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Mauldin discusses the brewing perfect storm and "The Rapid ‘Progress’ of Progressivism ." (See 1 and 1a below.)
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Tobin on "Bibi." (See 2 below.)
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Most wars, even ones that sound good, prove ineffective. Johnson's " War on Poverty" never measured up to its billing and actually proved, mostly, a costly failure. So the likelihood of the looming trade war.
Trump is correct to be concerned about China's pilfering of trade secrets and intellectual property. The Singapore based Broadcom's proposed acquisition of American based Qualcomm is a perfect example. Qualcomm is a powerhouse when it comes to the future development of 5G technology. Our government is rightly concerned China's Huawei Technology could gain an upper-hand in the coming 5G battle and the question is whether Broadcom's proposed acquisition of Qualcomm will allow China an edge. Thus, our government issued a CFIUS letter to investigate this proposed acquisition.
That said, Trump's tariffs can have a boomerang effect both economically and politically. As I have said, I am not gifted in understanding all the implications. I simply know one of the reasons of the "Hoover- Smoot Hawley Depression" related to trade embargoes and the world suffered a tragic Depression as a consequence.
Is Trump placing the world's economy on a slippery slope and is his effort the right solution to the problem of unfair trade and/or our trade imbalance? Time will tell. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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A Federal court will hold first-ever hearings on climate change science. https://tiny.iavian.net/lwr6
Can you trust any California Federal Judge to allow facts to dictate a decision or will the outcome be manipulated by the judge's ruling to reach his desired outcome?
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Erdogan was Obama's favorite leader but this turned out to be one more of his many mistakes. So what do we do about Turkey? (See 4 and 4a below.)
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Dick
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1)Hello again from the 2018 Strategic Investment Conference in San Diego.
A thrilling first day of presentations and panels has just concluded.
Patrick Cox, editor of Mauldin’s Transformational Technology Alert, and Karen Harris, managing director of Bain & Co’s Macro Trends Group, opened the show after lunch.
Cox said he sees a perfect storm brewing. The impact current anti-aging and life-extension research will have on society is almost something out of science fiction—but it’s actually happening. And it’s coming a lot sooner than most people think.
Although Millennials are about to outnumber Baby Boomers, the old-age dependency ratio—the number of retirees being supported by young workers—is rising. The young are paying the bills of the old. Will they rebel against this intergenerational problem?
Healthcare is driving growing budget deficits and medical costs. Regenerative medicine is the only answer, Cox said. He believes that this imperative will drive radical regulatory change and get these drugs and therapies to market far faster.
Biotech Panel
Eric Verdin, president and CEO of The Buck Institute for Research on Aging, showed how genes control lifespan. Research from the Buck Institute points to the impact of gene mutation on longevity. In his argument, he drew on lab results that produced a 35% life extension in mice.
Michael West, CEO of BioTime, talked about how the lion’s share of healthcare costs is spent fighting chronic diseases. In a lab setting, scientists have been able to reverse the aging process in cells. This cell process, said West, is now firmly under human control.
Aubrey de Grey, chief science officer of the SENS Research Foundation, parsed the critical differences between gerontology and geriatrics—things that happen throughout life versus those that happen at the end of life. Understanding the differences are crucial to how we approach the diseases of aging.
Niall Ferguson
Ferguson used the metaphor of an ancient city, and the difference between squares, where people meet, and towers, where the power resides.
For tech optimists, things did not go quite as they planned. An increasingly connected world should have led to an awesome world, but it didn’t work out that way. The power was not shifted to the “squares.”
The obvious question is, why should connecting the entire world make it a better place? Connectedness has instead disrupted political hierarchies. Without tools like Twitter, campaigns like Donald Trump’s would not have won. Social media made the difference.
Connectedness has created huge, monopolistic networks, Ferguson said, “and it will take a network to defeat a network.”
In the network battlefield, the winner takes all. The financial crisis was a global network crisis. In a hyper-connected world, is the status quo sustainable?
David McWilliams
Upheaval and change is not new; it happens all the time. McWilliams, economist and best-selling author, related this to the words of William Butler Yeats, who wrote that the center falls apart while the best people are silent, and the worst of society takes over.
