on Year One of the Trump Administration

Bacevich and Mearsheimer on Year One of the Trump Administration

January 22, 2018Derek Davison 2 Comments

by Derek Davison 
Last year, to mark the end of the Obama administration, LobeLog spoke with foreign policy analysts Andrew Bacevich, of Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies, and John Mearsheimer, of the University of Chicago. The resulting interview covered the Obama foreign policy legacy as well as the broader challenges facing U.S. foreign policy. To mark the first year of the Trump administration, LobeLog spoke again with Bacevich and Mearsheimer to get their impressions of Donald Trump’s foreign policy and the state of the world at large.
LobeLog: Talk about year one of the Trump administration in terms of its foreign policy. Has it aligned with your expectations?
Andrew Bacevich: Trump seemed to think that, having won the presidency, he would be in a position to sort of serve as planetary dictator, that he would issue directives and the rest of the world would fall into line. That was never going to happen, and it hasn’t happened. I think we see that, for example, in his demand for NATO members to increase their defense spending by substantial amounts. There has been a slight uptick, but not nearly as much as Trump was demanding. We see it in the way he directed China to solve the North Korea problem, which simply hasn’t happened. So external circumstances have constrained Trump, and on balance I think that’s a good thing.
John Mearsheimer: A year ago I was optimistic because I thought Trump represented a force for change, and I was pessimistic because he hardly knew anything about foreign policy, he was not a good listener, and he tended to shoot from the hip. I think if you look at where we are today, there’s no question that he did not disappoint regarding his tendency to shoot from the hip and to display great ignorance about foreign policy. One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Trump administration after one year is its incompetence. He’s lived up to his billing.
With regard to my hope that Trump represented a prospect for positive change, you have to remember that he got elected in good part because he ran against the existing foreign policy. He said that it was bankrupt and he was going to change it. There he’s disappointed us, because the longer he’s in office, the more apparent it becomes that there’s really little change taking place and that he’s basically following what Barack Obama called “the Washington playbook.” We could go down the list of foreign policy issues, and I think we would see there’s not a lot of difference between what he’s doing and what his predecessors did, except for the fact that he’s doing it less competently than they did. In a very important way, what we’re getting here is the worst of both worlds. We’re getting little change in American foreign policy, which was bankrupt to begin with, and it’s being executed in an amazingly incompetent way. And not surprisingly, we’re in real trouble.
Bacevich: There has been one difference, a stylistic one. It manifests itself in the way Trump speaks, in what he says and what he tweets. He is astonishingly crude and bombastic, and I think that one of the problems at the present moment is that Trump’s crudeness attracts so much attention from the media that the substance of the difficulties we are facing tends not to get the attention it deserves. The “shithole” story dominated the news for several days. That’s one example of the way that the president’s crudeness diverts attention from substance, which is a real problem. Day after day after day, Trump is the story, and therefore other matters that are actually far more important end up being underreported.
Mearsheimer: I agree completely, and that’s why I was arguing that Trump’s incompetence, which reflects his inability to concentrate on substantive issues and to talk about those issues in rational, legal language, is a cause of great trouble. You have an individual who is pursuing policies that are fundamentally flawed, and he’s doing it in an incompetent way.
Bacevich: I wonder whether in the eyes of foreign leaders, Trump’s remarks matter. How seriously do they take Trump’s rhetoric, as opposed to the words and actions of Trump’s key subordinates like Rex Tillerson and James Mattis? If I were working in Berlin or London or Tokyo at this point, I would tend to discount what the president is saying and look to the words and actions of others as a clearer indication of what the United States is up to. But that’s entirely speculative on my part.
Mearsheimer: I would come at it from a slightly different perspective, which is to say that I think what people in positions of responsibility in other countries are doing these days is not listening to what Trump says, but looking at what he does. And if you look at what he does, he’s nowhere near as threatening or as dangerous to them as his rhetoric might imply.
I think, however, when you talk about publics around the world, it’s quite clear that the people in other countries who are listening to him and mainly concentrating on his rhetoric, are really scared. Public opinion polls demonstrate that there has been a significant decline in confidence in American leadership from Obama to Trump. There’s a new poll out from Gallup that shows that Trump has a 30 percent approval rating around the world, which is down almost 20 points from Obama’s approval rating when he left office. I think this precipitous decline is in large part due to Trump’s rhetoric, not so much his policies, because the policies are not that different from the policies that Obama was pursuing.
LobeLog: Can you describe the Trump foreign policy? To what extent is there a disconnect between the administration’s articulated foreign policy (as laid out, for example, in its National Security Strategy) and what Trump himself appears to be doing?
Mearsheimer: You have to distinguish between what Candidate Trump said in 2016 and what President Trump has said in 2017, and then you have to distinguish what President Trump has said in 2017 from what President Trump has actually done in 2017. Candidate Trump was threatening to undermine existing U.S. foreign policy in fundamental ways—he was going to try to change it in all sorts of consequential ways. I think that much of the rhetoric we’ve heard from President Trump indicates that Candidate Trump and President Trump are quite similar in terms of what they want to do with foreign policy. But if you look at Trump’s actual policy, it reflects pretty much what the Obama administration, and before that the Bush administration, did.
If you look at the National Security Strategy document, for example, you see a set of policies that bear striking resemblance to policies we’ve pursued in the past—it reflects continuity. So you see a disconnect not just between Candidate Trump’s rhetoric and the actual policy we’re executing these days, but even between President Trump’s rhetoric and his policy. But because so much attention is focused on what President Trump says, the actual policies don’t get as much attention as they should.
Bacevich: As a candidate, Trump said “elect me president and I will change everything.” He won, then confronted the fact that he can’t change everything. Much of what he inherited simply cannot be changed—the world is what it is. I think some of the president’s rhetoric reflects a certain amount of frustration on his part as he finds himself obviously not delivering on glib promises that he made as a candidate.
One example of this is the wall. On the campaign trail, the great big, beautiful wall was going to extend all across the southern border of the country, it was going to get built in short order, and it was going to be paid for by Mexico. None of that is going to happen. I think he struggles now to reconcile the disparity between what he promised and what he’s going to be able to deliver. We see that in the way he contradicts himself from one day to the next.
Mearsheimer: I think, Andy, one of the problems Trump faced when he took office was that there were not many foreign policy experts who shared his worldview and were in favor of the policy positions he articulated as a candidate. It was sure to be very difficult for him to challenge the establishment without a team of lieutenants who really thought about American foreign policy the way he did. The few people he could find, like Michael Flynn, ended up getting themselves into all sorts of trouble right away. Steve Bannon is another case in point.
Those few people in Trump’s White House who shared his worldview ended up losing their jobs rather quickly and being replaced by establishment figures. Almost all of them are generals, but nevertheless they represent the status quo. He’s now surrounded almost completely by establishment figures who are going to great lengths to make sure he hews to the establishment line. He gets around that to some extent with his rhetoric, but rhetoric is not policy and the policy pretty much remains the same as it was under his two predecessors.
We should remember that President Obama was elected because he said that our foreign policy was bankrupt and he was going to change it. He was someone who had opposed the Iraq War, arguing that it was a foolish decision. Nevertheless, once he became president he ended up adhering to the “Washington playbook.” He made it clear in his interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in his last year in office that, basically, the establishment had beaten him down. What you see happening with Trump is very similar.
Bacevich: I think that’s exactly right, and very much applies to Generals Mattis, Kelly, and McMaster who occupy the principal centers of power—I leave out Secretary Tillerson quite intentionally, because he seems to be a marginal figure. There’s no question that the generals believe in the “Washington playbook”—that’s all they know. That said, their interpretation of the playbook differs from the interpretation of people like Obama, Ashton Carter, John Kerry, or Samantha Power. There was a softer tilt when the Democrats were in power. That now has been replaced with a harder edge. We see that in the National Security Strategy—not that I think that document really matters—but the emphasis on nationalism in the NSS is really striking.
Nonetheless, I think the point you’re making, John, is the key one: the “Washington playbook” prevails. This president said he was going to throw it out. That’s not happening, and it’s not going to happen.
LobeLog: A year ago you both seemed optimistic that the Iran nuclear deal would survive despite Candidate Trump’s harsh rhetoric about it. So far it has survived, but Trump seems to be champing at the bit to tear it up. Having watched his approach to the deal over this year, have your thoughts about its survival changed?
Mearsheimer: When you talk about the prospects of the deal surviving, there are two ways of thinking about the matter. First, do you think the United States is going to withdraw from the deal? And second, if the United States does withdraw, do you think the deal will fall apart? I think that if the United States were to withdraw from the deal, the Europeans, the Chinese, and the Russians, as well as the Iranians, would stick to it and the deal would remain in place. The United States by itself cannot wreck the deal.
LobeLog: But the U.S. can make it painful for Iran and for Europe, for example via secondary sanctions.
Mearsheimer: We’re already making it painful. I was in Iran in December, and almost everybody I talked to complained bitterly that the Americans were continuing to make it very painful economically for Iran, that the United States had not done enough to lift the sanctions and allow the Iranian economy to get back on its feet. We can do more by ourselves to hurt the Iranians by pulling out of the deal and reimposing sanctions, but that doesn’t mean the Europeans, Russians, and Chinese will walk away from the deal, and my sense is that the Iranians won’t walk away either. The question is, do you think President Trump will pull the United States out of the deal? Although he’s boxed himself into a corner on this issue, I think that ultimately he will not pull us out of the deal. But if he does I think all the other parties will stick to the deal.
Bacevich: It is interesting that pulling out of the deal on day one was one of Candidate Trump’s many vows, and here we are a year into his presidency and we haven’t pulled out. He’s made threats and he signs off on continuing the deal with great reluctance, but this is another example of how he’s been constrained by realities that he clearly did not appreciate prior to becoming president. I don’t know if ultimately Trump will pull the plug, but I agree with John that even if he does that doesn’t necessarily mean that the entire arrangement is going to collapse. It’s in the interests of Iran and the other signatories of the deal to maintain it. Our pulling out would be one more bit of evidence to suggest to others that the United States is becoming unhinged, but I think the deal will last.
Mearsheimer: You made the point earlier, Andy, that President Trump is frustrated by the fact that he can’t execute many of the policies that Candidate Trump advocated. I agree and I think he has a powerful sense that he’s in an iron cage, which frustrates him greatly. The one issue where that manifests itself most clearly is Iran, because he was promising that on day one he would rip up the agreement, but he’s been unable to do that. He’s surrounded by people who are telling him that it might not be a great deal, but it’s better than no deal, and therefore he’s been unable to kill it, at least so far. I think he’s very frustrated by that.
I think Trump has a sense that the Iranians are beating us at every turn. We overthrew the regime in Iraq, and what was the result? The new regime has developed close relations with Iran, so Tehran now has enormous influence in Iraq. What happened in Syria? The United States and Israel were deeply committed to overthrowing the Assad regime, mainly because the Assad regime was tied to Iran, and they viewed knocking off Assad as a way of hurting Iran. But Assad is still in power, and Iran’s influence in Syria is greater than ever. This really frustrates Trump, and that frustration is why there is a real possibility he might withdraw from the agreement.
LobeLog: How has the Trump administration changed the terms of the Israel-Palestine conflict? Has it made things worse, or simply made explicit what was always implicit in U.S. policy? Do you see any long-term impacts to the Jerusalem decision?
Bacevich: The so-called two-state solution has been a fiction for a couple of decades. The current government of Israel has absolutely no interest in seeing the creation of anything that looks remotely like a viable Palestinian state. The government of Israel is emphatically committed to expanding settlements, looking toward annexation of the West Bank. Ironically, declaring an intention to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem may be one of the few actions of the Trump administration that proves useful—it allows us to see the situation as it really is.
Mearsheimer: I agree with everything Andy said. The Israelis have been moving toward a “Greater Israel” for many years now. The two-state solution was actually never going to happen. The end result is that Trump just stated the obvious. He basically said that he’s not going to worry about a two-state solution. If the parties were interested in that outcome—which they’re not—we could deal with it, but let’s deal with reality now, which is one state. The key question you have to ask is: what does this mean for Israel and for the U.S.-Israeli relationship over time? After all, it’s quite clear that Greater Israel is or will become an apartheid state, which is going to cause all sorts of problems for Israel itself, and for the U.S.-Israeli relationship.
Photo: Andrew Bacevich

