President Donald Trump has withdrawn the United States from the nuclear agreement his predecessor, Barack Obama, negotiated with Iran in 2015.
All the other parties — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia — want to keep the deal in place. Trump’s only allies on the issue are the Arab Gulf states and Israel, which consider Iran a regional threat. (more…)
President Donald Trump is expected to announce today that he will pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, despite pleas from allies to remain in it.
The 2015 agreement between Iran and world powers lifted economic sanctions on the country in return for strict controls on its nuclear program. (more…)
Stephen Walt argues in Foreign Policy that the diplomatic crisis around the Iran nuclear deal shows European leaders don’t know how to handle an American bully:
[I]nstead of getting tough with Trump and warning him that Europe would both stick to the deal and defy any subsequent US effort to impose secondary sanctions on them, [France, Germany and the United Kingdom] chose to mollify and flatter Trump instead.
It seems to no avail.
It pains me to admit it, but Walt has a point:
[T]he European response to Trump shows how successfully the United States has tamed and subordinated the former great powers that once dominated world politics. After seventy-plus years of letting Uncle Sam run the show, European leaders can barely think in strategic terms, let alone act in a tough-minded fashion when they are dealing with the United States.
I do think this is slowly changing. Trump is a wake-up call. The EU is rushing new trade agreements with Japan and Mexico. France is leading efforts to deepen European defense cooperation outside NATO. The Balts and Scandinavians are remilitarizing.
But deferring to America is a hard habit to kick. (more…)
Andrew Sullivan is always worth reading, but, in the case of his latest column, I do think Noah Smith has a point and Sullivan falls into the trap of conflating Brexit and Donald Trump voters with “real England” and “real America”.
This is a mistake conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic make. The small towns and countryside aren’t the “real” country. They’re half the country. Or, in the case of Trumpists, a third of the country. Their views deserve to be taken seriously, but so do those of big-city liberals.
Or as Smith puts it:
What we should NOT do is elevate one segment of the populace to Special Real American status, simply because they fit a certain classic stereotype or because they are more intolerant and angry than the rest.
Related to this discussion is Nabila Ramdani’s argument in UnHerd for retiring the label “Gaullist” in France. (Charles de Gaulle is to French politics what Ronald Reagan is to American conservatism.)
de Gaulle’s base consisted of white, Roman Catholic conservatives who had a quasi-mystical faith in their rural nation. There was no place in Gaullism for the millions of immigrants from France’s former colonies, nor did it adapt to globalization and the spread of Anglo-Saxon culture.
Emmanuel Macron’s project is a belated attempt to reconcile these facets of modern France and it meets strong resistance in La France profonde. (more…)
It’s been a while.
As balances become clearer, life is better sorted and all that jazz, I find myself pulled, like the United States in the Middle East, back to the fray.
As it happens, I’ve found I can — and in some ways, must — do an update there and again on Geopolitics Made Super. The point of this blog remains the same — to take something in the headlines, something that is oft-Googled, and break it down to the basic geopolitical building blocks what creates behavior. If you want the hardcore angle, please do see my work over at Stratfor — who does not, by the way, represent or endorse what I write here. This remains a personal blog, in which I hope that those who stumble upon it are given the basics necessary to understand the world just beyond the headlines. The rest of you nerds who come by, I hope you have a good time.
So what have I been up to? Well, being part of the concerted push this week against the notion that we are going to fight World War III has been a big part of it.
We’re not. Not over Syria. I mean, it’s possible. But so is a meteor. So is the Second Coming. And since you probably don’t spend much time worrying about those, you shouldn’t worry about World War III either. But let’s delve into why. (more…)
European allies warned Donald Trump he could drive them into the arms of China and Russia if he decertified the Iran nuclear deal — and that is exactly what’s happening.
In a rare joint statement, the leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom reiterate their commitment to the 2015 agreement:
The nuclear deal was the culmination of thirteen years of diplomacy and was a major step toward ensuring that Iran’s nuclear program is not diverted for military purposes.
European foreign-policy coordinator Federica Mogherini is even more adamant:
The deal has prevented, continues to prevent and will continue to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Trump nevertheless refuses to confirm Iran’s compliance and has threatened to withdraw from the agreement unless it is somehow improved.
China and Russia, the other two signatories, have made common cause with the Europeans, virtually isolating the United States. Only Israel and the Arab Gulf states support Trump. (more…)
Count on Donald Trump to find a worse way than outright cancel the Iran nuclear deal.
