Month: December 2016

      Good Riddance to 2016

2016 won’t be missed.

For reasons why, a lengthy list.

Ali, Prince, and Bowie died.

Clinton lost; the Trumpster thrives.

 

ISIS killers took their toll.

The Broncos won the Super Bowl.

Climate change was heating up.

For once, we won the Ryder Cup.

 

Carnage in the Middle East.

We were not involved, at least.

Putin’s loose; that’s nothing new.

Turkey’s got a tyrant, too.

 

Brexit passed, but Renzi lost.

Europeans count the costs.

Thousands of new refugees.

Our leaders flail; the day not seized.

 

Obama leaves, and Trump will rule.

Who knew our voters were such fools?

A trade, or just a shooting war?

It’s certain life won’t be a bore.

 

2016 won’t be missed.

It’s hard to be an optimist.

We’ll soldier on; we have no choice.

Perhaps the truth will find its voice.

There was a column in the NYT a few days ago in which Ross Douthat suggested that the potential outcomes of the Trump Administration could be put on a graph, with the x-axis running from orthodox GOP positions to extreme populism, and the y-axis running from chaos to grim authoritarianism.  The concept reminded me of my proposed graphic on foreign policy (x-axis values/interests/; y-axis active/passive), so I naturally found the concept intriguing.

Just for grins, I worked out the most extreme cases on the Douthat matrix.  The quintessential authoritarian/populist would be Hitler.  Mussolini would be a populist/chaos figure.  Franco would be authoritarian/orthodox.  There are plenty of examples of failed right-wing dictators who were chaos/orthodox;  the most obvious one today would be Sisi.  No wonder Douthat hopes that Trump will wind up somewhere close to the middle of the graph.

For all of my initial enthusiasm for the matrix, I ultimately concluded that it wouldn’t work properly, even though the x-axis makes perfect sense.  The problem with the y-axis is that Trump isn’t likely to be either/or;  in the real world, you are likely to see both chaos in the decisionmaking process and periodic, but somewhat random, measures of authoritarianism in response to public reactions to his inevitable failures.  As time goes on, he may become more systematically authoritarian, but for now, his limited attention span and lack of policy agenda will prevent that from occurring.

It has long been a joke among Israeli politicians that they gladly accept American money and support, while ignoring our advice.  Bibi Netanyahu has taken this approach to a new level, however;  he clearly believes that he has a right, not merely to take our support for granted, but to tell our government what to do. That is why I invariably wind up shouting at the TV set any time he makes an appearance.

Even Putin doesn’t think he has a right to boss us around.  Coldly screw us over, yes, but not tell us what to do.

And so, there can be no doubt that Bibi has earned his award.  He’ll find it difficult to keep it, however;  Trump will be President in three weeks.

In the long run, will Trump find this kind of hauteur acceptable?  Only time will tell.

Donald Trump is working late in Versailles-in-the-Sky when he is suddenly felled by a great flash of light.  He starts to pick himself up.

God:  You may rise.

DT:  Who the hell are you?

God:  God, of course.  Who else could do that to you?

DT:  Around here, I’m the only god.

God:  I’m afraid you were wrong about that.  Do you know why I’m here?

DT:  Is this about the bathroom thing?  I’m going to fix that when I take office, you know.

God:  I’m here to tell you that you’re my instrument.

DT:  No, you’re my instrument.  I couldn’t have done it without all those evangelicals.

God:  Don’t  be impertinent.  Can you guess why I chose you?

DT:   Beats me.

God:  I’ve picked you to scourge America.

DT:  So the  evangelicals were right!  It is all about gay marriage!

God:  No, it’s about humility and tolerance.  You’re going to show them the errors of their ways.

DT:  How?

God:  Do you ever listen to yourself talk?

DT:  You must be one of those people who takes me literally, but not seriously.

God:  Where I come from, not being taken literally is called lying.  It violates a commandment.

DT:  You didn’t have to run for your job.

God:  You have a point there, although you were a liar long before you ran for office.

DT:  Can I ask you a question?

God:  I suppose so.

DT:  Will I go to heaven?

God:  Of course not.  You don’t believe anything I ever said.

DT:  But I’ve heard you’ll let anyone in, and the place is going to hell in a hand basket.  I can fix that and make heaven great again!

God:  That’s exactly why you can’t get in.  Anything else?

DT:  Is heaven as beautiful as Trump Tower?

God:  Are you kidding?  I have good taste.

DT:  But look at all the gold in here!

God:  You’re already in hell.  You just don’t know  it.

 

 

If you ask me, Joseph is the most underrated character in the Christmas story.  How would you feel if you were told that your virgin wife was carrying God’s child?  How much fun would you have being the stepfather to the son of God?  As far as we know, he did his duty without complaining, but does he get any credit?  When was the last time you saw a painting of him?  Never?  Thought so–it’s all about Mary.