Is Trump a Normal Foreign - Policy President

Thursday, January 18, 2018 - 12:00am

Is Trump a Normal Foreign-Policy President?

What We Know After One Year

Elizabeth N. Saunders

ELIZABETH N. SAUNDERS is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University.

 

For scholars studying the effects of presidential leadership on U.S. foreign policy, Donald Trump’s [1] surprise victory in 2016 has offered quite the test [2]. What does it mean for the United States to elect a leader with no experience in government, little knowledge of foreign policy, and an explicit disdain for expertise [3]?
After a year in office, Trump has confirmed a lot of what we knew about how leaders matter: he has held firm to the few beliefs he brought with him to office, demonstrated the importance of substantive knowledge (or lack thereof) for decision-making, and shown why advisers cannot substitute for experienced leadership. In other ways, he has proven a surprise, principally by failing to appoint people who could help him get what he wants. And as the world faces at least another three years of Trump, there are few reasons to think his behavior will change in the future.
GREAT MAN THEORY
International relations scholars long believed that leaders do not matter much—states will act how they act, regardless of who is at the helm. The political scientist Kenneth Waltz, for instance, has argued [4] that the constraints of the international system, not individuals or domestic politics, determine the actions of states.
More recently, however, that view has begun to change [5]. Long before Trump’s election, scholars had assembled a wealth [6] of new evidence [7] about how individual leaders [8] influence their countries’ behavior. One major finding is that leaders’ background experiences and beliefs—formed long before they arrive in office—shape how they make decisions, from taking in and processing information to deliberating with advisers and, ultimately, deciding on a course of action. What we see when leaders enter office is essentially what we’ll get, at least for the first few years.
Three insights from this body of scholarship stand out in particular. First, leaders’ beliefs are “sticky,” meaning that they are formed before leaders enter office [9] and tend not to change much [9] over time. As former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote in his memoirs [10], “The convictions that leaders have formed before reaching high office are the intellectual capital they will consume as long as they continue in office.” Although such stickiness is sometimes seen as a defect, fixed beliefs are, as the political scientist Robert Jervis has argued [11], necessary guides that help decision-makers grapple with a complex world. We should not wantour leaders’ beliefs to change too rapidly—sticky beliefs are a feature, not a bug.

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters Trump, his wife, Melania, and their son Barron arrive in West Palm Beach, January 2018.

