Peace, Denuclearziation, and the Gap Between Liberal and Progressive Security Policy

One of my former students, Van Jackson, put together a roundtable on the future of progressive foreign policy in the Texas National Security Review. On his Facebook, I weighed in on a discussion in which someone questioned whether there was enough diversity of views on "progressive" f.p., especially since the writers were all established foreign policy scholars. These progressive ideas are not new, but have been articulated by peace activists. However, the foreign policy/security views of peace activists are generally dismissed as radical, naïve, or unrealistic by mainstream policymakers (what Walt calls the establishment).

I was reminded of the roundtable (which I still haven't read but should) when I saw this clip of activists Sung-hee Choi, an activist I might call a friend, interrupting a peace and denuclearization conference hosted by the ROK government and the UN. In the video, she demands how such a conference could be held on Jeju Island without inviting or hearing the input of the local villagers who live by a naval base which permits nuclear submarines to port. In her rant, she criticizes the President Moon's policies and refers to his government as a puppet of the US.

What I find interesting, if not mildly puzzling, is how progressive activists criticize a president who's staked so much capital in building peace with North Korea and taking the engagement path towards denuclearization. In this case, I want to argue that there might be a distinction between liberal vs. progressive policy views. The established left support liberal foreign policy, whereas activists support progressive foreign policy. Of course, this may just be another name for the mainstream (or center) left and the radical (or far) left so no need to reinvent the wheel. Is it possible, though that policymakers are picking up some of the ideas of the radical left. If liberals are still part of the foreign  policy establishment, they are in cahoots with conservatives. Thus if someone wants to break the mold of the establishment, they have to enter the territory of progressives.

Sewol Ferry Protests, Four Years Strong, and Youth Protests

I was at Gwanghwamun Square to do some sight-seeing with family. As a researcher, however, I was quickly distracted by the large display in remembrance of the Sewol Ferry victims. The structures looked temporary, so my first question was how long the memorial would be up on Gwanghwamun Square? Then I wondered how long the memorial had been up. Wasn't the Sewol Ferry incident more than 4 years ago?

I found out the memorial, referred to as Sewol Plaza, has been on display since at least 2016, if not longer  It sounds like the memorial may not be up that much longer though with the possible establishment of two permanent memorials: the 416 Life Safety Park in Ansan, the city where many student victims were from, and the actual Sewol Ferry sitting in Mokpo. A good article in Korea Expose describes the memorial and people's reaction here. 

A recurring theme about the Sewol Ferry protests, and also the candlelight protests in 2016 against President Park Geunhye is the awakening of political activism among Korean youth. Here's an insightful first person account exploring this awakening across campuses. Apparently, there was a big student movement at Seoul National University (where I'm teaching for the summer) a couple years ago against the administration's decision to establish a new campus without student input. 

Not having conducted field research on social movements in Korea for over a decade, I feel out of touch with the latest issues. I also saw peace (or anti-US) protests across the street from the US Embassy. I know Korea had its own "me too" movement that lit on fire this spring. Relatedly, there's been protests against the use of women's spycacm porn.

Smaller conservative counter-protests led by groups like the Taeguki Citizens’ Revolutionary Movement and the Association of Patriotic Culture have also emerged. 

How to Address Human Rights in US Foreign Policy

My splendid co-author (Danielle Chubb) and I published our piece in today's Washington Post Monkey Cage blog: Will raising human rights issues really derail nuclear negotiations with North Korea?

I happened to see a similar sort of argument for raising human rights with China as well, titled "4 ways the U.S. can raise human rights issues with China."

And I found out my colleague at Catholic University and director of IPR, Bob Destro, was nominated as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

Where do you stand on the declining liberal order debate? More bad news for liberal international order

More on declining liberal international order I've dug up.

So if one guy can blow up the liberal international (institutional) order, than the order is not all that its cracked out to be. I've been making a similar argument in my book on Asian regional architecture, but from the angle that the liberal international order is more resilient precisely b/c it rests on norms and institutions.  Dan Drezner raises this point channeling a tweet presents the following.

As President Trump continues to wreak havoc, questions are being asked about the resiliency of the rules-based liberal order. Adam Elkus is a smart guy I follow on Twitter; maybe you should, too! But in response to much gnashing of teeth in the past week over this question, he tweeted the following: “If the Rules-Based Liberal Order can be blown up by one man within a 4-year time span then people can’t still unironically talk about institutions and the binding power of norms.”

If Elkus is correct, then it’s a pretty damaging blow to liberal institutionalists. It would turn out that all of the trappings of the postwar global order rested not on rules or norms, but on raw American power. Is he correct?