None of the people paid to predict the future were right, said McWilliams. At the tipping points, when things are fragile, it is the unconventional thinker that sees the world clearly and holistically. We need unconventional thinkers today—but do we reward or punish them?
McWilliams drew a connection to the types of brains rewarded in academia. It is the linear thinkers that are encouraged, he stated. The result is that millions of people leave school feeling clever. They go into banking, the military, or become economists... and we employ them. Then we end up with group-think at the top of organizations.
The most conventional thinkers being economists is very dangerous at a time like today, he said.
Panel with Niall Ferguson, David McWilliams, and Our Own John Mauldin
When asked about volatility, Ferguson said he thinks the Fed is coming off of its role in volatility suppression.
McWilliams talked about the old link between monetary policy and inflation being broken. He sees the interplay of human behavior and economics as being out of sync.
Ferguson noted that people invested in financial models but had unexpected results. One example is QE, when the anticipated inflation did not happen.
The conversation moved to the populist backlash seen in the US and Europe, and Ferguson warned that it is not temporary—it will continue, but in unknown directions. Will it produce even more radical outcomes? Will it end like the final days of the Roman Empire?
It is extraordinarily hard to predict political outcomes. It introduces uncertainty into the process of solving problems—and looking to the historical models for help will not work...
1a)
The Rapid ‘Progress’ of Progressivism By Victor Davis Hanson
Posted By Ruth King
Not long ago I waited for a flight to board. The plane took off 45 minutes late. There were only two attendants to accommodate 11 passengers who had requested wheelchair assistance.
Such growing efforts to ensure that the physically challenged can easily fly are certainly welcome. But when our plane landed—late and in danger of causing many passengers to miss their connecting flights—most of the 11 wheelchair-bound passengers left their seats unassisted and hurried out. It was almost as if newfound concerns about making connections had somehow improved their health during the flight.
Two passengers had boarded with two dogs each. No doubt the airlines’ policy of allowing an occasional dog on a flight is understandable. But now planes are starting to sound and smell like kennels.
Special blue parking placards were initially a long-overdue effort to help the disabled. But these days, the definition of “disabled” has so expanded that a large percentage of the population can qualify for special parking privileges—or cheat in order to qualify.
In California, 26,000 disabled parking placards are currently issued to people over 100 years of age, even though state records list only about 8,000 living centenarians.
Current crises such as homelessness and illegal immigration did not start out as much of a public concern.
Originally, progressive politicians felt that cities should bend their vagrancy laws a bit to allow some of the poor to camp on the sidewalks. Bathroom and public health issues were considered minor, given the relatively small pool of so-called “street people.”
Few objected to illegal immigration in the 1960s and 1970s. Foreign nationals came unlawfully across the border in relatively small numbers—thousands, not millions. Fifty years ago, America was eager to assimilate even the few arrivals who arrived illegally. Not now. The melting pot gave way to the identity politics of the tribe that asks little integration of the newcomers.
Whether out of guilt or out of fear of being perceived as exclusionary by harder leftists, progressives cannot, or will not, draw realistic limits to illegal immigration or homelessness. Yet both cost the law-abiding public billions of dollars in social services, often at the expense of America’s poor.
This rapid spread of progressivism leads to an endless race for absolute equality and an erosion of prior rules. It also makes once-liberal positions seem passe, recasting those positions as dangerously reactionary.
In 2008, Barack Obama ran for president on a number of Bill Clinton’s centrist Democratic policies. Obama opposed gay marriage as contrary to his own Christian beliefs.
Obama supported increased security along the border with Mexico. As a senator, he had voted for a 2006 measure to create 700 miles of new fencing along the Mexican border.
But by the time Obama sought re-election in 2012, progressives were routinely labeling Obama’s positions on gay marriage and immigration as homophobic and nativist, respectively.
Twenty years ago, there was honest debate over global warming. Ten years ago, there was still honest debate over the effects of human-induced climate change. Five years ago, there was still honest debate over the cost-benefit analysis of dealing with the problem.
Not now. Anyone who doubts that there is an existential man-caused threat to the planet—requiring the radical and costly reconstruction of the global economy and society—is considered a “denier,” deserving of professional ostracism or worse.
In the eternal search for perfect justice and equality, what starts out as liberal can quickly end up as progressively absurd. The logic of equality of result, rather than equality of opportunity, demands that there is always one more group, one more grievance, one more complaint against the shrinking and overwhelmed majority.