The second insight is that substantive knowledge matters—it is important for leaders to be informed about the world—and there are no shortcuts for acquiring that knowledge on the job. Research on expertise [12] shows that it is “domain-specific,” meaning that it does not translate [13] from one topic or issue area to another; even chess masters are humbled [14] by the random placement of pieces on a board. Little wonder, then, that business experience does not translate into foreign policy acumen.
Third, although advisers and bureaucratic appointments are crucial, they are no substitute for a leader with direct foreign policy expertise. Inexperienced presidents often make the case that advisers can fill the gaps in their own knowledge or tutor them on the job. During the 2000 presidential campaign, for example, George W. Bush emphasized [15] that he would be “surrounded by good, strong, capable, smart people.”
But as my own recent work has shown [16], it matters a great deal whether a president has as much knowledge of foreign policy as his advisers. Experienced leaders provide better oversight of foreign policy decision-making because they are more likely to ask hard questions, spot poor planning, or recognize unrealistic proposals. Their reputation for expertise can enhance oversight indirectly, since subordinates know that their boss will check their work. Experienced presidents are also better able to draw on diverse sources of advice.
In Bush’s case, his inexperience empowered advisers such as Vice President Dick Cheney to act without oversight, leading to poor planning for the Iraq war and its aftermath. By contrast, Bush’s father, former President George H. W. Bush, relied on many of the same advisers, including Cheney (who was then secretary of defense), to plan the successful Gulf War in 1991. An important difference was that the older Bush, a former vice president, UN ambassador, and director of the CIA, had deep foreign policy experience that prompted his team [17] to question and revise war plans before they even made it to the Oval Office.
A NORMAL PRESIDENT?
Despite the near-continuous drama of the last 12 months, Trump’s first year in office has confirmed much of what we know about how leaders affect foreign policy. That does not mean that Trump has played by the old rules—he has not. But he is essentially the president hired on November 8, 2016: a man with a few fixed beliefs and little substantive knowledge. And his actions as president have tended to confirm the three insights noted above. Despite the near-continuous drama of the last 12 months, Trump’s first year in office has confirmed much of what we know about how leaders affect foreign policy.
First, although Trump is often accused of lacking any fixed beliefs, he has several sticky views that were visible before the election. Exactly one year before Trump’s inauguration, the journalist Thomas Wright argued in Politico that the then candidate had three clear beliefs [18]: he was against trade, against alliances, and in favor of strongmen abroad.
Trump has stayed true to those beliefs during his first year in the White House. Soon after entering office, he withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and he has made clear his disdain for trade pacts such as the North American Free Trade Agreement. After railing against NATO on the campaign trail, Trump raised doubts [19] about the United States’ commitment to Article 5—which provides for collective defense—when he declined to endorse it in a speech in Brussels (he finally reaffirmed the Article 5 commitment [20] when back in Washington). And his admiration for authoritarian leaders has been evident, reflected in his public praise for the leaders of China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. These beliefs have proven quite sticky indeed.
Second, Trump has been hurt by his inexperience and lack of knowledge. His actions, including accidentally disclosing classified information [21] to the Russian ambassador and trumpeting largely symbolic business deals [22] with an increasingly assertive China [23]—even as the other TPP countries [24] try to move on with a multilateral deal without the United States—reveal a careless man with a naive belief in bilateral deals, not a master negotiator.
Third, Trump’s team has not been able to substitute for his lack of knowledge, even where it is experienced. Although Secretary of Defense James Mattis is running the Pentagon effectively, as a group, Trump’s advisers are neither constraining him nor channeling his preferences into coherent policies. For instance, as Susan Glasser reported [25] for Politico, during his trip to Europe this summer, Trump removed a reference in his speech to NATO’s Article 5 at the last minute, blindsiding his team. The president’s constant Twitter threats against North Korea likewise undermine [26] the notion of a coherent administration policy.

Reuters Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo, November 2017.

TRUMP'S SURPRISES
Where Trump has really surprised is in the area of personnel. In one sense, his rejection of expertise should be expected, given the populist tenor of his campaign. But when one looks more broadly at the history of U.S. foreign policy, the sharp break between Trump and the Republican foreign policy and national security community is remarkable. This community was central to the “Never Trump” movement during the campaign, as symbolized by a March 2016 open letter [27] opposing Trump that was signed by 122 Republican national security professionals. In return, Trump has refused to appoint these professionals to positions within his administration.
Instead, with a few notable exceptions, Trump has staffed his administration with remarkably inexperienced people. Most presidencies struggle to find their footing, and especially when their party has been out of power for a long time, new presidents often face the challenge of having knowledgeable appointees with little direct experience or years spent outside of government. But an inexperienced president deliberately choosing inexperienced advisers was, until Trump, essentially unthinkable.
The Trump administration has declined or failed to make appointments [28] to an unprecedented degree, even leaving what most observers consider crucial foreign policy posts [29], such as ambassadorships in Europe [30] and the Middle East [31], unfilled. Trump himself has left little doubt that this shortage, as well as the shrinking [32] of the State Department, is deliberate, declaring in response to a question about State Department job vacancies that “I’m the only one that matters.”
Part of what makes Trump’s behavior in this area surprising is that although his rejection of expertise clearly has some political appeal, it also makes it harder for him to get the policies he wants. Even a president who wants to do less in the world still has priorities. Career officials can fill in on a temporary basis, but it takes confirmed political appointees to try to translate the president’s words into action.
The first year is typically when presidents make what I have called “policy investments [33],” which include staffing decisions, budgets, strategies and institutional creation and change. Presidents have varied in their skill at making these investments. But most, until Trump, have at least tried.
WHAT'S NEXT?
What should we expect for the remainder of Trump’s term? Not much learning, for one thing. Learning, when it takes place at all, is often slow [34]. For instance, George W. Bush’s foreign policy evolved [35] in his second term as he confronted the difficult realities of Iraq. But Bush read books and consulted with outside experts [36]. Such learning requires openness to new ideas and new people, both qualities that Trump sorely lacks.
There are also likely long-term effects that we have not yet begun to appreciate. As Jim Goldgeier and I wrote in this magazine [37] shortly after the inauguration, a lot of good foreign policy is invisible. Diplomacy, trade, and alliances—all things Trump disdains—have benefits that can be hard to see until they’re gone. But like an insurance policy, they are missed only when they are needed. Trump’s weakening of these foreign policy tools leaves the United States ill prepared for the crises that inevitably challenge presidents.
Trump’s leadership has confirmed a lot of what we know about how presidents shape foreign policy—but that is scary, given what we know about Trump. In the debate [38] over whether Trump’s first year has been better [39] or worse [40] than expected, the real fear is that the worst is yet to come

ABD Dışişleri Bakanı Tillerson'un ABD'nin Suriye politikasına ilişkin "policy statement"