Foreign Affairs posted this interesting poll of foreign policy experts last year (May/June 2017) on whether they agreed/disagreed with the idea that the postwar liberal order is in "grave danger" The forecast looked gloomy. A year later, the prognosis is probably worse. There's a slew of new pieces discussing how Trump is destroying the liberal international order:

Dan Byman in Lawfare, stating that even if Trump exits after one term, the damage may not be easily reversible. In particular, the Trump years have signaled to the world the messiness of US domestic politics and the possibility that a substantial number of Americans may not want a liberal order.  As Byman argues, "A successor to Trump can try to renew these commitments but must do so with the world recognizing that a sizeable share of Americans oppose these traditional components of the world order and that a leader championing these Americans might again gain power." This was similar to Drezner's comments.

Robbert Kagan discusses the US as a rogue superpower that's not only rejected the liberal order, but is "milking it for narrow gain, rapidly destroying the trust and sense of common purpose that have held it together and prevented international chaos for seven decades."

Fareed Zakaria argued that the main headline of the US-North Korea summit last week was not the praise lavished onto Kim Jong Un, but the cancellation of military exercises and his allusion to reducing US troop commitment. China ended up being the big winner out of the summit.

In a CATO report, Patrick Porter finds policymakers nostalgic for the liberal order. Is it time to move on?

G7, Trade Disputes, and the Decline of Liberal Internationalism

“What worries me most is the fact that the rules-based international order is being challenged — quite surprisingly not by the usual suspects, but by its main architect and guarantor, the U.S.,” - European Council President Donald Tusk.

"When does a feud become a separation? A separation a divorce? When do arguments, sharp-tongued put-downs and perceived betrayal among allies become the collapse of the Western-dominated order that has ruled the world, under U.S. leadership, for the past seven decades?" - Karen DeYoung, Washington Post.

Washington Post June 10 2018 (Photo Credit: AFP)

These are the headlines underlining (or undermining) the 2018 G7 Summit in Canada,  capped by President Trump's early departure from the G7 and decision to withdraw US support joint statement. At the center of this debate is the Trump administration's threat to the international trade architecture as President Trump threatens to slap tariffs on goods - steel, aluminum, and automobiles in particular - of our closest allies in the name of national security. These allies include Canada, Germany, and Japan. Although there might be some "nuggets of truth" to Trump's claims on trade, most analysts believe the US will bear a significant economic cost in a trade war, translating into the loss of millions of jobs.  I don't have the economics or math background to prove to what extent Trump's trade policies would help or hurt the US economy, but if there's anything I learned from my IPE class in graduate school, it's that international trade always carries winners and losers. Steel and aluminum producers in the US may get their jobs back as Trump rises tariffs on foreign imported metals. But what about all the US manufacturers who rely on lower cost materials to make their products? What about the US pork and dairy farmer who will face retaliatory tariffs in Europe. The Washington Post had a great feature story on a sausage-making manufacturer in Ohio who will potentially lose millions of dollars b/c of Trumps steel tariffs. Here's an excerpt:

Bill Adler was invited last year to bid on a contract to make commercial sausage stuffers for a company that wanted to replace its Chinese supplier. The customer had just one non­negotiable demand: Match China’s price.

Adler, owner of metal-parts maker Stripmatic Products, thought he could. But even as he readied his proposal, talk of President Trump’s steel tariffs sent the price of Stripmatic’s main raw material soaring.

In April, with prices up nearly 50 percent from October and the first wave of tariffs in place, Adler’s bid failed. His costs were too high.

Today, instead of taking business from China, Adler worries about hanging onto the work he has. He hopes that the president’s tariffs are just a negotiating tactic.

Washing machines are another product in which trade tariffs, initially put in place to reduce competition from foreign competitors such as LG and Samsung, have backfired as those companies have continuously moved production to avoid tariffs, and ultimately moving production to the United States itself, complete with tax breaks and subsidies while creating US jobs. Here's a PBS video exploring if trade tariffs actually help US workers.

A looming trade war with China also stands to have the US losing billions, particular among US farmers as demonstrated in this clip from Vice News.

This is not only about trade. The rift at the G7 has broader implications for the liberal international order. The Trump administration has battled its allies on other issues including climate change (the US pulled out of the Paris Accords);  non-prolilferation (the US pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal). Some questioned whether Trump was looking after US or Russian interests as Trump called on the G7 to reinstate Russia as part of the G8. Max Boot headlined an article stating the US turned the G7 into the G6 vs. the G1.

In his PostEverything colum, Dan Drezner is circumspect about the possible long term damage of Trump's "bad-cop/bad-cop" approach to global affairs. Perhaps the most likely pathway linking Trump to a longer US withdrawal from the liberal order is increasing polarization in the US which promotes Trump's nationalist/anti-liberal policies. He ends the piece by stating. "Trump could get reelected. if that happens, the tombstone for the current order can safely be planted."

