Tag: North Korea

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The Donald Trump Negotiations Academy

Trump’s playbook involves doing essentially the opposite of what American and Israeli negotiators have been doing for the past 30 years.

We didn’t learn this week whether North Korea will give up its nuclear weapons. Only time will tell.

But we did learn that US President Donald Trump knows how to negotiate.

All of the negotiations experts insist the opposite is true. “How could they agree to a presidential summit without first guaranteeing its end product?” they sigh, knowingly.

“Trump’s showmanship is dangerous and counterproductive,” they sneer.

“At the end of the day, for this to work, Trump will have to copy Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran,” they insist.

Dennis Ross, who mediated the negotiations between Israel and the PLO that led directly to the largest Palestinian terrorism campaign against Israel in history, and Wendy Sherman, who negotiated Bill Clinton’s horrible nuclear deal with North Korea in 1994 and Obama’s disastrous nuclear deal with Iran in 2015, as well as all their esteemed colleagues have taken up their pens and stood before the cameras and clucked about how Trump’s Singapore show is amateur hour.

But what we actually saw in Singapore, for the first time since Ronald Reagan went to Reykjavik, was a US president who actually knew how to negotiate with America’s enemies.

Indeed, Singapore was the first time a Western leader from any nation has gotten the better of his opponent at the negotiating table.

There are three dangers inherent to the process of negotiating with enemies. And to understand how Trump succeeded where everyone since Reagan has failed, it is important to keep them in mind.

First, you have no guarantee that the other side will agree to a deal.

Trump can make the case for denuclearization to Kim. But he can’t make Kim agree to denuclearize.

Since the US has not defeated North Korea militarily, only Kim can decide whether to go along with Trump or not.

The first inherent danger of negotiating then, is that the other side walks away and – as PLO chief Yasser Arafat did in 2000 – chooses to make war instead of peace. Negotiations give credibility to the other side and may, as a consequence, make war a more attractive option for your opponent after a period of negotiations than it was when the talks began.

The last two dangers inherent to negotiations have to do with the actions of Western negotiators and leaders.

Democratically elected leaders have a greater tendency than dictators to become convinced that their political survival is dependent on their ability to deliver a deal. Once that happens, once a leader believes that the risk of failure is too great to accept, he becomes a hostage of the other side.

In 2000, then-prime minister Ehud Barak believed that his only chance of political survival was to convince Arafat to accept a peace deal with Israel. As a consequence, Barak stayed in the negotiations even after Arafat rejected his offer and tanked the Camp David summit in July. He remained in talks with Arafat and his deputies even after they launched the most murderous terror war Israel had ever seen.

The third danger inherent to negotiating with your enemy is related to the second danger. If a leader believes his future depends on getting a deal, the likelihood that he will accept a terrible deal skyrockets.

Obama made reaching a nuclear deal with Iran the chief aim of his second term. To achieve this goal, Obama abandoned every redline he set for himself. He let Iran continue enriching uranium.

He made no demand that Tehran curtail its ballistic missile development. He agreed to gut the inspections regime to the point of meaninglessness. And so on down the line.

Obama was so averse to coming home empty- handed that he agreed to a deal that far from blocking Iran’s path to a nuclear arsenal, paved Iran’s path to a nuclear arsenal. And he threw in $150 billion in sanctions relief to pay for Iran’s efforts to achieve regional hegemony as a sweetener.

With these risks in mind, we turn to the Singapore Summit. Trump’s playbook involves doing essentially the opposite of what American and Israeli negotiators have been doing for the past 30 years.

Five lessons stand out.

1. Don’t make light of your counterpart’s failings, play them up.

For decades, Israeli negotiators praised Arafat as a man of courage and Abbas as a moderate. Obama and his team praised Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as a moderate. By praising their opponents, the Israelis and Americans justified making concessions to their counterparts, without requiring them to reciprocate. In other words, Israeli and US negotiators put the burden to prove good intentions on themselves, rather than their opponents, who actually had no credibility at all.

Trump took the opposite approach. After North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile last July, Trump called Kim “Little Rocket Man” and a “madman.”



By polarizing Kim and blaming him for the growing danger to US national security, Trump made the case that Kim had to prove his good intentions to Trump, not the other way around, as a precondition for negotiations. Kim was required to release three American hostages and blow up his nuclear test site.

He was the one who needed to prove his credibility. Not Trump.

2. Intimidate, don’t woo, your opponent’s friends.

Trump’s three predecessors all begged the Chinese to rein in the North Koreans. In doing so, Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama handed all the leverage to Beijing. To curb North Korea even temporarily, the Chinese demanded continuous US concessions, and they received them.

Trump on the other hand, threatened China. He linked US-China trade deals to Chinese assistance in curtailing North Korean threats and aggression and agreeing to a US goal of denuclearizing China’s client state.

To prove his seriousness, Trump managed to lob 58 missiles at Syrian targets in retaliation for Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons while he was eating dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping at his golf club in Florida.

Trump’s linkage of US-China trade to North Korean denuclearization has paid off. Xi cut off North Korean coal exports to China and limited fuel shipments from China to North Korea. A month later, Kim announced he wanted to meet with his South Korean counterpart.

3. Make it easy for your side to walk away from the table and hard for the other side to jump ship.

Trump accomplished this goal through a series of moves. First, he and Defense Secretary James Mattis threatened to destroy North Korea. Second, Trump coupled the threats with the largest increase in defense spending in memory. Third, Trump has repeated, endlessly, that he has no idea whether talks with Kim will lead to an agreement, but he figures it’s worth a shot. Finally, after Kim insulted National Security Adviser John Bolton, Trump canceled the summit.