Remarks

Rex W. Tillerson
Secretary of State

Hoover Institute at Stanford University

Stanford, CA

January 17, 2018

---

SECRETARY TILLERSON: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Well, good morning. And I really, really appreciate this opportunity to swing down to Stanford while I was out on the West Coast and particularly to address this group. And I want to thank Stanford and the Hoover Institution and the international studies group for allowing me to speak to you this morning. I have familiarity with the Hoover Institution; I’ve spoken at some of their events in the past in my prior life, and it has consistently produced great, principled scholarship that makes the calls for representative government, private enterprise, and protecting the American way of life right at the center of your activities, and very important topics that we spend our time on.
And in that regard, you certainly have a true advocate in your ranks: my friend, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, who – I don’t know if she takes responsibility for this situation she got me into or not, but I – (laughter) – I hold her partially accountable anyway. And – but I appreciate Condi’s advice and counsel. When you arrive at the Secretary of State’s desk, I was looking for the how-to manual; there wasn’t one there. So she’s been a great source of help and inspiration to me.
And I also want to acknowledge the other co-host, one of our nation’s most dedicated and gifted public servants, certainly of the 20th century: former Secretary George Shultz. And George and I have known each other a long time as well, and I’m a great admirer of his work as well.
I’ve just come from a ministerial meeting in Vancouver, in which a number of nations discussed how to better implement our maximum pressure campaign against North Korea. The United States and our allies are and continue to be united in continuing this campaign until North Korea takes meaningful steps toward denuclearization. We all agreed – all of us – that we will not accept a nuclear-armed North Korea.
From Vancouver I made a quick swing down here to California. And I appreciated Dr. Rice’s help in arranging this for me on somewhat short notice. There are some people back in Washington that are suspicious I’m escaping the bad weather today to just come down here, but I am delighted to be here.
The topic and the subject of my remarks today is to talk with you about the way forward for the United States in Syria.
I’m going to start by giving you a kind of a broad historical and political context for what are some very difficult situations facing the Syrian people, and they raise concerns for all of the international powers as well.
Then I want to describe why it is crucial to our national defense to maintain a military and diplomatic presence in Syria, to help bring an end to that conflict, and assist the Syrian people as they chart a course to achieve a new political future.
And then lastly, I want to detail the steps this administration is taking to achieve a stable, unified, and independent Syria, free of terrorist threats and free of weapons of mass destruction.
Then, as indicated, Dr. Rice and I will have a little conversation.
For nearly 50 years, the Syrian people have suffered under the dictatorship of Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar al-Assad. The nature of the Assad regime, like that of its sponsor Iran, is malignant. It has promoted state terror. It has empowered groups that kill American soldiers, such as al-Qaida. It has backed Hizballah and Hamas. And it has violently suppressed political opposition. Bashar al-Assad’s grand strategy, to the extent he has one beyond his own survival, includes hosting some of the most radical terrorist elements in the region and using them to destabilize his neighbors. Assad’s regime is corrupt, and his methods of governance and economic development have increasingly excluded certain ethnic and religious groups. His human rights record is notorious the world over.
Such oppression cannot persist forever. And over the years, latent anger built up within the country, and many Syrians rose up and opposed Assad’s rule. Within the days of what began as peaceful demonstrations that swept Syria in 2011, Assad and his regime responded to his own people with bullets and jail sentences.
Since that time, the story of Syria has been one of a humanitarian catastrophe. Up to half a million Syrians have died. Over 5.4 million Syrians are refugees, and 6.1 million are internally displaced persons, or IDPs. And as a result of conflict between regime and opposition forces, whole cities have been destroyed. It will take years to rebuild an entire nation.
Previous American efforts to halt the conflict have been ineffective. When Assad used chemical weapons on his own people in 2013, in defiance of an American red line threat to retaliate, U.S. inaction emboldened the regime to further disregard civilian lives. In April of last year, the Trump administration responded to Assad’s use of sarin nerve agent on civilians with cruise missile strikes that destroyed 20 percent of Assad’s air force. We did this to degrade the Syrian military’s ability to conduct further chemical weapons attacks, to protect innocent civilians, and to dissuade the Syrian regime from further use or proliferation of chemical weapons. The United States takes chemical weapons threats seriously, and we cannot stand idly by and allow their use to become regularized. We will continue to seek accountability and justice for the victims of that attack.
In 2012, the Assad regime military forces began to struggle badly against armed opposition. The regime was soon bolstered through the assistance of Iranian-backed fighting forces. But despite this help, by August of 2015, Syrian rebel forces had made substantial progress against Assad’s regime. Fearing for his own survival, Assad then appealed to Russia, his longtime ally, for help. Russia intervened to save the regime, largely by providing increased air power, intelligence, and arms support.
In December of 2016, the key city of Aleppo fell to the regime after a brutal campaign that essentially destroyed that city, which had a population over two million people before the war. This symbolized the regime’s ruthless determination to regain momentum in the conflict. It also led to – Assad to wrongly think that he would maintain power without addressing the Syrian regime’s – the Syrian people’s legitimate grievances.
The civil war in Syria was horrific in and of itself. But Syria was thrown into an even greater state of turmoil with the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. This was an aspiring terror-state inside the borders of Iraq and Syria. The conflict between the regime and various opposition groups fighting to change Assad’s grip on power created the conditions for the rapid expansion of ISIS in 2013 and 2014. ISIS originally emerged from the ashes of al-Qaida in Iraq, a group Assad had covertly backed. Evidence suggests Assad also abetted ISIS by releasing known terrorists from Syrian prisons and turning a blind eye to ISIS’s growth. ISIS exploited the instability and lack of centralized authority in Syria to set up what it falsely claimed was a “caliphate,” with the Syrian city of Raqqa as its capital. Eventually, ISIS expanded to possess at its height a territory – an amount of territory roughly equivalent to the size of the United Kingdom, and a significant fighting force. Flush with cash from looted banks and in control of oil fields in Syria and Iraq, ISIS had all the elements to sustain itself and carry out attacks on the U.S. homeland and those of our allies. The establishment of a radical terror-state attracted thousands of jihadists from over 100 countries, and motivated other terrorists around the world to commit attacks where they live.
In the wake of the rise of ISIS, millions fled their homes, villages, and cities to escape the brutal regime’s ethnic cleansing, resulting in massive refugee flows into the neighboring countries and as far as Europe and Scandinavia. By the middle of 2014, ISIS had a stable base of operations in Syria and significant revenue streams to fund, plan, inspire, and direct attacks against targets in the West and against our regional allies. It was using Syria to build chemical weapons for use against our partners. Recognizing the destructive power of a strengthening terrorist organization, America focused on a military defeat of ISIS. In spite of the threat ISIS posed in Syria, Assad focused instead on fighting the Syrian opposition, even with Iranian and Russian military support at his back.
The Trump administration’s counterterrorism policy is quite simple. It is to protect Americans at home and abroad from attacks by terrorists. Central to this policy is to deny terrorist and terrorist organizations the opportunity to organize, raise money, recruit fighters, train, plan, and execute attacks.
When he took office, President Trump took decisive action to accelerate the gains that were being made in Syria and Iraq. He directed Secretary of Defense Mattis to present within 30 days a new plan for defeating ISIS. The President quickly approved that plan. He directed a pace of operations that would achieve decisive results quickly, delegating greater authority to American commanders in the field, and he gave our military leaders more freedom to determine and apply the tactics that would best lead to ISIS’s defeat. Today, nearly all territory in Iraq and Syria once controlled by ISIS, or approximately 98 percent of all of that once United Kingdom-sized territory, has been liberated, and ISIS has not been able to regain one foot of that ground. ISIS’s physical “caliphate” of Raqqa is destroyed. The liberated capital of the caliphate no longer serves as a magnet for those hoping to build a terrorist empire. Approximately 3.2 million Syrians and 4.5 million Iraqis have been freed from the tyranny of ISIS. Over 3 million internally displaced Iraqis are now back home, and Mosul, the caliphate’s second capital city in Iraq and one of Iraq’s largest cities, is completely clear of ISIS. In Iraq, for the first time since the beginning of the crisis in December of 2013, there are more Iraqis going home than there are that are still displaced.
As we survey Syria today, we see the big picture, a situation characterized by principally three factors:
ISIS is substantially, but not completely defeated.
The Assad regime controls about half of Syria’s territory and its population.
And continued strategic threats to the U.S. from not just ISIS and al-Qaida, but from others persist. And this threat I’m referring to is principally Iran.
As part of its strategy to create a northern arch, stretching from Iran to Lebanon and the Mediterranean, Iran has dramatically strengthened its presence in Syria by deploying Iranian Revolutionary Guard troops; supporting Lebanese Hizballah; and importing proxy forces from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere. Through its position in Syria, Iran is positioning to continue attacking U.S. interests, our allies, and personnel in the region. It is spending billions of dollars a year to prop up Assad and wage proxy wars at the expense of supporting its own people.
Additionally, the unresolved plight of millions of Syrian refugees and IDPs remains a humanitarian crisis. The catastrophic state of affairs is directly related to the continued lack of security and legitimate governance in Syria itself. Assad has gassed his own people, he has barrel bombed entire villages and urban neighborhoods, and repeatedly undermined any chance for a peaceful resolution of political differences. Those abuses continue to this day, as seen in recent civilian casualties in East Ghouta and Idlib Governance[1]. There is no way to effectively facilitate a large-scale safe and voluntary return of refugees without a political solution.
In short, Syria remains a source of severe strategic threats, and a major challenge for our diplomacy.
But the United States will continue to remain engaged as a means to protect our own national security interest.
The United States desires five key end states for Syria:
First, ISIS and al-Qaida in Syria suffer an enduring defeat, do not present a threat to the homeland, and do not resurface in a new form; that Syria never again serves as a platform or safe haven for terrorists to organize, recruit, finance, train and carry out attacks on American citizens at home or abroad or against our allies.
Second, the underlying conflict between the Syrian people and the Assad regime is resolved through a UN-led political process prescribed in UN Security Council Resolution 2254, and a stable, unified, independent Syria, under post-Assad leadership, is functioning as a state.
Third, Iranian influence in Syria is diminished, their dreams of a northern arch are denied, and Syria’s neighbors are secure from all threats emanating from Syria.
Fourth, conditions are created so that the refugees and IDPs can begin to safely and voluntarily return to Syria.
And fifth, Syria is free of weapons of mass destruction.
The Trump administration is implementing a new strategy to achieve these end states. This process largely entails increased diplomatic action on the heels of our ongoing military successes. Our diplomatic efforts will be characterized by stabilization initiatives and a new emphasis on the political solution to the Syrian conflict.