The ancient Athenian philosopher Plato once made his megaphone Socrates lament that in ancient Athens’ nonstop search for perfect equality, soon even the horses would have to be accorded the same privileges as humans.
Socrates’ fantasy was an exaggeration intended as a reminder about the craziness of always-creeping mandated equality. Now it seems not far from the mainstream positions of animal-rights groups.
If we insist that the human experience is not tragic and cyclical, but instead must always bend on some predetermined arc to absolute equality and fairness, then unfortunate results must follow.
One, what is welcomed as progressive on Monday is derided as intolerable on Tuesday. The French and Russian revolutions went through several such cycles. After reformers had removed absolute rulers, the reformers were soon derided as too timid. Then came far more radical revolutionaries, who were in turn beheaded or shot as dangerous counter-revolutionaries.
Second, when rules and regulations are always watered down as too exclusionary, the descent to no rules is quite short. The ultimate destination is nihilism and chaos. We see that now in Venezuela and Cuba—and increasingly in California as well.
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2)
Not indispensable, but also not easily replaced
Netanyahu’s AIPAC speech is a reminder to his critics that his unique ability to rally the pro-Israel community and connect with the White House cannot be ignored.
For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s legion of critics, it was all just a big distraction from the main event. As far as they are concerned, Netanyahu’s trip to Washington, D.C., was just a break from reality. With new corruption charges being lodged against him by the police and with former staffers turning state’s evidence, the prime minister’s enemies are sure that the end of their nemesis is in sight. That’s why they are quick to dismiss his warm embrace by the Trump administration and the ecstatic reception he received at the annual AIPAC conference as nothing but theatrics that won’t help him escape the legal peril that seems to be inexorably closing in on him.
They may be right. The initial charges about Netanyahu taking cigars and champagne from rich friends, as well as his futile talks with a publisher about trying to get better media coverage, seem trivial and unlikely to ever result in a conviction. But the newer accusations about other alleged influence-peddling plots seem serious. More to the point, if the police are determined to criminalize every political transaction the premier or his wife has engaged in over the past nine years, it may be inevitable that sooner or later, they might discover something that will stick.
Nevertheless, we’re still a long way from Netanyahu being forced out. Whether he decides, as some think likely, to push for early elections to solidify his hold on office to better fend off legal challenges or simply tough it out until the end of his term in late 2019, the prime minister is looking to pose as the indispensable man of Israeli politics. The widespread belief that no one else on the current scene—either within the governing coalition or the opposition—with Netanyahu’s combination of security gravitas, economic expertise, diplomatic experience and political talent is the best argument for allowing him to stay in power as long as he can, in spite of the tremendous legal pressure being put on him.
Viewed from that perspective, Netanyahu’s trip to the United States was not a distraction. On the contrary, it was a key part of a strategy that seeks to convince Israelis to ignore the police charges and left-wing press howling for his blood, and to keep in place the only person capable of doing all that he can do in the way that he does it.
Is he right?
As a matter of principle, the answer must be no.
In a democracy, no single individual is indispensable—no matter how talented or special his or her attributes might be. Should Netanyahu be forced from office at some point in the next year or two, the Israeli state will not collapse. Nor will the U.S.-Israel alliance. Netanyahu’s successor will be cheered by delegates at future AIPAC conferences and will still be received cordially at the White House.
It might even be to Israel’s benefit, to some extent, since most of the U.S. foreign-policy establishment and media wrongly believe that Netanyahu’s toughness is a major obstacle to peace. Replacing him with someone less truculent and less widely despised would make it slightly easier to point out that the reason peace hasn’t been achieved is due to the Palestinians’ refusal to accept Israel’s legitimacy and end their century-long war on Zionism.
But, as Netanyahu demonstrated this week, there is still no one quite like him.
Netanyahu’s floorshow at the AIPAC conference can be dismissed as show biz and his rhetoric criticized for recycling the same arguments he’s been selling the world for the last 25 years. But no rival could have pulled off the same kind of tour de force speech that he did at AIPAC, as well as the many times before that he’s wowed the pro-Israel community and U.S. political establishment.