Not only did Trump’s polling numbers not suffer from canceling the summit, they improved. As for Kim, Trump’s nixing the summit taught him two lessons. First, he learned the price of failure.

Second, Kim learned that unlike his predecessors, Trump doesn’t fear walking away. Indeed, he’ll walk away over something that none of his counterparts would ever dream of jumping ship for. If Kim wants to negotiate with Trump, he will respect Trump’s choices.

4. Appoint hard-line negotiators.

Kim’s attack on Bolton was reasonable from his perspective. Ever since Clinton signed his failed nuclear deal with Kim’s father in 1994, Bolton has been the most outspoken critic of nuclear diplomacy with North Korea in Washington. Bolton opposed – rightly – every diplomatic initiative and agreement every administration adopted with Pyongyang. There is literally no one in Washington more skeptical of the chances that an agreement with North Korea will succeed than Bolton.

And there he was on Tuesday, sitting at the negotiating table in Singapore.

For the past generation, American and Israeli leaders engaging in negotiations with their enemies have given their opponents a say – indeed, they have routinely given them veto power – over the members of their negotiating teams. US and Israeli leaders used their team roster as yet another tool to appease the other side. This, while ignoring the concerns of their domestic constituencies.

Trump took the opposite approach. After setting up the talks in a manner that minimizes the cost of walking away from the table for him and maximizes the cost for Kim, he chose negotiators that would both minimize the chance of reaching a bad deal and assuage and encourage his constituents that he can be trusted. Both Trump’s supporters and detractors know that so long as Bolton is at the table, the chance of the US agreeing to a bad deal is fairly close to zero. Trump’s rising poll numbers and the fact that the majority of Americans support his negotiations with Kim show that his efforts have paid off politically.

5. Take control of the clock.

Reporters in Singapore were shocked when Trump informed them Tuesday afternoon that he and Kim were about to sign an “agreement.” But sure enough, shortly thereafter, they were shepherded into a grand hall for a formal signing ceremony.

A quick look at the “agreement” showed that there was really nothing there beyond platitudes.

Trump’s many critics were quick to take him to task for his “deal” because it was purely aspirational.

But they missed the point. The point wasn’t to reach a serious agreement. The point was to sign a piece of paper that said “Agreement” on it.

By signing the piece of paper, Trump took all time pressure off of himself and his team. They have their deal. He signed it. In a ceremony with a fancy fountain pen. They have all the time they need now to do what it takes to get Kim to cough up all of his nukes.

On the other hand, time is working against Kim.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday that the economic sanctions on North Korea will remain in place until after North Korea has denuclearized in a verifiable manner. In other words, assuming Kim cares about his economy and is in this for the money, Kim will want to reach a deal and implement it as quickly as possible.

Trump’s critics in the US ratcheted up their attacks against his summitry with Kim on Wednesday and Thursday. But everything they say just discredits them. Trump is only dealing with a nuclear armed North Korea because all of his predecessors enabled Pyongyang’s nuclear armament through feckless diplomacy. He’s only there to try a new approach because their old approach gave Kim the theoretical ability to nuke New York.

And now that he’s actually negotiating, it is clear that what they really fear is not that he will fail like they did. They fear that he will succeed, like only he – a loudmouthed real estate mogul and reality show star from Queens who couldn’t care less what they think of him and happened to write a book called The Art of the Deal – can do.

Originally Published in the Jerusalem Post.

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After North Korea Comes Iran

Prime Minister Netanyahu said the following after President Trump’s historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“I commend US President Donald Trump on the historic summit in Singapore. This is an important step in the effort to rid the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons.

President Trump has also taken a strong stand against Iran’s efforts to arm itself with nuclear weapons and against its aggression in the Middle East. This is already affecting the Iranian economy. President Trump’s policy is an important development for Israel, the region and the entire world.”

The outcome of the summit in Singapore has already drawn a warning from Iran to North Korea.

“We don’t know what type of person the North Korean leader is negotiating with. It is not clear that he would not cancel the agreement before returning home,” Iranian government spokesman Mohammad Bagher Nobakht was quoted as saying by IRNA new agency.

Nobakht questioned Trump’s credibility. “This man does not represent the American people, and they will surely distance themselves from him at the next elections,” he said.



As it stands, Trump has returned home and the deal appears to still be standing.  In fact Trump has said he wants a new “real” deal with Iran.

“I hope that, at the appropriate time, after the sanctions kick in — and they are brutal what we’ve put on Iran — I hope that they’re going to come back and negotiate a real deal because I’d love to be able to do that but right now it’s too soon to do that,” Trump said.

The real game behind this summit was two-fold.  The first was to denuclearize the Korean peninsula, which both China and the USA have a serious interest to do and the second and perhaps real reason why Trump and his team took this unprecedented step to meet with the North Korean dictator was to disconnect it from Iran.  This isolates the Islamist regime in Tehran.

Trump does not believe he can get anything out of the Ayatollah’s who are driven by Shiite messianic ideology.  Kim Jong Un, while a brutal dictator does not appear to have an issue with Western cultural entertainment.  Can we say Dennis Rodman?

However, the Ayatollahs, firmly believe their purpose is to bring the Mahdi and destroy the world.  No amount of basketball and hotels will change this.  Meaning, there is no real ability to create a personal connection between them and the Trump team.

So what is next?