But let us be clear: The United States will maintain a military presence in Syria focused on ensuring ISIS cannot re-emerge. Our military mission in Syria will remain conditions-based. We cannot make the same mistakes that were made in 2011 when a premature departure from Iraq allowed al-Qaida in Iraq to survive and eventually morph into ISIS. It was that vacuum that allowed ISIS and other terrorist organizations to wreak havoc on the country. And it gave ISIS a safe haven to plan attacks against Americans and our allies. We cannot allow history to repeat itself in Syria. ISIS presently has one foot in the grave, and by maintaining an American military presence in Syria until the full and complete defeat of ISIS is achieved, it will soon have two.
We understand that some Americans are skeptical of continued involvement in Syria and question the benefits of maintaining a presence in such a troubled country.
However, it is vital for the United States to remain engaged in Syria for several reasons: Ungoverned spaces, especially in conflict zones, are breeding grounds for ISIS and other terrorist organizations. The fight against ISIS is not over. There are bands of ISIS fighters who are already beginning to wage an insurgency. We and our allies will hunt them down and kill them or capture them.
Similarly, we must persist in Syria to thwart al-Qaida, which still has a substantial presence and base of operations in northwest Syria. As in the years before 9/11, al-Qaida is eager to create a sanctuary to plan and launch attacks on the West. Although ISIS is the terrorist group that has dominated the headlines most in the last few years, al-Qaida is still a grave threat and is looking to reconstitute in new and powerful ways.
Additionally, a total withdrawal of American personnel at this time would restore Assad and continue his brutal treatment against his own people. A murderer of his own people cannot generate the trust required for long-term stability. A stable, unified, and independent Syria ultimately requires post-Assad leadership in order to be successful. Continued U.S. presence to ensure the lasting defeat of ISIS will also help pave the way for legitimate local civil authorities to exercise responsible governance of their liberated areas. The departure of Assad through the UN-led Geneva process will create the conditions for a durable peace within Syria and security along the borders for Syria’s neighbors.
U.S. disengagement from Syria would provide Iran the opportunity to further strengthen its position in Syria. As we have seen from Iran’s proxy wars and public announcements, Iran seeks dominance in the Middle East and the destruction of our ally, Israel. As a destabilized nation and one bordering Israel, Syria presents an opportunity that Iran is all too eager to exploit.
And finally, consistent with our values, America has the opportunity to help a people which has suffered greatly. We must give Syrians a chance to return home and rebuild their lives. The safe and voluntary return of Syrian refugees serves the security interests of the United States, our allies, and our partners. To relieve the enormous pressure of refugee flows on the surrounding region and on Europe, conditions must be created for these refugees to safely and voluntarily return home. It will be impossible to ensure stability on one end of the Mediterranean, in Europe, if chaos and injustice prevail on the other end, in Syria.
The United States, along with its allies and partners, will undertake the following steps to bring stability and peace to Syria:
First, stabilization initiatives in liberated areas are essential to making sure that life can return to normal and ISIS does not re-emerge. Stabilization initiatives consist of essential measures such as clearing unexploded land mines left behind by ISIS, allowing hospitals to reopen, restoring water and electricity services, and getting boys and girls back in school. The approach has proved successful in Iraq, where millions of Iraqis have returned to their homes. In Syria, however, unlike in Iraq, we do not have a national government partner for stabilization efforts, so we must work with others. As such, there is a great deal of difficulty to them. Since May, the United States has deployed additional diplomats to the affected areas in Syria, working with the United Nations, our partners in the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, and various nongovernmental organizations.
Our work to help local and regional authorities provide services to liberated areas builds trust between local populations and local leaders who are returning. Terrorists thrive under conditions that allow them to peddle their warped and hateful messages to vulnerable people in conflict-stricken areas. Our stabilization efforts will help those people turn away from the prospect of terrorism and toward integration in their local communities.
We must be clear: “Stabilization” is not a synonym for open-ended nation-building or a synonym for reconstruction. But it is essential. No party in the Syrian conflict is capable of victory or stabilizing the country via military means alone. Our military presence is backed by State Department and USAID teams who are already working with local authorities to help liberated peoples stabilize their own communities.
Simultaneous with stabilization efforts, de-escalating the overall conflict is also a critical step to creating the conditions for a post-Assad political settlement. Since July, the United States has worked with Russia and Jordan to establish the de-escalation area in the southwest part of Syria. It has achieved a ceasefire, ended indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations, and with some few exceptions, has thus far held up well. The agreement in the southwest also addresses Israel’s security by requiring Iranian-backed militias, most notably Hizballah, to move away from Israel’s border. We need Russia to continue to work with the United States and Jordan to enforce this de-escalation area. If it does, the resulting cessation of regime-opposition hostilities will allow for the safe delivery of humanitarian aid, create the conditions for the safe and voluntary return of IDPs and refugees, and provide the Syrian people the security to start rebuilding areas scarred by conflict. Our efforts have been – have helped refugees and IDPs return into the southwest de-escalation areas from where they had taken refuge in Jordan, and overall, an estimated 715,000 Syrians in total, including 50,000 Syrians from abroad, returned to their homes in 2017. These early but positive trends can increase through the continuation of de-escalation efforts not just in the southwest, but elsewhere.
On counterterrorism, we will continue to work with allies and partners, such as Turkey, to address the terror threat in Idlib and address Turkey’s concern with PKK terrorists elsewhere. Al-Qaida is attempting to re-establish a base of operation for itself in Idlib. We are actively developing the best option to neutralize this threat in conjunction with allies and partners.
The United States is vigorously supporting UN efforts to achieve the political solution under UN Security Council Resolution 2254. This is the political framework for peace and stability in a unified Syria which has already been agreed upon by members of the UN Security Council. Specifically, we will work through what is known as the Geneva process, supporting UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura in his efforts.
The Assad regime clearly looks to Russia as a guarantor of its security. Russia therefore has a meaningful role to play in persuading the Assad regime to engage constructively in the Geneva process. Beyond Russia’s own vote to support UNSCR 2254, President Putin reaffirmed Russia’s commitment to Geneva in his joint statement with President Trump issued from Da Nang, Vietnam last November. The United States and Russia have worked together on the southwest de-escalation area to success, and we have established deconfliction arrangements around the Euphrates River Valley to ensure the safety of our respective forces.
Russia must now follow through on the commitment our presidents made last November to find an ultimate solution through the UN-led Geneva process. One of the ways Russia can do that is to exert its unique leverage on the Syrian regime, which itself has agreed to participate in the Geneva process. Russia must put new levels of pressure on the regime to not just show up in Geneva but to credibly engage with the UN’s efforts and implement agreed outcomes.
The United States, the EU, and regional partners will not provide international reconstruction assistance to any area under control of the Assad regime. We ask all stakeholders in Syria’s future to do the same. We will discourage economic relationships between the Assad regime and any other country. Instead, we will encourage international assistance to rebuild areas the global coalition and its local partners have liberated from ISIS. Once Assad is gone from power, the United States will gladly encourage the normalization of economic relationships between Syria and other nations. The United States calls on all nations to exercise discipline in economically pressuring Assad and rebuilding Syria after a political transition. Our expectation is that the desire for a return to normal life and these tools of pressure will help rally the Syrian people and individuals within the regime to compel Assad to step aside.
UNSCR 2254 also calls for UN-supervised free elections in Syria. The United States believes that free and transparent elections, to include the participation of the Syrian diaspora who have been displaced – all those who were forced to flee the conflict – will result in the permanent departure of Assad and his family from power. This process will take time, and we urge patience in the departure of Assad and the establishment of new leadership. Responsible change may not come as immediate as some hope for, but rather through an incremental process of constitutional reform, UN-supervised elections – but that change will come.
The United States recognizes and honors the great sacrifices the Syrian Democratic Forces have made in liberating Syrians from ISIS, but its victories on the battlefield do not solve the challenge of local governance and representation for people of eastern and northern Syria. Interim local political arrangements that give voice to all groups and ethnicities supportive of Syria’s broader political transition must emerge with international support. Any interim arrangements must be truly representative and must not threaten any of Syria’s neighboring states. Similarly, the voices of Syrians from these regions must be heard in Geneva and in the broader discussion about Syria’s future.
On these points, the United States hears and takes seriously the concerns of our NATO ally Turkey. We recognize the humanitarian contributions and military sacrifices Turkey has made towards defeating ISIS, towards their support of millions of Syrian refugees, and stabilizing areas of Syria it has helped liberate. We must have Turkey’s close cooperation in achieving a new future for Syria that ensures security for Syria’s neighbors.
Finally, reducing and expelling malicious Iranian influence from Syria depends on a democratic Syria. For many years, Syria under Bashar al-Assad has been a client state of Iran. A Syrian central government that is not under the control of Assad will have new legitimacy to assert its authority over the country. The reassertion of national sovereignty by a new government, along with de-escalation efforts and new flows of international aid, will lower violence, set better conditions for stability, and speed up the departure of foreign fighters.
We recognize Syria presents many complexities. Our proposed solutions will not be easy to achieve. But it is necessary to proceed in these ways for the sake of our security and that of our allies. We will not repeat mistakes of the past in Iraq, nor will we repeat the mistakes made in Libya.
Well-intentioned military interventions independent of stabilization and political strategies give rise to a host of adverse, unintended consequences. For this reason, we seek to de-escalate the civil war in Syria, work for peace, and encourage all parties to head to the negotiating table. Continued fighting will likely lead to worsened humanitarian conditions, more chaos, and increased regional military intervention in Syria. Our focus is to build a positive political path forward that honors the will of the Syrian people and sustains the unity and territorial integrity of Syria.
As with almost all of our foreign policy challenges, the steps for achieving our objectives cannot be undertaken alone. We will continue to work closely with allies and partners. In suffering many terrorist attacks over the past few years, our allies in Europe have sadly experienced firsthand what groups like ISIS and al-Qaida are capable of. We need allies and partners to support our strategy in order to permanently mitigate the risk to security posed by these terrorist organizations and others.
And finally, the Syrian people have endured seven years of unimaginable chaos and hardship. They need help. A new course of action is a preferable alternative to more years of wishful thinking. A stable, unified, independent Syria will serve the national security interests of the United States, its allies, and our partners. If that reality can come to pass, it will be a victory for all, and it will support the ability of the Syrian people to pursue their own God-given rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Thank you for your kind attention, and I look forward to our discussion. (Applause).