It is 5:00 on December 24.  Bob Cratchit is working in his cubicle at Scrooge LLC when the boss, in “managing by walking around” mode, comes by.

BC:  Mr. Scrooge, sir.

S:  What is it (looks for nameplate on the cubicle) . . . Cratchit?

BC:  Can I please have tomorrow off, sir?

S:  Why?

BC:  Why, it’s Christmas, sir.

S:  Not in China, it isn’t.  How am I supposed to compete with those people and their low labor costs if I give people free time off?  As it is, Obama is killing me with taxes and regulations.

BC:  It’s just one day of the year, sir.  It’s important for me to be with my family.  I have a special needs child, you know.

Scrooge peers into the cubicle again and sees a photo of Tiny Tim.

S:  Is that him?

BC:  Yes, sir.

Scrooge hobbles around the office with an exaggerated limp.

BC:  He’s in really bad shape, sir.  Why are you making fun of him?

S:  I don’t have time for that political correctness crap.

BC:  You sound just like Donald Trump.

S:  Yes, and thank God he won!  He’s going to get rid of all of those taxes and regulations and make me–er, America–great again!

BC:  What about our health insurance?  Obamacare has been a lifesaver for Tiny Tim.

S:  He’ll get rid of that, too.  In this country you have to earn your health care.  The strong survive, and the weak die!   That’s the way it should be.

BC:  But what about Christmas?

S:  Oh, I suppose it would be a violation of some stupid federal regulation if I don’t give you the day off–at least as long as Obama’s still in office.  But you can work from home, so keep your phone on–I will send you some spreadsheets to analyze.

He thinks for a minute.

S:  Hey, there’s an idea!  You could be an independent contractor. . .

 

I’ll be on vacation until December 30, so posting will be sporadic at best until then.  Merry Christmas!

You probably recall the scene in “Key Largo” in which a world-weary, but courageous, protagonist played by Humphrey Bogart confronts the gangster Johnny Rocco, played by Edward G. Robinson.  The Bogart character asks the rhetorical question, “What does Rocco want?” and answers it himself:  “More.” Rocco agrees.

For some reason, that scene makes me think about Vladimir Putin.  The question for today, therefore, is what does Putin want?

On the domestic front, he wants three things:  to retain power; stability; and prosperity, in that order.  His political system is based on the government’s ultimate control of resources and legal privileges, so any effort to deregulate the economy and thereby increase growth is inconsistent with #1 and #2.

Outside of Russia’s borders, he wants to turn all of the countries that were part of the USSR into vassal states, and he wants Russia to be viewed universally as a world, not a regional, power, as the USSR was.

It is important to note what this list does not include.  Russia’s economy is about the size of Australia’s, so dominating the world, or even Europe, is out of the question.  Annexing the former Soviet republics and recreating the USSR would be far too risky and expensive; better to dominate them politically and economically without having to take responsibility for them.  Finally, there is no reason to believe that he takes his Christian conservative ideology particularly seriously;  it is just a weapon to use against his adversaries.

His assets in this battle are a friendly political system, a competent military, nuclear weapons, oil and gas resources, the stoicism of the Russian people, and a security apparatus that remembers the lessons of the Cold War.  His principal liabilities are the absence of Russian soft power and the economic weaknesses of his country, which, as Obama frequently points out, doesn’t sell anything that anyone wants to buy except petroleum products.

Based on his own criteria, he can count himself a success, even though the Russian economy is struggling, and his country is little loved abroad.  Is this “success” sustainable in the long run?  I would say not.

 

The OMB leader named Mick.

For the poor, he won’t care–not a lick.

If you’re rich, he’s the man.

Big tax cuts are the plan.

And the white working class has been tricked.

It has always been clear that the Obama Administration viewed a negotiated settlement as the only acceptable solution to the Syrian problem.  Negotiations were only likely to succeed if none of the parties had the ability to win a complete victory.  As a result, the objective was to maintain an acceptable balance of power, and to force a stalemate.

The concept wasn’t pretty, to be sure, but it made cold political sense.  The problem was that the Administration wasn’t willing to ratchet up its commitment to the rebels when the Russians intervened in force.  There were several legitimate reasons for that, including the lack of legal justification and domestic political support for our intervention, the fear that the rebels might not prove to be very “moderate,” and obvious concerns about the risks of a military conflict with the Russians.  The bottom line, however, is that, whatever the merits of the approach, the execution was flawed, and the outcome was a failure.

What can we learn from this experience?  If there is a lesson here, it is to avoid public overseas interventions when you know the other side is more motivated than you are to win.  The application of this to military support for Ukraine is obvious.

