Trump’s National Security Strategy Is a Farce

Roger Cohen

The Trump Administration has put out its new national security strategy. This is a farce. On any one issue, President Trump and his team have several contradictory positions. That’s what happens when your priority as president is to use foreign policy to throw red meat to your base while other cabinet members are scrambling to stop Armageddon.

“It’s impossible to know what the United States position is on any number of subjects,” a European ambassador told me last week. “We could go sleepwalking into a war.”

Let’s start with North Korea, whose small but growing nuclear arsenal is overseen by Kim Jong-un, a leader as volatile as Trump. Last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the Trump Administration’s policy toward North Korea is “really quite clear.” He said, “We’re ready to talk anytime North Korea would like to talk, and we’re ready to have the first meeting without precondition.” That was Tuesday at the Atlantic Council. By Friday, at the United Nations, Tillerson was setting conditions.

North Korea must cease “threatening behavior” before talks can begin; it must “earn its way back to the table;” and pressure will “continue until denuclearization is achieved.”

Denuclearization is not going to happen in the real world. If that’s the condition, there will be no talks. As for Trump, he has said Tillerson is “wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man.” He has warned that the United States is “locked and loaded.” He has never embraced talks without preconditions, favored by France, Britain and sometimes Tillerson.

Clear enough already?

Oh, I should add that Nikki Haley, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, was not present when Tillerson spoke. Great optics there: Haley and Tillerson are known to be at loggerheads, with the secretary of state (regarded by some as a dead man walking) suspecting Haley wants to succeed him.

Now, effective pressure on North Korea has three components: China, China and China. Trump’s new national security strategy identifies China as “a strategic competitor.” It suggests the United States will get tough on Chinese “cheating or economic aggression.”

Great timing there: Trump is asking President Xi Jinping to cut off crude oil exports to North Korea as his “strategy” lambasts China. Our president believes everyone will do his bidding because he says so. Hello! You want a favor? You don’t double down on confrontation.

I mentioned red meat: war with North Korea, tearing up the Iran nuclear deal, recognizing Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and promising to move the American embassy there some day — all this gets the blood up for Trump’s base. (Of course, words exceed action and appearance is all, as with everything in Trump’s world). I also mentioned Haley, who did not show up for Tillerson but put on quite a show over Iran the day before at a military base in Washington.

Before I get to the Haley show, involving some Iranian-made missiles “on loan from Saudi Arabia,” a little background on Iran is needed. The 2015 Iran nuclear deal sent the country’s nuclear program into reverse, guaranteed rigorous international inspections, and put the country much further from a bomb than it had been. In return, Iran got sanctions relief. The deal, concluded with the United States and five other world powers, is working. It was not intended to usher in an American-Iranian love-fest or realign Iranian policy in Syria. It was intended to stop Iran going nuclear. Tearing it up would be a colossal strategic error.

Tillerson recognizes this; he’s urged preservation of the deal. Trump calls it “the worst deal I’ve ever seen negotiated” and, in October, declined to recertify it. This kicked to Congress the issue of whether to reimpose sanctions within 60 days. It did not, and from what I hear the White House did not press for sanctions. (Remember, noise without action is Trump’s only discernible “national security strategy.”)

By mid-January, Trump has to decide whether to sign waivers on Iran sanctions. My guess is he will to avoid blowing up the deal. Meanwhile, the administration is reviewing whether to block Boeing’s agreed $20 billion sale of jetliners to Iran. So what’s the policy here? Show implacable hostility to Iran, possibly short of destroying the deal, barring a mishap.

Clear enough, already?

Enter Haley with her Iranian missiles of dubious provenance demonstrating no provable infringement of international law. What a performance! “Absolutely terrifying,” she declared, before saying that “the nuclear deal has done nothing to moderate the regime’s behavior in other areas.” It was not supposed to do that.

Iran has a nasty regime that does despicable things from time to time. It also has a substantial moderate wing, headed by President Hassan Rouhani. Moderates have been reinforced by the nuclear deal. The best way to lock in hard-liners for the next two decades would be to tear it up.

On North Korea and Iran, on Israel-Palestine and Syria and Saudi Arabia-Qatar, the Trump administration is all over the place. As Tillerson noted last week, it has no “wins” in diplomacy. That’s not surprising. It also has no national security strategy. It has outbursts.