Trump will continue to isolate the regime in Tehran and make it clear he intends to back Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the other Gulf allies.  He will also attempt to turn Russia against Iran by guaranteeing Putin that he will keep control of Western Syria in return for Putin backing Iran’s abandonment of Syria and allotting the Syrian Kurds their own state or let’s call it proto-state.

Why would Putin go for this?

He historically does not like or trust Iran and it may well be that Trump will also relax US opposition to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its growing control southeast Ukraine, otherwise known as the Donbass.

The USA will continue to isolate Iran militarily and economically. Will the regime in Tehran fold?  Probably not, but unlike North Korea, there is enough people in Iran that are educated and will eventually make it clear to their leaders that times up.

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Trump’s North Korea Strategy Is Terrifying Iran

Originally Published on Breitbart
The North Korean media reported Sunday that Syrian President Bashar Assad is due in Pyongyang for an official state visit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.

Much of the instant media commentary regarding the announcement claimed that it is nothing more than a testament to the deep, long-standing ties between the two isolated nations, whose rogue behavior has caused both to be shunned by the international community.

With the planned summit with President Donald Trump back on for June 12, Kim is about to score North Korea’s greatest diplomatic achievement since the hermit kingdom was established in the aftermath of the Korean armistice in 1952.

Last week, Kim received a visit from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who invited him to come to a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin later this year. Kim has had two meetings with South Korean President Moon Jae-In, and has had two meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping, in just the past three months.

Assad, for his part, just met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi on May 17. His forces and their Iranian/Hezbollah/Shiite militia allies have retaken the outskirts of Damascus, and so largely ensured the survival of his regime. Assad has made clear that his next moves will be to seize southern Syria along the Israeli and Jordanian border regions of Quneitra and Daraa from rebel forces. He also has his sights on the U.S.-allied Kurdish held areas in eastern Syria.

In other words, things are looking good for both men. Why would they risk their newly held credibility by meeting with one another? Kim will certainly score no points with Trump for meeting with the man the president referred to recently as “a monster.”

The answer, in a word, is: Iran.

In September 2007, the Israeli air force destroyed a nuclear reactor in Deir Azzour in Syria. The reactor was constructed by North Korea and paid for by Iran.

The Israeli operation placed Iran’s nuclear cooperation with North Korea in stark relief. Many Israeli officials viewed the Syrian reactor as an extension of the Iranian program. Iran constructed the Syrian reactor, they told reporters, as a means to replicate and expand its own capabilities.

According to an Israeli official who was intimately engaged in discussions with the Bush administration regarding the Syrian nuclear reactor both before and after the Israeli airstrike, rather than use the revelations of Iranian-North Korean nuclear cooperation to pressure Iran and North Korea to come clean about their collaborative efforts, and the extent of their nuclear cooperation, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sought to silence discussion of the issue.

Rice, who opposed the Israeli operation in Syria, was engaged at the time in nuclear talks with both Iran and North Korea. Rice was not interested in highlighting either regime’s role in building the Syrian reactor, because she apparently hoped to appease both.

Due to Rice’s efforts, little attention has been paid publicly to the issue of Iran’s nuclear ties to North Korea. But the fact that those ties exist is an undisputed fact.

Consequently, with North Korea apparently actively engaged in discussions of its nuclear program with Washington, the Iranian regime is likely in a state of panic about what Kim and his representatives are telling the Americans about their work with Iran.

And that is where Assad comes in.

If the North Korean media report of his planned visit is accurate, and if Assad soon shows up in Pyongyang, he won’t be there to show the world that he has friends, too.

Assad will be in Pyongyang as an emissary of the Iranian regime, which wants to find out what Kim is planning — and hopefully, coordinate policy with him before his June 12 meeting with Trump.

Iran’s apparent effort to coordinate its operations with its longtime partner, and its fear that North Korea may be in the process of selling out to the Americans, is not happening in a vacuum. The Trump administration is implementing an across-the-board strategy to isolate Iran from its economic and strategic partners.

In some cases, like Trump’s diplomacy with Pyongyang, and the decision to abandon the Iran nuclear deal, the U.S. is implementing its strategy directly. In other areas, the U.S. is using Israel to implement its strategy of isolating Iran.

If North Korea is Iran’s chief Asian partner, Assad and Putin are Tehran’s most important allies in the Middle East. Russia built Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor. Russia has sold advanced weapons systems to Iran. Since 2015, Russia has been Iran’s chief partner in preventing Assad’s defeat in Syria, and in winning back regions of Syria that rebel forces had successfully seized control over during Syria’s seven-year war.

But for the past several weeks, backed by air strikes against Iranian targets in Syria, Israel has been leading a diplomatic effort aimed at Putin to convince the Russian leader to attenuate, with the goal of ending his alliance with Iran in Syria. As Dore Gold, former director general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, outlined in a policy paper this week, Israel has been making the case to Putin that now that the Syrian war is petering out, with the Assad regime in control over wide expanses that were previously held by rebel forces, Iran’s plans and interests are no longer aligned with Russia.

Russia wants stability in Syria to ensure its continued control over the Tartus naval base and the Kheimnim air base near Latakia. Assad gave Moscow the bases in exchange for Moscow’s military assistance in saving his regime from destruction.

Iran, on the other hand, has made no attempt to hide the fact that now that the war is winding down, it expects to use its position in Syria, where it controls some 80,000 forces, to pivot to war against Israel. Israel has responded to Iran’s threats by attacking Iranian military positions in Syria. And Israel has also made clear that if it is forced to go to war against Iran in Syria, the government will order the Israel Defense Forces to destroy the Assad regime.