The American president announced on Friday that he will no longer certify Iran’s compliance with the agreement but not withdraw from it either.
The compromise is unlikely to please Iran, which has kept its end of the bargain, nor other world powers, which want to keep the deal in place. (more…)
North Korea’s nuclear program is more advanced than Iran’s yet it is not the one that should keep Americans up at night, argues Adam Garfinkle, a foreign-policy expert.
President Donald Trump has threatened “fire and fury like the world has never seen” if North Korea continues to provoke the United States.
Garfinkle doesn’t share his sense of alarm. (more…)
By all accounts, Iran is complying with the 2015 multilateral agreement that curtailed its nuclear program. The country is giving full access to inspectors, who have found no violations.
The only person upset by this is Donald Trump.
The New York Times revealed earlier this month that the American president had only reluctantly certified Iran’s compliance with the deal.
Now the same newspaper reports that he has instructed his team to find a way to declare Iran noncompliant — whether it is or not.
Congress requires the president to certify every three months that Iran is meeting its obligations under the agreement. If Trump doesn’t, then lawmakers have sixty days to restore sanctions that were rescinded in 2015. (more…)
Donald Trump is finding out that tough talk doesn’t get you anywhere in the real world.
He tweeted in January, before taking office, that he would not allow North Korea to develop a nuclear weapon that could reach the United States.
As president, he pressured China to rein in the nuclear ambitions of its client state, threatening commercial reprisals if it didn’t.
Neither appears to have been impressed. (more…)
Donald Trump was caught unaware of a nuclear treaty with Russia on a recent phone call with Vladimir Putin, Reuters reports.
According to the news agency, the American president needed to consult with aides when Putin raised the possibility of extending the New START agreement that came into force in 2010.
Once informed about the treaty, Trump told Putin it was a bad deal that favored Russia — and proceeded to discuss his own popularity.
Assuming the reporting is accurate — and Reuters cites two serving American officials and one former official with knowledge of the call — this raises several worries. (more…)
Nuclear disarmament is once again addling Britain’s Labour Party. Unfortunately, the debate is riddled with the all-too-common and internalized falsehood that nuclear arms are in themselves immoral and that the world would be better off without them.
Long an objective of the party’s new leader, Jeremy Corbyn, the proposal to unilaterally disarm has spurred resignation threats, divided the leadership and affiliated trade unions, and — more than any other issue — defined Corbyn’s shadow cabinet reshuffle earlier this month.
“Moralists” and “pragmatists” argue the respective merits of leading by example — disarming in accordance with the Nonproliferation Treaty — and taking a more measured approach, advocating disarmament and nonproliferation while maintaining a minimum deterrent.
The pragmatists are in the majority and they are, in turn, supported by the majority of voters. They begrudgingly accept that wielding such ghastly weapons is necessary in a still-dangerous world. This argument has carried the day in Britain since 1952, but it routinely surrenders the moral high ground to “ideal world” happy-talk. (more…)
When America’s secretary of state, John Kerry, made an unexpected trip to Geneva, Switzerland last weekend, there was hope in the international community that Iran and the world’s major powers were close to a nuclear deal. A successful agreement, however short-term, would have been seen as a big political victory for the Obama Administration at a time when its foreign policy credentials have been challenged by a host of shimmering conflicts abroad, from the civil war in Syria to a moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
It turned out the deal that many thought possible was beyond the grasp of negotiators last weekend. It is not exactly clear who scuttled the momentum. Some reports point to the French who appeared to insist on more restrictions. Others blame the Iranians for failing to budge on some of their core demands involving the right to enrich uranium.
In the long run, whoever was to blame matters little. What matters is what impact the failed talks will have on the diplomatic process that the Obama Administration is now so dearly invested in. (more…)
Britain’s inevitable renewal of the Trident II system, the sole weapon in its nuclear deterrent, is perhaps the most contentious issue in British defense policy.
At a time of budget cuts across nearly all government departments, the Ministry of Defense has faced difficult decisions. Among a myriad of cuts, it has phased out the Harrier and Nimrod aircraft without replacements; is in the process of slashing the numbers of serving personnel and has overseen the reduction of the Royal Navy to a similar size as maritime heavyweight Italy.
The commitment to Trident was never at risk, however, despite Liberal Democrat involvement in the coalition government. (more…)