There’s more to statecraft than giving speeches, but Netanyahu’s ability to convey the case for Israel and against its foes in crisp, concise American English is unmatched in the history of his country. So is his knowledge of U.S. politics and its players, combined with resilience and charisma that have been so effective in rallying the pro-Israel community behind his policies.
Just like in Israel, not everyone in America loves Bibi. Jewish liberals regard him with suspicion and long for someone who, like the late Shimon Peres, will ply them with the sort of platitudes about coexistence and a bright future—without conflict—that they long to hear. Netanyahu’s hard-nosed evaluations of Palestinian intransigence and threats from Iran are firmly tethered to reality in a way that the left’s patent nostrums about the chances for peace are not; still, they will never win him the cheers of liberals and the mainstream media.
The person who succeeds Netanyahu will be hard-pressed to match his communication skills, his savvy or his willingness to tell hard truths to the world. As the less than scintillating but well-meaning performance of Zionist Union/Labor leader Avi Gabbay at this year’s AIPAC conference and the similarly lackluster presentations of Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid have shown, Netanyahu’s opponents lack the stature to represent the country at the same level. If the polls are to be believed, Israeli voters feel the same way since they seem prepared to give Netanyahu and his coalition another term in spite of the deluge of negative press he’s gotten over the corruption issues.
Netanyahu’s trip demonstrated that while anyone can be replaced, in his case, that’s going be a tough act to follow.
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3) The Man Behind Trump’s Embrace of Tariffs
Mr. Navarro was the campaign’s only PhD economist and had left a tenured position at the University of California, Irvine. Before Mr. Trump took office, he named Mr. Navarro to run a new National Trade Council, which was seen as being on a par with the NEC and the National Security Council.
3) The Man Behind Trump’s Embrace of Tariffs
Trade adviser was boxed in by rivals early in the administration, but he eventually won over a president who shared his views
By Bob Davis
WASHINGTON—For Peter Navarro, President Donald Trump’s trade guru, it’s been quite a turnaround.
Last spring, he was running the White House’s Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, an impressive-sounding group that consisted of himself and an aide in a single room in a building across the alley from the Oval Office. He couldn’t persuade the White House to hire him an administrative assistant, and he reported to the president through his rival, National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn.
The White House, the 68-year-old told some visitors, was like the bloody TV series “Game of Thrones,” and he was dodging arrows. The “deep state”—conservative lingo for the Washington bureaucracy—was trying to torpedo the president, he complained.
Now, Mr. Cohn has resigned. The president has embraced Mr. Navarro’s lobbying for heavy tariffs on steel and aluminum, and White House officials say he is in the running to replace Mr. Cohn, who fought against the tariffs. Next on the president’s trade agenda are possible sanctions on China for intellectual-property violations—a longtime goal of Mr. Navarro, who came to candidate Trump’s attention with his anti-Beijing books.
Mr. Navarro “has persistence, and that persistence has paid off in terms of rising up the ladder to a position of prominence,” says Michael Wessel, an adviser to the United Steelworkers.
During the presidential campaign, Mr. Navarro and billionaire investor Wilbur Ross, now the commerce secretary, put together Donald Trump’s trade and economic plan.
“The president—he’s the man who leads. He says, ‘I want to do this. How do we do it?’ ” Mr. Navarro says in an interview. “The way I help is figuring out how you might do it.”
Mr. Navarro was the campaign’s only PhD economist and had left a tenured position at the University of California, Irvine. Before Mr. Trump took office, he named Mr. Navarro to run a new National Trade Council, which was seen as being on a par with the NEC and the National Security Council.
George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen says Mr. Navarro’s early academic work, which focused on energy policy and charities, was good enough “to be published in respectable journals.” He says his work on China isn’t up to that same standard: “It’s a polemic.”
Mr. Navarro focused on China later in his career. In his book “Death by China,” Mr. Navarro mixed incendiary language—China is “turning into the planet’s most efficient assassin”—with what have become fairly mainstream recommendations. They included stopping Beijing from pressuring U.S. companies to transfer technology to their Chinese partners and blocking Chinese state-owned firms from buying U.S. companies. The administration is following that line.