In other words, the Israelis are saying to the Russians: If you do not rein in Iran in a serious way, and block the chance of war, the Assad regime that gave you your port and air base will disappear, and you will need to hope that the next regime, whatever it is, will let you keep the bases. In giving full backing to Israel’s military operations in Syria, the Trump administration has signaled to Moscow that the U.S. will back Israel in the event of such a war.



Understanding that Israel is coordinating all of its actions with the Trump administration, Russia has given partial support to Israel’s position. Over the past two weeks, Putin and Lavrov have made a series of statements calling for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Syria, and stating explicitly that Russia expects Iranian-controlled forces to withdraw from the border area with Israel. The border areas, the Russians have said, should be manned only by Syrian regime forces. Moreover, they have said, Russia is willing to deploy police forces to the border areas to ensure that no Iranian-controlled forces are deployed in those areas.

Israel, while thanking Russia for its recognition of Israel’s concerns, has insisted that Russia demand all Iranian-controlled forces withdraw from Syria. The U.S. backs that demand, which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated explicitly during his speech on the administration’s Iran policy at the Heritage Foundation last week.

So far, there is ample evidence that Russia is not speaking with one voice on Iran. On the one hand, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights announced Wednesday that Iranian and Hezbollah forces were preparing to withdraw from the border area with Israel.

On the other hand, while insisting that all Iranian-controlled forces abandon the border zones with Israel, the Russians are also telling Assad that as the “sovereign” in Syria, he has the power to decide whether foreign forces will operate in the country and where they will deploy. Shortly after Putin called for all foreign forces to withdraw from Syria, Russian and Iranian forces jointly constructed 17 fixed military posts around Idlib province.

And perhaps most damningly, on Thursday, Israel’s Hadashot news channel reported that Hezbollah forces along the border with Israel were sighted donning Syrian military uniforms.

But whether Putin is lying or telling the truth about his attenuation of his ties with Tehran, what is clear enough is that Russia’s warm embrace of Israel, including Putin’s decision not to block Israel’s air assaults against Iran’s military assets in Syria, is setting off alarm bells in Tehran.

Whereas a year ago, the Iranians believed their alliance with Putin was stable, today they are forced to worry that he will stab them in the back to improve his relations with Washington. And now, with Putin making at least an artificial separation between Syrian regime forces and Iranian-controlled Shiite forces, the Iranians also need to worry, if only at the margins, that Assad may feel he needs to distance himself from his Iranian sponsors.

The U.S., for its part, is doing everything it can both to reinforce this Iranian paranoia and to prod Moscow away from Tehran. The administration is working both indirectly, through Israel, and directly, through discussions of a summit between Trump and Putin.

It is far too early to know if the Trump administration’s strategy for isolating Iran and destabilizing its alliances will be successful. But both the announcement of Assad’s planned visit to Pyongyang, and the noises the Russians are making on Syria, indicate that Moscow is attenuating its ties with Tehran. Those are encouraging signs of progress.

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Trump Puts the Screws on North Korea and Iran

News today that President Trump decided to pull out of his much vaunted summit with North Korean despot Kim Jong Un sent shockwaves around the world.  US markets dipped on the news.  Once Trump pulled out of the JCPOA (aka Iran nuclear agreement) this should not have been a surprise to anyone.  There has been overwhelming evidence for some time now that Iran and North Korea have been working together.  Iran was essentially helping North Korea financially with all the oil cash it began to receive in order for North Korea to test Iranian advances in their nuclear program.

Ultimately Trump understands that a true hardline approach is needed with these actors.  As China threatens Taiwan and Iran moves towards resuming nuclear development in order to reach full breakout, North Korea’s true intentions never matched their photo ops.



With Israel and Jordan increasingly cornered by Iran and Hezbollah, the Trump administration sees war on the horizon.  In a situation with war against Iran, having North Korea play games with diplomacy is downright dangerous.  The Trump administration has decided to take a hardline against North Korea and thus be ready for the coming hot war on the verge of breaking out.

In the months to come watch for Iran to make moves against Israel by way of Hezbollah, while it directly pushes against Saudi Arabia.  Kim Jong Un is now embarrassed. With China threathening Taiwan and Iran on the move, North Korea has nothing holding it back from going all in.




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In a New Era of Peace, the US and Israel Can Resolve the Iran Problem

The recent summit between North Korea and South Korea was as much historic as it was surreal. After 65 years in a state of war, both leaders agreed to work together to ‘denuclearize’ the Korean peninsula, potentially heralding a ‘new era of peace’. Fortunately, it looks doubtful that a forecast by Rabbi Nachmani (23 years ago) of an end of days war initiated by North Korea will occur.

We learn from our sages that Moshe Rabbenu (Moses) was the transmitter of G‑d’s word, the Torah, which is known as truth. But, his brother Aaron HaCohen was focused on bringing peace between husband / wife, friends, nations, etc. He would even ‘bend the truth’ if it meant achieving constructive outcomes. We also learn that Avraham Avinu was known for his kindness whereas his son Yitzchak Avinu was known for strength / rigidness in following commandments. These concepts represent the different paths toward conflict resolution. While both paths were tried with the Koreas, we can optimistically assess that peace triumphed over truth and kindness over rigidity for the greater benefit of world civilization.

Conversely, tensions between Israel and Iran have risen to new heights and appear headed toward resolution via a different path. Israel has taken aggressive measures to thwart the Iranian presence in Syria. Over the weekend, Israel bombed a munitions facility in Syria, killing Iranians. Also, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu dramatically asserted earlier today that the Iranian government lied for years about its nuclear program which was not solely intended for peaceful purposes. Interestingly, it is unclear how Israel fared against the much-heralded Russian S-300 air defense system. Either Israel had a side agreement with Russia to hold back its use or Israel has developed a way to neutralize the capabilities of the system.