Yesterday’s NYT had a fairly lengthy article about limited experiments with the UBI, in Finland and elsewhere.  There is a pretty compelling theoretical argument in favor of the UBI;  the two countervailing questions are cost and the disincentive to work. The experiments will give us some real world data to see whether the concept can be successful.

This is exactly how the issue should be addressed.  I approve.

The demise of the TPP has dealt a severe blow to the effort to construct a rules-based system to either accommodate or deter China, depending on its behavior. Trump thinks rules are for suckers, anyway;  power is all that matters.  In light of that, how, if at all, does he propose to stop Chinese aggression in the South China Sea?

Trump’s principal concern about China is its trade surplus, so it may be safely assumed that he would be willing to swap Chinese predominance in its immediate neighborhood for a better deal on commercial issues.  Assuming, for purposes of argument, that such a deal cannot be made, here are his options:

1.  Indifference:  Trump could simply decide that East Asia is a far away place about which we know little, and permit the Chinese to convert it into a sphere of influence.  Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam, among others, would become Chinese vassal states.  Call it the Xi Doctrine.

2.  A Show of Force:  Perceiving that time is not on his side, Trump could order an attack on the lightly populated Chinese “islands” early in his administration. The objective would be to send a message of American military predominance without creating too great a risk of escalation.

3.  Encirclement, with Russian Assistance:  As part of a deal in which Putin is given a free hand in the former Soviet Union, Trump could call on the Russians to ratchet up tensions along the Chinese border, thereby relieving some of the pressure in the South China Sea.

Nixon and Kissinger reached out to China in the early 1970’s in order to create leverage with the Soviet Union.  This was known as “playing the China card.”  If Trump were to choose Option #3, he would be doing precisely the opposite.

 

Donald Trump doesn’t have enough of an attention span to want to run the country on a day-to-day basis.  He wants to be:  (a) the center of attention; (b) popular; (c) in charge of all negotiations of any consequence; and (d) the man who makes all of the really important decisions.  Everything else can and will be delegated.

Carrier is a good example of what we can expect over the next four years:  a very public intervention in the economy which created lots of favorable headlines, but ultimately accomplished less than met the eye.

 

The Twitter King

“Our firm is still struggling” said the big CEO.

“We have to move lots of jobs to Mexico.”

“The wall’s a distraction, created by clowns.”

TWEET, went the Trumpster, and then he backed down.

 

“We care very deeply about workers’ rights.

If you try to erode them, you’re in for a fight.

Opponents of unions are ignorant slobs.”

TWEET, went the Trumpster, and he lost his job.

 

She’s really pissed off by the big oil spill.

Of corporate malfeasance she’s had quite her fill.

She’s called out the system as blind and corrupt.

TWEET, went the Trumpster, and she shut up.

 

A cop shot his cousin three times in the back.

He thinks that it happened because he was black.

He called on the President to take a side.

TWEET, went the Trumpster, and he had to hide.

 

Some call this bullying–some call it worse.

For four years it seems that we’re probably cursed.

You can do lots of harm with a casual tweet.

I just wish he’d learn to be much more discreet.

I’m not old enough to hate Henry Kissinger.  His realism always seemed to me to be an island of sanity in a sea of imperial overstretch and misplaced idealism.  As a result, for me, his original sin was not Cambodia or Vietnam, but the Iraq War, for which his support was a clear violation of his principles.   Metternich would have known better.

There is an interview with Kissinger in the most recent edition of The Atlantic which largely focuses on Obama’s record with regard to China.  Kissinger gives Obama a B+ for his China policy, which seems fair to me, but he criticizes the President for lacking a long-term vision in the Far East, which does not.  It is reasonable to say that Obama’s approach to foreign affairs has been largely fact-driven and ad hoc, but his “pivot to Asia” was an exception to that.  He actually did have a long-term goal of creating a rules-driven economic and security framework in the Pacific which could either accommodate or thwart the rise of China, depending on the behavior of the Chinese.  The cornerstone of that approach was the TPP.

Now, with the election of Trump, this approach is in ruins.  More on that in a subsequent post.

 

 

 

Given Trump’s authoritarian tendencies, it is virtually a given that he will attempt to stretch his legal powers to the maximum extent possible.  When that happens, the first line of defense will be the federal judiciary.

You can expect to see plenty of litigation filed in District Courts in blue states. Many of the judges in these areas will be Obama appointees, and Trump cannot fire them.  The outcomes will depend on the facts and the legal issues, of course, but in general, I would anticipate that Trump’s won/loss record won’t be very good.

How will the man on golf cart react to adverse court orders?  Will he obey or ignore them?  Based on his behavior relative to the judiciary to date, it’s hard to be very optimistic on this point.