Mr. Navarro also urged the U.S. to create a partnership with Europe, Japan “and other victims of China’s mercantilism” to sue China in the World Trade Organization. President Trump has eschewed such multilateralism. The proposed steel and aluminum tariffs would apply to many nations and have raised protests in Western nations and China, producing a kind of ad-hoc coalition against U.S. trade policy.
Early in his White House tenure, Mr. Navarro was boxed in. His National Trade Council—himself and his aide—busied itself trying to help individual companies with trade problems, not setting broad trade policy. Putting the best face on it, Mr. Navarro at the time called it a “SWAT team” approach.
His early appearances on Capitol Hill to explain trade policy didn’t go well. In a February session, he appeared unprepared to answer questions on specific trade issues posed by lawmakers, say Congressional aides. Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown said in a letter to Mr. Navarro he was “troubled” by what seemed to be the administration’s inattention to steel companies.
In April, the National Trade Council was disbanded and replaced by the less-grandiose sounding Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy—still Mr. Navarro and his aide. The rebranding effectively demoted him and confirmed that trade was being handled by Mr. Cohn’s NEC. He focused on strengthening the military’s industrial base and examining Buy-America provisions.
“I don’t worry about getting outmaneuvered,” Mr. Navarro said then. “I just worry about getting things done.”
He counted on what he considered a strong relationship with White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and said in an interview he sometimes met one-on-one with Mr. Trump. He kept pushing for tariffs, as part of the so-called nationalist wing of the White House that was pitted against the administration’s free traders, especially Mr. Cohn, say those involved with the discussions.
Early on, according to Mr. Navarro, the administration rejected an idea raised by trade economists that they try to work out a deal with China to curb the country’s vast steel and aluminum capacity—the source of the steel that floods global markets.
“Even if you were to come to a negotiated agreement today with China to reduce their overcapacity levels to levels which would basically allow a market price to emerge,” he says, “it would probably take five to eight years, and it would assume China would abide by that agreement, which is a stretch, given their history.”
Mr. Cohn slowed the push for tariffs, but in the end Mr. Navarro won out because his views meshed with the president’s. The president all along wanted tariffs, says Peter Morici, a University of Maryland economist who has long advocated a tougher U.S. trade policy. “That was Navarro’s position. It’s not that Navarro outmaneuvered anybody.”
In a sign of his rising stature, the White House dispatched Mr. Navarro to defend the tariffson three Sunday news shows last week.
Now he is being touted as possible chief of the NEC, which puts together broad economic policies.
Even his ideological allies have doubts about whether he is suited for the job. “He’s a polarizing figure,” says Mr. Morici. “He’s insensitive to people who don’t embrace his view. I can’t see him chairing a meeting with conflicting views and blending them.”
Mr. Navarro declined comment on a possible NEC role.
Next up on the president’s trade agenda are sanctions on Chinese trade—a Navarro favorite.
3a) How a Trade War Escalates
Europe retaliates against U.S. exports and Republican states.
By The Editorial Board
The European Union on Wednesday released its target list of retaliatory tariffs on American exports worth $3.5 billion if President Trump pushes ahead with his steel and aluminum tariffs. This is how Mr. Trump’s trade irruptions could imperil American exporters and become a destructive spiral.
The EU is acting with some restraint—for now—in crafting a narrow list of items on which to impose tariffs, including bourbon, orange juice, corn, ladders and motor boats. None are vital to European industry, but they are politically shrewd in targeting exports from states represented by Republicans on Capitol Hill. The point is to punish voters in states Mr. Trump carried in 2016 and Republicans running for re-election this year. Too bad Europe can’t impose a tariff on Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro, the architects of this fiasco.
The danger for the EU is that this will inspire Mr. Trump to indulge his schoolyard impulses and hit back at the EU again. “The European Union has been particularly tough on the United States. They make it almost impossible for us to do business with them,” Mr. Trump said at a White House presser with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven. He’s also threatened tariffs on European cars.
Since White House aide Gary Cohn soon won’t be around the White House to explain how unconnected to reality this is, we’ll try. It is not “almost impossible” for American companies to do business in Europe. The bilateral trading relationship between the U.S. and the combined EU states is the largest in the world. In 2016 American companies sold goods worth $270 billion in the EU and services worth $231 billion. America has a bilateral trade deficit in goods with the EU—$147 billion in 2016—but a services surplus of $55 billion.