Iran Background

The Iranian regime can hardly be described as a flourishing democracy. The political dynamics pit a middle class who want less religious restrictions and more economic opportunity against a poorer class who are more religiously inclined. The leadership in Iran holds what amount to mock elections to give the population the illusion of democracy while the mullahs hold the power. Unfortunately, as of today, the divergent economic and religious interests in Iranian society are too wide to allow both sides to team up and overthrow the regime.

Although most people are familiar with the theocratic divide between Sunnis and Shiites, an even more relevant one is between Arabs and Persians. Deeply rooted prejudices exist as many Persians view Arabs as having a lower status in society. Iranians widely believe that their government should not spend money on Hamas or Hezbollah as they have absolutely no interest in the Arab Israeli conflict.

US – Israel Relations

President Trump was elected on a mandate to forge a new foreign policy direction away from building up other nations at the expense of US interests. During his inauguration, he stated the US would ‘seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world’ and ‘not seek to impose our way of life on anyone’. While the US will not initiate any kind of Iranian invasion via military force, it has strongly allied itself with Israel. The threat of annihilation to South Korea from North Korea was not acceptable and can be applied similarly. Israel should not be expected to live in fear of an Iran that intrudes towards its borders and funds terrorist groups. Regrettably, a new US administration has not swayed the mullahs attitude toward Israel or the US. Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, who is the commander of foreign operations for Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, even refused to open a letter from then CIA Director Mike Pompeo saying, ‘I will not take your letter nor read it and I have nothing to say to these people’.

As we approach the move of the US embassy to Jerusalem, we can conclude that President Trump has been a strong supporter of Israel. His latest moves elevating Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State and John Bolton as National Security Advisor, both very pro-Israel, reinforce this fact. While a deal maker by trade, President Trump does realize that one cannot negotiate with entities that are sworn to its destruction.

Conclusion

In summary, we have a US administration that strongly supports Israel lined up against a fanatical Iranian theocracy that does not act in the best interests of its citizens. While close monitoring of the Iranian power structure is required, there appear to be cracks in the regime. There was an unverified report over the weekend that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei may remove General Soleimani over differences between him and other commanders. Signs of a potential currency crisis have been evident in recent weeks. This would have dire consequences on the Iranian economy as further economic stress would likely cause businesses to ‘pack up and leave again’.

Generally, I do not put much thought in Israel’s security. As we know, it is a complete miracle that Israel exists as a nation. Israel has overcome insurmountable odds in numerous wars over thousands of years. There are long standing rumors that Israeli wars (of the past 70 years) are never taught at West Point. The mullahs in Iran will soon come to that realization. If the mullahs had an ounce of intelligence, they would realize what they are up against and change course. If Israel’s destruction was their true goal, their best move would be make peace with Israel and pray to Allah that the Jews forsake their G-d. Fortunately, that won’t happen any time soon.

Originally Posted in News With Chai.

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TRUMP’S ART OF THE DEAL IN NORTH KOREA, ISRAEL AND SYRIA

Understanding Trump’s America First foreign policy.

It’s really not that complicated.

But President Trump’s Syria strikes have reopened the debate over what defines his foreign policy. Is he an interventionist or an isolationist? Foreign policy experts claim that he’s making it up as he goes along.

But they’re not paying attention.

President Trump’s foreign policy has two consistent elements. From threatening Kim Jong-Un on Twitter to moving the embassy to Jerusalem to bombing Syria, he applies pressure and then he disengages.

Here’s how that works.

First, Trump pressures the most intransigent and hostile side in the conflict. Second, he divests the United States from the conflict leaving the relevant parties to find a way to work it out.

North Korea had spent decades using its nuclear program to bully its neighbors and the United States. Previous administrations had given the Communist dictatorship $1.3 billion in aid to keep it from developing its nuclear program. These bribes failed because they incentivized the nuclear program.

Nukes are the only thing keeping North Korea from being just another failed Communist dictatorship.

Instead, Trump called North Korea’s bluff. He ignored all the diplomatic advice and ridiculed its regime. He made it clear that the United States was not afraid of North Korean nukes. The experts shrieked. They warned that Kim Jong-Un wouldn’t take this Twitter abuse and we would be in for a nuclear war.

But the Norks folded.

The Communist regime held high level talks with the United States and South Korea. It’s reportedly planning to announce an official end to the war. That probably won’t amount to much in the long term, but it shifts more of the responsibility for the conflict away from the United States and to the Koreas.

Trump accomplished more with a few tweets than previous administrations had with billions of dollars.

An instinctive negotiator, Trump’s realpolitik genius lay not in ideology, but in grasping the core negotiating strategy of the enemy and then negating it by taking away its reason not to make a deal.

When Trump called North Korea’s bluff, its nuclear weapons program was transformed from an asset that it used to blackmail aid from its potential targets into a liability that could end with its destruction.

Trump did the same thing with Jerusalem.

The PLO had refused to make a deal with Israel because its constant refusals to negotiate allowed it to keep escalating its demands. The more it sabotaged negotiations, the better the offers became.

The PLO’s Palestinian Authority didn’t have nukes, but its weapon of choice was terrorism. And it had played the same game as North Korea for decades. It would begin negotiations, demand payoffs, then sabotage negotiations, threaten violence, and demand an even higher payoff for ending the violence.

The PLO/PA knew that it could get the best possible deal by not making a deal.

