Controlling Corona Meant South Korea’s Election was Not Dominated by It

This is a re-post of an essay I wrote for the Lowy Institute a few days ago about the recent South Korean legislative election.

This was written before the vote, so it is not a commentary on the results. My concern here instead was to illustrate that democracies can in fact run elections during this pandemic without some Wisconsin-style choice of vote-and-risk-corona or stay-home-and-forego-your-franchise. That was absurd, and the GOP’s disturbing willingness to make voting hard during a pandemic is an embarrassment bordering on authoritarianism. Here are some pics from when my wife went to vote; you can see that it was not some kind of death-trap.

For my thoughts on the results, try this and this. Basically, the right got buried and really needs to figure out what it stand for going forward besides anti-communism. Also, I am uncomfortable that this is yet another missed opportunity for a national referendum on President Moon Jae-In’s outreach to North Korea. Obviously, corona was unanticipated, but it pushed off the agenda the most important, revolutionary policy of the Moon government. That is unfortunate.

The full essay follows the jump:

Trump’s Impeachment is Good for US Foreign Policy

This essay is a local re-post of my essay for the Lowy Institute for this month.

In brief, I argue that Trump, for all his bluster and chaos, has not actually moved the US foreign policy consensus that much. So if he is impeached, we’ll likely get a ‘snap-back’ to more traditional liberal internationalist positions. That would broadly be a good thing, but for the over-interventionism of the traditional foreign policy community. Trump’s departure would mean the end of idiocy like undercutting the World Trade Organization or the Universal Postal Union, attacking US allies, throwing friends like the Kurds under the bus, and cozying up to dictators like Kim Jong Un.

Trump is too uninformed, impulsive, and erratic to represent any kind of meaningful critique of foreign policy liberalism. Some of his supporters try, but it’s most been in vain. There’s no coherent Trump Doctrine, just whatever suits his fancy or serves his political purposes at the time. Nor has Trump created an alternative foreign policy community to the current one. As POTUS, Trump is hugely influential in that community, but he’s leaving no lasting mark because he’s too incoherent and, well, dumb. So if he’s impeached, it’s back to what was, because there is no serious Trumpian alternative.

The full essay follows the jump:

GOP Post-Iraq Foreign Policy Incoherence: Still Making Belligerent, Aggressive Threats, but Unwilling to Follow Through

This is a local re-post of an essay I wrote a few weeks ago for the Lowy Institute. The argument is right there in the title: the GOP wants to keep talking like hyper-belligerent, threats-against-everyone neocons or Jacksonian America Firsters, but GOP voters don’t want anymore wars. So Trump’s rhetoric comes off hollow: he’s threatened war on North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, and Iran. But his voters are very opposed to more wars now. That is one of the ways Trump beat his GOP rivals. He denounced stupid wars. But GOP rhetoric hasn’t caught up to the base’s shift, and Trump is such a blowhard that he can’t help but make outlandish threats.

The result is that the GOP now sanctions everyone. It looks tough about avoids war. But in reality, GOP foreign policy looks increasingly incoherent. All threats and no follow through makes the US look like a paper tiger or just confused.

The full essay follows the jump:

Hanoi Fallout (2): Trump is Too Incompetent and Unprepared for these Open-Ended, High Stakes Summits. Time to Stop

This is a re-post of an essay I wrote for the Lowy Institute earlier this month.

Basically, Trump blew Hanoi, because he is lazy and poor negotiator. He has no empathy, so he cannot put himself in another’s shoes. Nor does he read, so he has no idea what the issues really are. He isn’t preparing for these meetings. He is throwing them together as he goes. So he walks into them unprepared with little fallback when he doesn’t get his way. Both Singapore and Hanoi failed along the same lines. Trump is 0-2, because he’s winging it.

This is classic Trump of course and shows yet again how badly suited for the office he is. A normal president would have at least had staff hammer out some basic agreement beforehand so that acrimony was not the only outcome. But not Trump. Negotiating to him is laying down ultimatums and sounding off on Twitter. And the response is predictably: the North Koreans are upset at the snub and threatening to restart testing.

For the life of me, I cannot understand the affection of Trump’s voters for such rank incompetence. He is so obviously in over his head, bungling a rare window of opportunity with NK, because he simply will not read, plan, or prepare like a normal professional. It’s amazing he hasn’t wandered into something genuinely catastrophic.

The full essay follows the jump:

My Thoughts on the US Midterm: Voting against Trump to Defend US Institutions and Keep the GOP from becoming the National Front

This essay is a re-post of a post I wrote for the Lowy Institute before the election explaining my vote against Donald Trump’s Republican party. This post went viral on Twitter; thank you.

One thing I wish I had emphasized more in retrospect is that Trump is turning the GOP into the National Front. I mention that in the essay, but the more I think about Trump’s impact on the Republicans, the more I think the National Front is the right model for where the GOP is going. The NF is a lot like Trump himself: semi-authoritarian, racist, gangsterish, flirting with anti-semitism. No wonder Bannon and Marine LePen get on so well.

I say all this as a deeply disaffected lifelong registered Republican. I voted a straight Democratic ticket this week just because of Trump’s threat to America’s institutions. I figure I will stay a registered Republican for the 2020 primary, to vote against Trump there. But if Trump wins re-election, I see no choice but to register as a Democrat. The GOP will be unrecognizable at that point – basically the American National Front by 2024. I imagine a lot of other center-right natsec types are probably thinking the same. This whole thing is so depressing, because the US actually needs a coherent center-right party as a part of checks-and-balances in a two-party system.

The full essay is after the jump…

Détente Divergence: the US-South Korean split on this Year’s Engagement with North Korea

This is a local re-post of my monthly op-ed for the Lowy Institute: here.

Trump is Moving the Overton Window on Striking North Korea to the Right

This is a local re-post of an essay I wrote for the Lowy Institute last month. Basically Trump is shifting the entire debate on responding to North Korea to the right.

Broadly, I would say there a two camps – hawks and doves – within the Korea analyst community. And each of those has a nested sub-division – moderates and ultras. The dove ultras are basically pro-Pyongyang. There aren’t too many of these folks left, no matter how mccarthyite the South Korean right gets. Then come the moderate doves who want engagement and the Sunshine Policy. On the right, the moderate hawks (I put myself here) are skeptical of engagement but accept trying, focusing more on sanctions and China. And the hawk ultras want to bomb the North.

Trump’s big impact on North Korea debate is to legitimize the hawk ultras and push the entire conversation their way, in the process writing the doves out of the conversation entirely debate. I have half-in-jest referred to this as the ‘Kelly Rule’ on Twitter. The American debate is increasingly a contest between bombers ultras, like John Bolton yesterday in the WSJ, vs panicked moderate doves and hawks forming a united front to prevent a war.

In social science language, Trump is pulling the Overton window toward strikes, making them more likely generally, even if they don’t happen this year. Trump is normalizing or legitimizing discussions of (the hugely risky) use of force against North Korea.

The full essay follows the jump…