The flip side of the trade deficit is a substantial flow of investment into the U.S. from Europe. Around half of new direct investment in America (measured as acquisition of an American firm, or creation or expansion of a subsidiary) came from Europe in 2016—nearly $200 billion.
Such investments, made over decades, supported roughly 4.7 million jobs of Americans employed directly by affiliates of European companies as of 2015, according to U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis data (counting all of Europe, including some countries that aren’t EU members). And that ignores Americans employed by companies that sell to those European affiliates, and those who work for U.S. firms that benefit from European investment in equity markets and so on. This is what economic “winning” looks like.
American leaders at least dating to George Marshall have understood that close economic ties between the U.S. and Europe are necessary to support the trans-Atlantic military alliance. Not coincidentally, the Continent’s most vigorously pro-trade politicians also tend to be its most pro-American. A perverse consequence of Mr. Trump’s trade wrangling is that he’s alienating them. That includes French President Emmanuel Macron, a rare European leader to eschew outright hostility to Mr. Trump.
There’s plenty of scope to improve the U.S.-EU trading relationship. One sore spot on both sides remains agricultural protectionism, often related to dubious safety concerns. Another is Europe’s treatment of American tech companies such as Microsoft , Amazon, Google and Apple on questionable antitrust and tax concerns.
Those and other issues are best addressed through negotiations rather than tariffs. Mr. Trump would better serve American workers and businesses by urging the EU to join him in dusting off stalled free-trade talks. If he persists instead in stoking a trade war with America’s most important strategic and economic partner, he and America will lose—and big.
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4) Erdoğan's Turkey has no Place in NATO
The West's self-imposed Pollyanna game over Turkey a decade or so ago seemed delusional to most Turks who knew the true nature of the Islamist politician lauded as a pro-reform, pro-West democrat. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, western leaders argued, would consolidate Turkey's democratic system, bring the country closer to its western allies and even win a historic membership in the European Union. Erdogan's Turkey would be a perfect bridge between western and Islamic civilizations, thus being a role model for less democratic Muslim nations
A decade later, obliviousness has turned into bitter feelings, but Pollyanna is still out there, all smiles. In the words of Fabrizio F. Luciolli, president of the Atlantic Treaty Organization: "Since sixty-five years [sic], a mutual commitment binds Turkey and NATO, which can hardly be scratched by contingent interests or frictions, or replaced by new strategic directions. In its dialogue with Turkey, NATO once again reveals its unique role as transatlantic forum for political consultation on security issues."
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4) Erdoğan's Turkey has no Place in NATO
by Burak Bekdil Begin-Sadat Center
Originally published under the title, "Turkey and NATO: From Loveless to Hateful Marriage."
Originally published under the title, "Turkey and NATO: From Loveless to Hateful Marriage."
A decade later, obliviousness has turned into bitter feelings, but Pollyanna is still out there, all smiles. In the words of Fabrizio F. Luciolli, president of the Atlantic Treaty Organization: "Since sixty-five years [sic], a mutual commitment binds Turkey and NATO, which can hardly be scratched by contingent interests or frictions, or replaced by new strategic directions. In its dialogue with Turkey, NATO once again reveals its unique role as transatlantic forum for political consultation on security issues."
Turkey-optimism is not a new phenomenon in the West. But it is fascinating that it still finds buyers in the marketplace of ideas.
A Phony Ally
Turkey has not arrived where it stands today overnight.
In April 2009, Turkey and Syria held a joint military exercise – the first of its kind between a NATO member and a Russian-armed and trained client state. In September 2010, Turkish and Chinese aircraft conducted joint exercises in Turkish airspace. This, too, was a first for a NATO air force. In 2011, before finally providing NATO forces with logistical support for their anti-Qaddafi campaign, then-Prime Minister Erdoğan angrily asked, "What business can NATO have in Libya?"
In 2012, Turkey became associated with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as a dialogue partner. (Other dialogue partners were Belarus and Sri Lanka; Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Iran, and Mongolia acted as observers.) Since then, Erdoğan has repeatedly stated that Ankara will abandon its quest to join the EU if offered full membership in the SCO... In 2013, Turkey announced the selection of a Chinese company for the construction of its first long-range air and anti-missile defense system, reassuring its western allies that local engineering would make the Chinese system interoperable with the US and NATO assets deployed on Turkish soil. (The contract was eventually scrapped.)