Just like North Korea, Trump cut the PLO down to size by negating its negotiating strategy. Instead of the deal getting better and better, Trump showed that it would get worse by taking Jerusalem off the table.

Previous administrations had rewarded the PLO/PA for its refusal to make a deal by sweetening the pot. Instead Trump threatened to take away Jerusalem, the biggest prize in the pot. And then he warned that the PLO would lose even more of its demands if the terrorist group continued to refuse to make a deal.

Unlike Clinton, Bush and Obama, Trump did not overcompensate for the US-Israel relationship by pressuring the Jewish State to make a deal with the PLO so as to seem like an “honest broker”. Instead he leveraged that relationship to move the United States away from the conflict.

Moving the embassy to Jerusalem sends the signal that the US-Israel relationship doesn’t depend on a deal with the PLO. That’s the opposite of the messages that Clinton, Bush and Obama had sent.

Their old failed diplomacy that made the US-Israel relationship dependent on a deal with the PLO had given the terrorists control over our foreign policy. The US and Israel were perversely forced into appeasing the terrorists of the PLO just to be able to maintain a relationship with each other.

Trump kicked the PLO out of the driver’s seat. And the terrorist group is becoming isolated.

Saudi Arabia and its allies are much more focused on Iran than the old proxy war against Israel. And, for the moment, that leaves the PLO with few allies. If it doesn’t make a deal, then the United States will rebuild its relationship with Israel around regional security issues. And the Saudis have signaled that they are willing to do the same thing. Then everyone else exits the conflict except Israel and the PLO.

Trump left it to the South Koreans to decide the conflict with North Korea. Ditto for Israel.

The United States will put forward proposals, but the long game is to get America out these conflicts. And Trump does that by turning the United States from an eager mediator to a bully with a big stick.

He made it clear to Kim Jong-Un that he would have a much easier time negotiating with South Korea than with America. And he’s made it equally clear to the PLO that it’s better off turning to Israel than to its allies in the State Department. The message is, “You don’t want to get the United States involved.”

Previous administrations believed that the United States had an integral role in resolving every conflict. President Trump’s America First policy seeks to limit our involvement in foreign conflicts without robbing us of our influence by making those interventions as decisive and abrasive as possible.

It breaks every rule of contemporary diplomacy. But it has plenty of historical precedents. And it works.

President Trump wants to get out of Syria. But he doesn’t want to hand Iran another win. And he doesn’t want to get the United States bogged down in another disastrous regional conflict.

So, just like in North Korea and Israel, he sent a decisive message of strength.

The strikes were a reminder that unlike his predecessor, he was not afraid of using force. But just as in North Korea and Israel, the show of strength was only a lever for disengaging from the conflict.

Instead, Trump wants to bring in an “Arab force” to stabilize parts of Syria. That would checkmate Iran, split Syria between the Shiites and Sunnis, and ‘Arabize’ the conflict while getting America out of it.

The threat of more strikes would give an Arab force credibility without an actual American commitment.

And the threat of a Sunni Arab force is meant to pressure Assad into making a deal that would limit Iran’s influence over Syria. If Assad wants to restore complete control over Syria, he’ll have to make a deal with the Sunnis inside or outside his country. And that will limit Iran’s influence and power in Syria.

The debates over chemical attacks were never the real issue. Keeping weapons like that out of the hands of terror-linked states like Syria is good policy. But there was a much bigger picture.

Iran took advantage of the Obama era to expand its power and influence. Trump wants to roll back Iranian expansionism while limiting American exposure to the conflict. Once again he’s using a show of strength to mobilize the local players into addressing the problem while keeping his future plans vague.

Assad’s biggest reason for refusing to make a deal was that Iran’s backing made his victory inevitable. Iran and Hezbollah had paid a high price for winning in Syria. But they were unquestionably winning. The only thing that could change that is direct American intervention. And Trump wants Assad to fear it.

Trump is offering Assad the rule of his country. But to get it, he has to dump his biggest partner.

When Trump came into office, the two bad options were arming the Sunni Jihadis or letting Iran’s Shiite Jihadis win. Instead Trump has come up with a third option. Either keep the war going or force a deal.

Either the conflict will drag on, but with minimal American involvement. Or Assad will sell out Iran.

None of these are ideal options. But there are no good options. Not in North Korea, Israel or Syria. The Norks and the PLO aren’t likely to reform. Syria, like Iraq, will stay divided between feuding Islamic sects. None of these problems will go away at the negotiating table. And Trump understands that.

Trump is too much of a dealmaker to believe in the unlimited promise of diplomatic agreements.  He knows that it takes leverage not just to make a deal, but to keep it in place. And he doesn’t believe that the United States can make a deal work when a key player really doesn’t want the deal to happen.

Trump’s Art of the International Deal identifies the roadblocks to previous agreements, breaks them down, puts the local players in the driver’s seat and then makes fixing the problem into their problem.

Obama’s people dubbed his failed diplomacy, “Smart Power”. Call Trump’s diplomacy, “Deal Power.”

Originally Published in FrontPageMag. 

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Is Trump Preparing to Take on Both North Korea and Iran at the Same Time?

President Donald Trump said the following in a Tweet Storm Saturday morning:

“Presidents and their administrations have been talking to North Korea for 25 years, agreements made and massive amounts of money paid hasn’t worked, agreements violated before the ink was dry, makings fools of U.S. negotiators. Sorry, but only one thing will work!”

While there maybe a desire to play this sort of verbage down, the prevailing opinion is that the comments portend to a direct conflict between North Korea and the USA coming very soon.