SECRETARY RICE: Well, thank you. Thank you very much for that comprehensive look at one of the most daunting problems that, I think, anyone in the international system has faced, and I’d like to return to a couple of substantive issues, but I want to ask you a question first about being Secretary of State. It’s kind of a hard job, isn’t it? (Laughter.) SECRETARY TILLERSON: It’s – yeah, it’s a little different. (Laughter.)
SECRETARY RICE: Yeah. (Laughter). So, when I was secretary, I’d get up in the morning, and there were some things I’d see on my calendar, and I’d think, “Oh good, I’m going to get to do that,” and then there were some things that I’d would think, “I’ll just – maybe I’ll just go back to bed.” What do you like about the job, and what do you find most challenging?
SECRETARY TILLERSON: Well, what I like most about the job is what I’ve always enjoyed throughout my career, and it’s the quality of the people you have the privilege to work with every day. And what I’ll say about the people in the State Department, the career people as well as the political appointees: These are extraordinarily dedicated individuals, some of the greatest patriots you’ll meet anywhere, and they really come in every day with one objective in mind, and that’s to carry out the foreign policy goals, objectives of the administration, but to serve the interests of the American people.
So what I look forward to every day is even if we’re talking about really complicated issues, like the one I just described – and Syria is one of the most complex situations on the ground – the level of intelligence and the level of openness for us to have a good conversation about that is what I most look forward to. And I have a bullpen area – it used to be the Deputy Secretary of Management’s office. I absconded it, and we have nothing but whiteboards in there, and I love going in the bullpen and just whiteboarding these exercises.
What I least look forward to coming in to are those days when I have to deal with the loss of life. And whether it’s the loss of a State Department person, or the loss of military personnel, or any American citizen anywhere, those are the days that are difficult, because you make calls to family members, you try to – people who have been taken hostage, you try to give their families reassurance, but those are the days that are really tough.
SECRETARY RICE: Yeah. Now, as Secretary, you face some unique challenges as well. Social media was barely born when I was secretary. Thank God for that. And we know that your boss loves social media, so what’s it like, and how do you deal with the constant pressure of social media, especially out of the White House?
SECRETARY TILLERSON: Well, he’s world class at social media and I’m not – (laughter) – and I want to confess here in the heart of the creation of this great technology, I have no social media accounts. I have never had any and I don’t intend to have any. (Laughter.) It is a great tool when it’s used well. The President has used it to great effect by bypassing the traditional means of communicating, and he absolutely thrives on this ability to instantly communicate not just to the American people, but to our friends and allies or to our adversaries, to the entire world.
I don’t know when he’s going to do that because he – that is just the way the President operates. So the challenge is just getting caught up because I don’t – I don’t even have a Twitter account that I can follow what he’s tweeting, so my staff usually has to print his tweets out and hand them to me. (Laughter.) Now, on the one hand, you can say, “Well, that’s nuts. Why don’t you get an account?” But on the other hand, I’ve actually concluded that’s not a bad system because it goes out and I don’t know it’s going to go out, so there’s not a whole lot I’m going to do until it’s out there. By the time I find out about it, there’s actually been some period of time, and dependent on where I am in the world it might be five minutes or it might be an hour before somebody hands me a piece of paper and says, “Hey, the President just tweeted this out.” There – I already have the early reactions to that and it allows me to now begin to think about, all right, how do we take that then into – if it’s a foreign policy issue, is it – what is it he’s tweeting about, how do we take that and now use it?
And so it’s interesting. I get the question a lot from people about, gosh, it must be impossible to deal with that. I had to get used to it early on because it was very unconventional for all of us. But I take it and I say, okay, this is information. Let’s – we know what our objectives are and he didn’t change any of them. This is just his way of wanting to communicate on the subject. How do we take that and use it? And so that’s what – that’s how I deal with it, but I think I’m probably going to go to my grave and never have a social media account. (Laughter.)
SECRETARY RICE: I was really struck when you talked about Syria and you talked about the way forward in Syria, leaving aside the military side, which obviously there have been some real gains, particularly in clearing ISIS from Iraq and now a leg up, at least, on ISIS in Syria. But I was struck that when you turned to political stabilization, you used a few words that most people would not associate with the Trump administration. I want to have you talk a little bit about that. You talked about values, America’s values. You talked about human rights. You talked about the need for the Syrian people to be able to express themselves in free elections.
We would consider those parts of the values agenda, if you will, because going really all the way back to Woodrow Wilson, American presidents have believed that the internal composition of states actually does matter. And I think you’ve made a very good case that one of the reasons that we face the problem that we face in Syria is that Bashar al-Assad is a dictator who has murdered his own people and oppressed his own people.
And so pull back from Syria and talk about how, after now almost a year on the job, you see the issue of values, human rights, democracy in the – in American foreign policy.
SECRETARY TILLERSON: Well, it’s a great question, and it’s one that I’ve – as an engineer, I guess I’ve had a hard time describing to others how I view it. Our American values of freedom, respect for the individual, human dignity – all of the manifestations of the values that define who we are as a people, who we are collectively as a group of people who have aligned ourselves around these values and defines how we treat one another every day – how you take that into the foreign policy arena.
And at one level, these are values that are enduring, and what I’ve said to people is you know with foreign policy if you – when you take the values and you try to put them into foreign policy, the concern I’ve always had is policies can change and adjust, and they do. And so how do you – if you’re doing that, your values never change. They never adjust. So our values are with us at all interactions always.
Now, how do you operationalize – and I’ll use that word – how do you operationalize the values? Because I think that’s getting to the heart of the question. And Syria is a great case study in my opinion of that. Going into Syria and advocating human rights, religious freedoms, women’s equal participation in the midst of literally thousands of people and civilians being killed every day doesn’t resonate very well, because the most important human right to anybody is our first one: the right to life. Life, then liberty, then the pursuit of happiness. And that’s the way I think about our values. I first have to keep people from being killed, and if I can keep them from being killed and if we can create areas of stability, then we begin to create the seeds of liberty, and then we create the pathway to a pursuit of happiness. And underneath all of that are, then, the articulation of our respect for the human dignity, the human condition, all the ways that we express these values that are uniquely American values.
And so it really is how do you create the conditions so people can actually achieve that, and the priority in Syria right now is stop people from being killed. They’re being killed. They’re being killed by the thousands. Stop that, stabilize it, start creating some conditions, and then we can begin to promote respect for people’s religious freedoms, respect for their dignity. And so it is very much – in my mind it’s – and being an engineer, this is the way I think it’s a process. It’s a process inside of a system, and at any point in time and depending on the country’s condition, the location, the circumstances, we’re going to be at a different place in that process. If we have a stable – a stable government that is repressive of certain religious organizations, then we go right at that. Because it’s not that people are being killed, but they’re being persecuted; they’re being denied their own pursuit of happiness.
So it – very much, I think in each situation, I look at it and say, what is the priority here? And the first priority is always the protection of life – stop people from being killed. And if you do that, you begin to create the conditions where we can truly lean forward and advocate on the values themselves.
SECRETARY RICE: And the tools for doing the kind of work that you’re talking about, obviously when you’ve stabilized a situation, you still have to have the diplomacy, you still have to have the assistance to people. There have been concerns about the commitment to, say, foreign assistance and to having those tools that American diplomats rely on to bring stability. Jim Mattis apparently famously said that if he doesn’t have foreign assistance, he’s going to need more bullets, just to paraphrase.
Now, a couple of American foreign assistance efforts that have been just universally appreciated: PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which probably, through the efforts of President Bush and then President Obama, saved millions of people from a pandemic; and then the Millennium Challenge, which tries to take foreign assistance and give it to states that are actually going to use it wisely, that are not corrupt. Can you talk a little bit about the future of those programs? And I know you’re an advocate for them. How are you doing inside the administration and on the Hill?