Beginning in 2015, Turkey came under international suspicion for systematically and clandestinely abetting various jihadist groups in Syria, including, allegedly, ISIS. Speculated to have included logistics and arms, this support reflected Ankara's distinct approach to the Syrian theater: while the West's primary goal has been to fight ISIS, Erdoğan has sought to topple Syria's Alawite President Bashar Assad and install a Sunni, pro-Turkey, and Islamist regime in his place.
In December 2017, Ankara officially announced that it would acquire two Russian-made S-400 surface-to-air missile systems, making it the first NATO member state to operate such systems. To be sure, Turkey is also discussing with Eurosam, a European consortium, the development and co-production of a similar system for its future air defense architecture. But that hardly gives any relief to western capitals
where policymakers are now wondering, among other concerns, how a NATO ally will simultaneously operate a Russian-made air defense system and the planned, US-led, multinational F-35 strike fighters.
Turkey, a partner in the Joint Strike Fighter group that builds the F-35, has ordered a batch of 116 future stealth fighter jets. But its growing relations with Moscow and its recent military campaign in Syria have added to calls for an F-35 boycott. It is not a secret that Washington is quietly weighing that option as Erdoğan threatens to extend his military campaign in Syria to areas (Manbij and the east of the Euphrates) where US troops are aligned with Kurdish militias. Ankara has deemed these militias terrorist organizations and thus legitimate targets. This is not the typical war scenario NATO's first and second largest armies would normally envision.
A Grim Future
Then there is the problem of like-mindedness. The founding values of NATO, such as the safeguarding of freedom and the principles of liberal democracy, individual liberties and rule of law, are rare commodities in today's Turkey.
In January 2018, the annual Freedom in the World report, produced by the US NGO Freedom House, classified Turkey as "not free" for the first time since the report series began in 1999. The country had lost its status as "partly free" due to a slide in political and civil rights, Freedom House noted.
Also in January, the World Justice Report, an independent organization seeking to advance the rule of law around the world, said that Turkey fell to the 101st position out of 113 countries in its 2017-18 Rule of Law Index.
The future may be gloomier. At a time of rising xenophobia and anti-western sentiments across Turkey, Erdoğan's campaign for the November 2019 presidential elections will undoubtedly target the "evil powers of the West," adding to the isolationist (that is: anti-NATO) Turkish psyche.
Erdoğan's militancy will likely strike a chord among his constituents. According to a December 2017 survey by the Turkish pollster Optimar, 71.9 percent of Turks are "against the US" while 22.7 percent are "partly against the US." This in sharp contrast to the 62.1 percent approval rating among Turks for closer relations with Russia.
A survey of 393 Turkish businessmen has likewise found 66 percent of them to have an unfavorable opinion of the US; while a survey by Kadir Has University in Istanbul (in December 2017) found that 64.3 percent of respondents viewed the US as the top security threat to Turkey.
Russian President Vladimir Putin could not have possibly found a better partner than Erdoğan for his attempts to divide and weaken NATO.
Burak Bekdil is an Ankara-based columnist and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Burak Bekdil is an Ankara-based columnist and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.
4a) Crafting a US Response to Turkish Intransigence
by Gregg Roman The Hill
Originally published under the title, "Navigating the U.S. Collision Course with Turkey."
Originally published under the title, "Navigating the U.S. Collision Course with Turkey."
In a rare public policy speech in mid-December, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster singled out Turkey as one of the two leading state sponsors (alongside Qatar) of "radical Islamist ideology." The Turkish government protested the statement as "astonishing, baseless and unacceptable," which means it was a pretty good start. McMaster's speech highlighted an emerging recognition among Trump administration officials that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Turkey poses a pernicious threat to US interests in the Near East. Since McMaster's speech, Erdoğan has invaded Afrin, Syria (a city then controlled by America's Kurdish allies), massacring women, children and the elderly; promoted the use of child soldiers in his fight against the Kurds; and undermined U.S. sanctions against Iran. A Manhattan Federal District Court's guilty verdict against a Turkish banker accused of helping Iran evade sanctions speaks volumes about the growing threat posed by Erdoğan's Turkey. Although Erdoğan was not charged in the case, "testimony suggested he had approved the [defendant's] sanctions-busting scheme" to launder billions of dollars for Iran beginning in 2012, according to the New York Times.