To complicate matters even more, rumors from within the White House make it clear that President Trump is seriously considering pulling out of the nuclear treaty with Iran. None of this is disconnected as it may seems. Most observers agree that Iran and North Korea are in nuclear symbiotic relationship where the latter develops weapons in exchange for needed money.

The above facts point to a two front war between the USA and Iran and North Korea at the same time. Considering that any conflict in this arena risks bringing in both China and Russia, the stakes are consitantly growing higher.  Trump and Washington are losing ground in both the Pacific and the Middle East as Saudi Arabia is making serious agreements  with Russia’s Putin.

In order to hold Saudi Arabia within the US network, a more robust policy is necessary against its arch-enemy Iran.  Given the fact that Russia appears to have taken large areas of the Middle East as well as funding the North Korean regime, Trump has no choice but to push back.

It appears that the USA is at a breaking point in terms of holding to a non-poractive foregin policy.  Trump is now willing to change that, but it could be too little, too late.

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NORTH KOREA’S ULTIMATUM TO AMERICA

What the US response will mean for stability in Asia and beyond.

The nuclear confrontation between the US and North Korea entered a critical phase Sunday with North Korea’s conduct of an underground test of a thermonuclear bomb.

If the previous round of this confrontation earlier this summer revolved around Pyongyang’s threat to attack the US territory of Guam, Sunday’s test, together with North Korea’s recent tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the continental US, was a direct threat to US cities.




In other words, the current confrontation isn’t about US superpower status in Asia, and the credibility of US deterrence or the capabilities of US military forces in the Pacific. The confrontation is now about the US’s ability to protect the lives of its citizens.

The distinction tells us a number of important things. All of them are alarming.

First, because this is about the lives of Americans, rather than allied populations like Japan and South Korea, the US cannot be diffident in its response to North Korea’s provocation. While attenuated during the Obama administration, the US’s position has always been that US military forces alone are responsible for guaranteeing the collective security of the American people.

Pyongyang is now directly threatening that security with hydrogen bombs. So if the Trump administration punts North Korea’s direct threat to attack US population centers with nuclear weapons to the UN Security Council, it will communicate profound weakness to its allies and adversaries alike.

Obviously, this limits the options that the Trump administration has. But it also clarifies the challenge it faces.

The second implication of North Korea’s test of their plutonium-based bomb is that the US’s security guarantees, which form the basis of its global power and its alliance system are on the verge of becoming completely discredited.

In an interview Sunday with Fox News’s Trish Regan, former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton was asked about the possible repercussions of a US military assault against North Korea for the security of South Korea.

Regan asked, “What are we risking though if we say we’re going to go in with strategic military strength?… Are we going to end up with so many people’s lives gone in South Korea, in Seoul because we make that move?” Bolton responded with brutal honesty.

“Let me ask you this: how do you feel about dead Americans?” In other words, Bolton said that under prevailing conditions, the US faces the painful choice between imperiling its own citizens and imperiling the citizens of an allied nation. And things will only get worse. Bolton warned that if North Korea’s nuclear threat is left unaddressed, US options will only become more problematic and limited in the years to come.

This then brings us to the third lesson of the current round of confrontation between the US and North Korea.

If you appease an enemy on behalf of an ally then you aren’t an ally.

And eventually your alliance become empty of all meaning.

For 25 years, three successive US administrations opted to turn a blind eye to North Korea’s nuclear program in large part out of concern for South Korea.

Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama all sought to appease North Korea’s aggressive nuclear adventurism because they didn’t believe they had a credible military option to deal with it.

In the 1980s, North Korea developed and deployed a conventional arsenal of bombs and artillery along the demilitarized zone capable of vaporizing Seoul.

Any US military strike against North Korea’s nuclear installation it was and continues to be argued, would cause the destruction of Seoul and the murder of millions of South Koreans.

So US efforts to appease Pyongyang on behalf of Seoul emptied the US-South Korean alliance of meaning. The US can only serve as the protector of its allies, and so assert its great power status in the Pacific and worldwide, if it prevents its allies from being held hostage by its enemies.

And now, not only does the US lack a clear means of defending South Korea, and Japan, America itself is threatened by the criminal regime it demurred from effectively confronting.

Regardless of the means US President Donald Trump decides to use to respond to North Korea’s provocative actions and threats to America’s national security, given the nature of the situation, it is clear that the balance of forces on the ground cannot and will not remain as they have been.

If the US strikes North Korea in a credible manner and successfully diminishes its capacity to physically threaten the US, America will have taken the first step towards rebuilding its alliances in Asia.

On the other hand, if the current round of hostilities does not end with a significant reduction of North Korea’s offensive capabilities, either against the US or its allies, then the US will be hard pressed to maintain its posture as a Pacific power. So long as Pyongyang has the ability to directly threaten the US and its allies, US strategic credibility in East Asia will be shattered.

This then brings us to China.

China has been the main beneficiary of North Korea’s conventional and nuclear aggression and brinksmanship.

This state of affairs was laid bare in a critical way last month.

In mid-August, Trump’s then chief strategist Steve Bannon was preparing a speech Trump was set to deliver that would have effectively declared a trade war against China in retaliation for its predatory trade practices against US companies and technology. The speech was placed in the deep freeze – and Bannon was forced to resign his position – when North Korea threatened to attack the US territory of Guam with nuclear weapons. The US, Trump’s other senior advisers argued, couldn’t declare a trade war against China when it needed China’s help to restrain North Korea.