SECRETARY TILLERSON: Well, you picked two of the easiest to defend, because PEPFAR is broadly viewed, within the administration even, as like the gold standard of success. It has produced extraordinary results and it has demonstrated it really uses the American dollar wisely. For dollar invested, if you think about it as an investment, it’s a dollar invested for the return – PEPFAR, by any measure you want to examine it, has been wildly successful.
And the Millennium Challenge Corporation, similarly, has been wildly successful because of the disciplined process it uses. I think the debate that goes on more is not about those kinds of programs, but about a lot of other assistance programs that may not have the kind of structure around them that PEPFAR has or the kind of structure around them – and accountability to go with structure – that the Millennium Challenge has, and a view that America is, has been, and still is today the most generous nation on planet Earth when it comes to humanitarian assistance, disaster relief. We are always first and foremost.
But if you look at the situation with the nation’s finances, and we all know about the deficits that we’re building up all the time, I think the President has rightly asked the question of, okay, we know what we’re doing; how’s the rest of the world doing? And are you doing your share? And so that has become very much an overlay to how this administration thinks about all means of foreign assistance, from the kind of assistance that’s provided through USAID and the State Department to foreign military sales and assistance, to international organizations at the UN and others. We will do our part, but we demand that others do their part as well. And so he has created very high expectations that we will go out and elicit others to step up and start contributing more on a proportionate basis with their ability to do so. And he famously points to a lot of nations around the world that are doing extraordinarily well. In many cases they’re doing better than we are with our own economy, yet they’re not carrying what in our view is their share of this need the world has.
So a lot of this last year and even the early part of this year is a lot of active engagement with countries around this issue. Having said that, there’s no abandonment of our recognition of these needs. And as you know and through the budget process, the budget process involves our two branches of government, co-equal branches. The Congress has their say on it as well, and the administration has theirs. So a lot of this is, in the end, we resolve it through the budget negotiation process.
The last thing I would say about the State Department budget in particular, because it got a lot of – it’s gotten a lot of discussion, is I like to give people perspective. The State Department’s budget is coming off of a record high – $55 billion, largest budget the State Department ever had, and a series of about the last five or six years of one record budget after another. And what I tell people, and having run another organization that had large numbers we had to deal with every day, it’s very hard to execute – it’s very hard for the State Department to execute a $55 billion budget. I mean, quite frankly, if you want to do it well and you want to be good stewards of the American hard-earned taxpayer dollar that you’ve been given, we do need to be able to go out and do that well. And the truth of the matter is one of the reasons we’re not struggling in 2017 is we had a lot of carry-forward money because no one could execute that size of a budget. And so there’s a lot of money that’s moving through.
So right now I’d say we’re in a dynamic situation where we’re not – we’re not in a position of being unable to meet, we believe, the most critical needs out there. But it’s coming and we’re trying to plan ahead and we’re trying to elicit more burden-sharing from others around the world.
SECRETARY RICE: Thanks. One final question before we let you go. I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask about where you started your remarks: North Korea. We’ve got false alarms going off in Hawaii. We’ve got people talking about war coming on the peninsula. At the same time, we’ve got the North Koreans and the South Koreans deciding they’re going to march together in the Olympics.
Do you have a sense at all that the rhetoric that we’ve used, the fact that perhaps the diplomacy is not as front and center as some of the talk about our military options, that we might be driving a wedge with our South Korean allies? I know when I was secretary and trying to do the Six-Party Negotiations, the North Koreans loved to drive a wedge to pick off the Chinese or pick off the South Koreans or pick off the Russians, and it was really important not for the United States to get isolated.
So how should we read these initiatives between the North and South? And tell us about the diplomacy, because I think we’re all in agreement, nobody really wants war on the peninsula, on the Korean Peninsula, despite the seriousness of the North Korean threat.
SECRETARY TILLERSON: Well, our diplomacy efforts, which began really last February, the first week I was – after I was sworn in, I was with the President in the Oval and the very first foreign policy challenge that he gave me was he said you’ve got to develop a foreign policy approach to North Korea. And so we did and we worked that through the interagency process.
And what we – I labeled it the peaceful pressure campaign; the President has since relabeled it the maximum pressure campaign. But it is – and I know people say, “Ah, we’ve tried sanctions in the past. They never work.” We’ve never had a sanctions regime that is as comprehensive as this one, and we’ve never had Chinese support for sanctions like we’re getting now. Russia is a slightly different issue. But the Chinese have leaned in hard on the North Koreans to the point – part of this approach was to help the Chinese come to the realizations that North Korea for the last 50, 60 years may have been an asset to you; they’re now a liability to you. And I mean, it’s because of how events can play out on the Korean Peninsula. If China doesn’t help us solve this problem, there are a lot of follow-on effects, and China is well aware of those.
So I think the diplomatic efforts are about unifying the international community around this sanctions campaign, which has been extraordinarily effective. As President Moon himself told us on the phone call – and I would tell you, we have probably – the level of communication that goes on between ourselves, South Korea, and China on this issue is pretty extraordinary. People would probably be surprised at how often we are on the phone with one another a week talking about this. Moon said the reason the South Koreans came to us was because they are feeling the bite of these sanctions. And we’re seeing it in some of the intel, we’re seeing it through anecdotal evidence coming out of defectors that are escaping.
The Japanese made a comment yesterday in our session that they have had over 100 North Korean fishing boats that have drifted into Japanese waters – two-thirds of the people on those boats have died – they weren’t trying to escape – and the ones that didn’t die, they wanted to go back home. So they sent them back to North Korea. But what they learned is they’re being sent out in the wintertime to fish because there’s food shortages, and they’re being sent out to fish with inadequate fuel to get back.
So we’re getting a lot of evidence that these sanctions are really starting to hurt. And so the rapprochement of the North to the South, now they’re on to the playbook that you know as well as anyone. And the playbook is, okay, we’re going to start our charm offensive to the rest of the world and let them see we’re just normal people like everybody else. We’re going to engender some sympathy. We’re going to try to drive a wedge between South Korea and their allies. And we spent an extraordinary amount of time yesterday in the group discussion hearing from Foreign Minister Kang of South Korea about how they’re not going to let that happen.
So we understand what this is about, and we’ve been supportive of this rapprochement, because the other element of the diplomacy is we’ve been waiting for Kim to decide he wants to talk. We’ve been very clear, and our channels are open. And as I said yesterday in my press avail, he knows how to reach me if he wants to talk. But he’s got to tell me he wants to talk. We’re not going to chase him.
So this may be their early effort to break the ice; we’ll see. Nothing may come of it, but – we are supportive of that, but I would tell you that among the allies in the region, but equally with China, I don’t think we have ever been as unified against this threat. Because China knows the potential consequences of this, to unintended consequences that could come later. And in diplomacy, where you’re dealing with someone across the table like this, and when we get to that negotiating table – and I’m confident we will – I want to know that Secretary Mattis has a very, very strong military option standing behind me. That will give me a better position from which to try to solve this.
As Secretary Mattis and I told our Chinese counterparts when we were across the table from one another in a security and strategic dialogue, I said to my counterpart, Yang Jiechi – I said, “State Councilor, if you and I don’t solve this, these guys get to fight, and we don’t want that. And neither do you.”
So we are highly motivated. It is a long process. It’s taken a lot of patience. We’ll see. But we are committed, as is everyone in the international community, to a denuclearized North Korea. And we’re going to stay on that until we achieve it.
SECRETARY RICE: Thank you very much, and all the best. We certainly hope you succeed. Thank you very much. (Applause.)
[1] Governorate

