Tim Talks Politics - The Weekly Brief, May 11, 2018
The Weekly Brief - May 11, 2018
Deal or No Deal? No Deal
Questions, surprisingly, abound after the announcement by President Trump this week that he is withdrawing the US from the JCPOA, aka the Iran Deal. I say “surprisingly” because Trump has been clear for quite some time that he thinks this was/is a bad deal. The question then becomes “why now?” Well it depends on who you ask. There's the political interpretation, the geopolitical interpretation, the strategic interpretation, the nuclear interpretation, and many more, I’m sure.
So far most of the analysis I read has looked at the political interpretation. and it's been mostly partisan. Conservative thinkers, even ones who have been very critical of Trump, call it a “courageous” decision while more left-leaning writers have called it “dumb.” Some foreign policy practitioners have said that this undercuts US interests while others have claimed that this is the best time to force Iran back to negotiations. Where do we begin to make sense of any of it?
That's where we need to look at the strategic interpretation. If we were only looking at the world through a lens of America and its relationship with Iran and Europe (the John Kerry interpretation) then this certainly seems like an inexplicable policy action. However, it's arguably concern for other allies that contributed to Trump’s decision. Lawfare reports that the much ballyhooed Netanyahu slide deck on Iran's nuclear ambitions was derived from a Mossad intelligence op that was able to nab the bulk of Iranian nuclear documentation. You combine this with Iran ramping up missile attacks against northern Israel, Hezbollah elections win in Lebanon, and proxy war efforts against Morocco and a picture emerges of regional allies feeling under threat. And, of course, Saudi Arabia has not been happy with the deal since it was penned in 2015 and has consistently lobbied against it.
The deal certainly did not slow Iran down from destabilizing the region. Arguably, it made them abler since sanctions relief provided a sudden cash inflow, which even Iranians recognized was diverted towards foreign adventures.
As American sanctions snap back into place, Iran is already feeling the bite as its currency took a tumble against the dollar. This portends greater economic decline as France in particular now has to wrestle with the possibility of losing large business contracts with Iran. It's not just that Iran is losing money or economic growth as a result of America’s withdrawal. In the wake of signing the deal in 2015, European countries were quick to sign trade deals and business pacts with Iran so this now could negatively impact them, which is a big part of why Iran and Europe have a vested interest in keeping the deal going. The American withdrawal, however, now forces European countries to make a choice between Iran and the United States - a choice Iran’s mullah’s doubt will go in Iran’s favor. Der Spiegel seems to think that there is little reason to believe that Iran or Europe has very strong bargaining power in such a situation.
At the nuclear level, concerns are high that withdrawing from the deal will send the wrong signal to North Korea ahead of this month’s Trump-Kim summit. The concern is that North Korea won’t sign a deal they think America will withdraw from. Of course, this concern depends on the assumption that North Korea stands by its deals, which is demonstrably false.
An alternative interpretation suggests that withdrawing now, before the summit, actually makes strategic sense. If North Korea has been watching Iran, they've been seeing that sanctions relief actually enables greater destabilizing behavior or the ability to build up military forces. The US withdrawing thus sends a strong signal that such behavior is neither expected nor tolerated in the wake of the deal.
It is entirely too early to chart every possible outcome so I would caution against putting money on any hot take you hear in the news. One very specific take away that I think we can garner from the situation at the moment is the recognition that certain brands of presidential decision making and leadership do not last very long.
Lawfare outlines very specifically that this outcome is largely due to the fact that the deal brokered by the Obama administration does not have the force of law like many other deals do. like so many of Obama's executive orders that were quickly overturned in the early days of the Trump administration, this deal was open to the same possibility. While the consequences may be greater, positive or negative, it is a critical lesson in the recognition of decision-making in the American federal system. Presidential fiat just doesn't last very long.
Nuclear Diplomacy Coming to a Singapore Near You
If we go with the more strategic interpretation of America's withdrawal from the Iran deal, it suggests that the Trump administration is hard at work strengthening its bargaining hand ahead of the Kim-Trump summit. While Kim Jong Un received a large amount of praise for taking the diplomatic initiative, the events surrounding the Iran deal, along with Mike Pompeo’s visit securing the release of three US prisoners held by the North Korean government suggest a certain leveling of the playing field ahead of the summit, which is officially be held in Singapore. As it draws closer, it will become important to consider what other major stakeholders in the area of concern would like to see come out of any agreement. Like the Iran deal, any deal with North Korea is going to have to include other players, most notably China as North Korea's only ally.
China’s Great Power Growing Pains
Facing down a trade war, the first round of which the Hudson Institute believes the United States has won, China has to tread carefully as it considers a diplomatically and economically aggressive Trump administration. With a suspected laser attack on US airmen last week by China, along with additional missiles placed on islands in the South China Sea, China's stance on North Korea will be closely watched and leveraged by the US. This isn't to say that China is on the verge of a meltdown, they’re not, but it is important to consider the limitations of an increasingly authoritarian system.
Mapping America’s Conservative Media
As I've watched the reporting on the Iran deal internationally and the ongoing opprobrium directed towards the Trump administration domestically I've been increasingly interested in the emerging new voices in the media. Combine this with the public debate surrounding social media use, privacy and fake news, the future of American media seems to be in flux. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the wild west of the American conservative media.
The rise of Trump has led to a bifurcation in the conservative media between those who have support Trump and those whose publications and channels oppose Trump. Bifurcation creates openings for new voices to emerge in the conservative media space and the social media landscape has provided the platform for the newer younger faces to develop a following. However, with social media regulation an open question, it'll be interesting to see how future regulation might affect those new voices. As conservative media grows more diverse, the Atlantic provides a helpful reminder that distorted views of the right are not helpful in such a varied landscape.