So by enabling North Korea’s aggression against the US and its allies, China has created a situation where the US has become neutralized as a strategic competitor.

Rather than advance its bilateral interests – like curbing China’s naval aggression in the South China Sea – in its contacts with China, the US is forced into the position of supplicant, begging China to restrain North Korea in order to avert war.

If the US does not act to significantly downgrade North Korea’s offensive capabilities now, when its own territory is being threatened, it is difficult to see how the US will be able to develop an effective strategy for coping with China’s rise as an economic and strategic rival in Asia and beyond. That is, the US’s actions now in response to North Korea’s threat to its national security will determine whether or not the US will be in a position to develop and implement a wider strategy for maintaining its capacity to project its economic and military power in the Pacific in the near and long term.

Finally, part of the considerations that need to inform US action now involve what North Korea’s success in developing a nuclear arsenal under the noses of successive US administrations means for the future of nuclear proliferation.

In all likelihood, unless the North Korean nuclear arsenal is obliterated, Pyongyang’s nuclear triumphalism will precipitate a spasm of nuclear proliferation in Asia and in the Middle East. The implications of this for the US and its allies will be far reaching.

Not only can Japan and South Korea be reasonably expected to develop nuclear arsenals. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and other inherently unstable Arab states can be expected to develop or purchase nuclear arsenals in response to concerns over North Korea and its ally Iran with its nuclear weapons program linked to Pyongyang’s.

In other words, if the US does not respond in a strategically profound way to Pyongyang now, it will not only lose its alliance system in Asia, it will see the rapid collapse of its alliance system and superpower status in the Middle East.

Israel, for one, will be imperiled by the sudden diffusion of nuclear power.

Monday morning, North Korea followed up its thermonuclear bomb test with a spate of threats to destroy the United States. These threats are deadly even if North Korea doesn’t attack the US with its nuclear weapons. If the US does not directly defeat North Korea in a clear-cut way now, its position as a superpower in Asia and worldwide will be destroyed and its ability to defend its own citizens will be called into question with increasing frequency and lethality.

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post. 

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Are Russia and China Purposely Setting Up a War Between the US and North Korea?

Russian President who is in China for the BRICS summit came out strongly today against increased sanctions and at the same time warned against revving up war rhetoric.




Putin who along with China seem to be supportive of doing something about North Korea’s regime, actually have proposed nothing concrete in dealing with the rogue nation.

“Ramping up military hysteria in such conditions is senseless; it’s a dead end,” Putin said at the BRICS summit. “It could lead to a global, planetary catastrophe and a huge loss of human life. There is no other way to solve the North Korean nuclear issue, save that of peaceful dialogue.”

The question remains that if Russia and China are truly interested in stopping North Korea, why are they not committed to shutting down Kim Jong Un’s oil supply. Doing so, would leave him about two weeks until his country would cease to function.

Goading America to Attack

The only explanation to the behavior of Russia and China is that they are purposely provoking a USA attack in order to create as much chaos as possible. For Russia, an America embroiled in an al out war with North Korea and probably China is an America less focued on Putin’s advancement across Eastern Europe or even his consolidation of forces in Syria.

For China, its economic and military strength has grown to the point of igniting a push back by the US Security State. Any sort of chaos allows China to continue to move into the Middle East while at the same time sucking even more money out of the over taxed USA.

The challenge for both of these countries is containing the chaos once it starts.  As the USA learned through its creation of ISIS, chaos might be useful for shortwhile, but uncontrolled it can bite its own creator. With Russia and China now leaving little room for a diplomatic solution, America and its allies can ill afford to allow Kim Jong Un to shoot off an ICBM loaded with an H-Bomb Eastward.  Furthermore, if his threats of setting of an EMP are credible, Trump has little time to waste maneuvering with Russia and China.

Worse than the above, North Korea can now sell nuclear weapons direct to Iran or Syria whose militaries sit on Israel’s Northern border under Russian protection.

The argument to hold off striking North Korea because many people will die has now been proven untenable, since everyday Trump waits increases the amount of potential casualties.  With South Korea and Japan pining to remilitarize, a teetering American republic cannot waste time playing chicken with China and Russia, but rather should arm its allies in the region with the means to strike hard at their adversary in the North.

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BREAKING: North Korea Fires Ballistic Missile Over Japan as Iran Preps for Striking Israel

“We assess North Korea conducted a missile launch within the last 90 minutes. We can confirm that the missile launched by North Korea flew over Japan,” Pentagon said in a statement a few hours ago.

With the above words, the world has entered into unchartered territory.  South Korea reports that its military has raised it alert level, while Japanes Prime Minister Abe warned his citizens to take the proper safety precautions. Ultimately the three ballistic missiles that flew over Japan have now pushed the likelihood of a major military confrontation between the USA and North Korea to a high probability.

This of course has come at the same time that it has become clear that Iran is now in position to strike Israel from both Lebanon and Syria, effectively choking Israel’s North.

As we have noted numerous times, both North Korea and Iran have a symbiotic relationship where one supplies the other with money while the other develops ballistic missiles and ultimately nuclear weapons.

As chaos seems be the new norm, the VIX (Voltility Index) which essentially is the markets measurement for global chaos skyrocketed.

And if markets are an indications of where things are going this tells us everything:

Most observers believe President Trump will now have no choice but to strike North Korea in some manner.  Of course we know that the Chinese will step in at that point.

Iran will not stand on the sidelines while its partner is attacked and should be expected to strike on Israel and the Golan.

These three missiles now place the world at a crossroads between the stability of the old order and the chaos that comes right before a new world.

All eyes are now on Trump.