That Erdoğan was secretly weakening U.S. sanctions right when Iran was feeling the pinch should come as no surprise. He has been repositioning Turkey as an adversary of the United States for years — covertly aiding ISIS in Syria (before switching sides on a dime to align with Russian forces), overtly embracing Hamas terrorists, flooding Europe with migrants, and hosting an international summit condemning U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, to name just a few of the lowlights. While wishful thinkers still hold out hope that U.S.-Turkish relations are strained by short-term concerns and eventually will rebound, a growing chorus of voices led by Daniel Pipes contends that "Erdoğan's hostile dictatorship" has passed the point of no return and cannot be reconciled with American interests and values. Erdoğan's increasingly brutal methods of governance, particularly since a July 2016 failed coup against his regime, is wholly unbecoming of a NATO ally. In late December, he issued an emergency decree that effectively legalizes politically-motivated lynching.
Why does the United States continue to allow Erdoğan's malign behavior in the region? And, more importantly, what should policymakers do about it?
For Washington, it is time both to up the ante in seeking a course correction from Erdoğan and to prepare for the worst. This path forward should be guided by the following basic principles.
No more silence
Since Erdoğan goes out of his way to lambast the United States at every turn, Washington should make a practice of not holding back when it censures his behavior.
The United States should speak out against Erdoğan's continuing oppression of minority Kurds, in Turkey and in neighboring Syria and Iraq. In particular, it should call for the release of Kurdish political leaders jailed by Erdoğan, such as Selahattin Demirtaş, co-chair of the Kurdish-dominated Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP). The US should invite Kurdish representatives to visit Washington for high-profile meetings at the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon.
No more favors
Last June, the United States International Trade Commission issued a report finding that Turkey has been subsidizing the sale of steel reinforcing bars (rebars) in the United States, a judgment that ordinarily leads to the imposition of anti-dumping tariffs. As of yet, this hasn't happened. But it must.
More serious penalties should await Turkey for purchasing the S-400 missile system from Russia last year, which clearly ran afoul of new U.S. sanctions on Russia (the manufacturer of the S-400 has been explicitly blacklisted by the State Department). The White House should immediately put to rest speculation that it intends to waive these penalties.
No more trust
Whichever direction Erdoğan's ambitions take Turkey, one thing is certain — his regime cannot be trusted with sensitive military technology and intelligence. The United States should expel Turkey from the nine-nation consortium producing the next-generation F-35 fighter jet. The risk that the plane's technological secrets will find their way from Turkey to Russia or Iran is too great.
The United States should remove dozens of nuclear weapons presently stored at Incirlik air base in southern Turkey. Although adequate safeguards are in place, these weapons serve no practical purpose (aircraft stationed at the base cannot load them) and their continued presence might be misconstrued as a U.S. endorsement of Erdoğan's reliability as an ally.
No more second chances
Erdoğan's government arrested more than a dozen American citizens of Turkish descent — including a NASA scientist who happened to be visiting family—in the wake of the July 2016 coup attempt. These arrests, as well as those of tens of thousands of Turkey's own subjects, are based on unspecified allegations concerning these individuals' involvement in the coup. Most incarcerated Americans were denied consular access until recently. At least seven are still being held in Turkish prisons— more or less as hostages. Erdoğan has offered to trade them for the extradition of a political rival living in the United States. While on a May 2017 visit to Washington, Erdoğan ordered his security detail to viciously attack peaceful protesters outside the Turkish ambassador's residence. A similar, equally appalling episode happened when he visited in 2016.
Washington must make it crystal clear to Erdoğan that any further egregious violations of the laws of the United States, the sanctity of its soil, or the rights of its citizens will result in immediate sanctions banning him and his lieutenants from stepping foot in this country (or inside one of its embassies) ever again.
In conclusion, while Turkey's relative political stability, economic strength and military power make it a desirable ally, they also make it a formidable enemy. Now is the time to make it clear to Erdoğan and his subjects that America no longer plays nice with its enemies.
Gregg Roman is director of the Middle East Forum.
Gregg Roman is director of the Middle East Forum.
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