If there's any optimism, though, we need to remind ourselves that America has faced worse, and has tended to rebound from tumultuous periods (i.e. Civil War in the 1860s, the 1930s depression, riots of the 1960s). There is always recourse to head back to the political center - or return to some consensus. 

Strategic Narratives

I've been thinking a lot about foreign policy narratives - and in particular the rise of "restraint" and the decline of "liberal internationalism" as dominant narratives. Beyond U.S. foreign policy, however, one might consider global narratives. A piece in Foreign Affairs by Ian Bremmer and Joe Kennedy III gets at this:

Today, however, non-Western powers are gaining political and economic influence, and no longer feel that the global architecture created in the late 1940s fits their purposes and their ambitions. They’re right. But in response, the Trump administration seems content to let the old order collapse—and even help accelerate that process—while seeming unwilling to use American power to create a new and better one.

In a slightly different twist on how narratives influence foreign policy - more at the domestic than the grand strategy level -  CSBA published a piece on how authoritarian states have used information warfare as a means to alter narratives within domestic politics. The title is "Countering Comprehensive Coercion: Competitive Strategies Against Authoritarian Political Warfare."

And in a  piece by Aaron Friedberg on visions of international order, the author gives much more attention to ideas and ideology. Friedberg writes:

If they wish to respond effectively to these new realities, American and allied policymakers cannot afford to downplay the ideological dimension in their own strategy. Beijing’s obsessive desire to squelch dissent, block the inward flow of unfavourable news and discredit ‘so-called universal values’ bespeaks an insecurity that is, in itself, a form of strategic vulnerability. China’s rulers clearly believe the ideological realm to be a crucially important domain of competition, one that they would be only too happy to see the United States and the other Western nations ignore or abandon....


... Last but not least, the experience of the past century suggests that, if America’s leaders are serious about mobilising and sustaining the bureaucratic focus, domestic political support and economic resources necessary to wage a protracted strategic competition against a powerful and determined rival, they are going to have to cast the challenge, at least in part, in ideological terms. Geopolitical abstractions and economic statistics may be important, but historically what has moved and motivated the American people is a recognition that the principles on which their system is founded are under threat. There is an undeniable risk here of fear-mongering and overreaction, but at this point excessive caution and a continuing refusal to face facts may be an even greater danger. What is needed instead is a sober assessment of the challenge in all its dimensions, a clear articulation of the measures necessary to meet it, and leaders in Congress, the executive branch and the private sector who are capable of conveying both to the public.

The attention given to ideology leaves the door wide open for research on narratives.

North Korea Diplomacy in 2018 - A News Roundup

A roundup of some of the best analysis I’ve seen on North Korean diplomacy, the inter-Korea summit and the US-North Korea summit.

June 12, 2018 (Post-Summit Analysis)

• Victor and Sue Mi Terry provide their assessment of the summit. Victor also write an op-ed in the NY Times. Basically, as messy, idiosyncratic, and incomplete as the summit was, we're in the end still in a better place than before.
• My initial reactions were similar to Andrei Lankov's when I read the joint statement: is that it?
• Here's the idiotic propaganda video made by Trump about the choice North Korea can make. Definitely a must show for my students. To bad it fails to mention that the level of openness required to achieve such levels of investment in North Korea would jeopardize Kim's stronghold over his country. 
• Anna Fifield shares her notes, reflecting back a decade earlier when the NY Philharmonic visited North Korea, and the atmosphere of the summit today and whether the prospects for change are for real this time. 
  

May 30, 2018

·        Moon Jae-in's diplomatic acumen and delicately playing middle man in keeping US-NK summit alive.        

·     David Igantius on Trump's break-up letter and what the implications could have been. In retrospect, Trump was giving Kim a taste of his own medicine in walking away from talks. This shouldn't have been a complete surprise given the message coming from Trump days before the letter, and North's shifting tone and no-show to a meeting in Singapore. What's the meaning of this zig-zag approach to the Summit.

May 8, 2018

·        From Van Jackson on what Kim wants from Trump

·        Victor Cha on the success of the inter-Korea summit raising the stakes and expectations for US-North Korea meeting.

·        Anna Fifield on whether South Koreans believe peace talks with North Korea will be different this time

·        Victor Cha and Katrin Katz on The Right Way to Coerce North Korea. They take a pretty hardline stance, which some might criticize as unnecessarily escalating tensions.

·        Chung-in Moon, who advises the Moon Jae-in administration, with a much more optimistic view of the inter-Korea summit and the path to peace.

·        Moving away from diplomacy, Jung Pak, former CIA analyst and now at Brookings, offers a great profile of Kim Jong Un in her piece, The Education of Kim Jong Un