe can threaten the river’s mouth, then trade possibilities face a pretty brutal cap. Securing river mouths and keeping them free of foes was a leading topic of much of Europe’s genocidal centuries.

For the Americans, the problematic bit isn’t just New Orleans, the last stop on the Mississippi’s course to the Gulf of Mexico, but also the island of Cuba which truncates access between the Gulf of Mexico and the wider Atlantic. And even if the Americans can get past Cuba, they still need to neutralize all maritime choke points in the Greater Caribbean region.

If anything, it is more serious than it sounds. For the United States has more waterways than “merely” the Mississippi. The Intracoastal Waterway lies behind a series of barrier islands that broadly parallel the East and Gulf Coasts. One of those Cuban-pinch points is the Florida Strait, which could enable a hostile Cuba-based power to not just block American trade in and out of the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi, but also disrupt internal maritime transport from New York, Richmond, Savannah and Miami from reaching New Orleans, St Louis, Louisville and Minneapolis.

Any extra-hemispheric power that is able to partner with any spot in the region could turn the Americans from an outward-projecting superpower to one whose own internal transport systems are in question.

There’s more to the Caribbean than Cuba, more to Panama than cheap shipping, more to Venezuela than cheap oil, more to the Bahamas than beaches, and more to Grenada than cheap medical school. These places and more are the collective garage door to the United States. A hostile Caribbean threatens the United States in a way that a robust China, a war-drum-beating Soviet Union or German-dominated Europe cannot. As such, American strategic policy since roughly 1800 has been borderline neurotic about forcing the Caribbean into a shape that works for the United States. Just how neurotic? What was truly scary about the Cuban Missile Crisis wasn’t just how discombobulated the Americans were, but how logical it was for them to risk nuclear war to keep the Soviets out of Cuba.

At its core, Obama’s sunshine policy was about putting the Cuban bit of the Caribbean puzzle on the path to bed – permanently. It wasn’t like Cuba had been a threat to the Americans since 1992. Left with just its own resources, Cuba is merely an irritant. Yet as a geopolitical strategist I did find it nice to shift the country firmly out of the “watch closely” category with Iran and Ukraine on my wall map, and lump it in with the “meh” column that serves as home to Belgium, Belarus and Bangladesh.

Does this mean Trump’s decision is foolhardy? Not at all. Trump is at least partially right: the Obama administration really didn’t play hardball with Havana – the bilateral warming put next to no pressure on the Castro regime to liberalize, much less stand down. To use the president’s terms, a better deal can certainly be had. Trump holds most of the cards here, and there are plenty of options: everything ranging from a firmer diplomatic stance to economic sanctions that target other investors in Cuba to the threat (or use) of (para)military force. And since at present there is no extra-hemispheric power that seems interested in making Cuba its local military footprint, there is no time pressure either.

But that doesn’t mean that Cuba will remain in its post-Soviet no-man’s-land forever. Trump’s actions must have follow up. For if all this backtrack does is buy time and space for someone else to insert themselves into Cuban affairs, then much of what gives the Americans all that strategic insulation, economic power and room to maneuver – much of what makes the United States a global superpower –could be in doubt.