How to overcome the EU's many crises

Opinion

Ten Commandments to overcome the EU's many crises

• 

  The Juncker commission (Photo: European Commission)

By Uffe Ostergard

COPENHAGEN, Today, 09:28

I have been a strong proponent of European cooperation for the past 50 years and am sad to see how our dream of a united Europe has been destroyed by the many crises of recent years.
The monetary union was a faulty construction that lacked a political arm to govern the economies involved.

The result was that Europe lost 8 percent of gross national product (GNP), compared to the US, after the 2008 financial crisis. We could have had the same growth rate as the Americans by taking real control of the EU economy. In fact, eight percent of the EU's GNP could have solved most of its economic problems.
The refugee crisis was not difficult to foresee and the expansion of Africa's population and its consequences should not have come as a surprise.
We abolished all EU internal borders without establishing strong common borders around the EU/Schengen countries. We were then taken aback when refugees started to move towards us.
We need urgently to control the EU borders, stop the illegal immigration industry and open up legal immigration routes for people from outside the EU with proper passports, visas and work offers.
Brexit could have been avoided if we had dealt with the EU's basic problems and given Europeans a slim, efficient and democratic Europe before the British people voted.
These three major EU crises led to populist victories in several countries. The EU has grown in popular support recently because people feel threatened by one country leaving it - not out of love for the Brussels institutions.

This is the core analysis that I have written together with the longest-serving Danish member of the European Parliament, Jens-Peter Bonde.
The book that we have written together is called 'What Next, EU?'
It contains ten proposals that would change things from continual crisis to a better Europe if they were to be adopted. We have been political opponents for many years. Then we met and succeeded in overcoming our differences. The result is this book that ends with 'Ten Commandments' to democratise EU.
We hope that you as its reader will also be willing to discuss our ideas on how to save Europe.

1. Close all tax havens and reform the EU currency union

* Forbid all tax transactions through tax havens if they do not offer full disclosure and information.
* Introduce common rules for taxation of all companies that export or have subsidiaries in other countries. It is unfair that big businesses can avoid paying taxes, while smaller companies and ordinary citizens pay the bill for those who have a better ability to pay.
* Introduce joint taxation of financial transactions and company profits to replace member states' and citizens' contributions to the EU.
* Either wind up the euro or let the monetary union be governed democratically, with greater emphasis on growth and employment than controlling inflation, and with the necessary willingness to show solidarity between the richer countries and areas and those that lag behind.

2. Create green growth

* Use the EU budget, the European Investment Bank and the European Central Bank to contribute to climate protection, green growth and job creation in the member states. That makes more sense than continuing the existing massive supports for those who own farmland.
* Adopt a sliding scale for countries' co-financing of green growth based on their financial capacity, so that the richest countries for example, would receive, say, 10 percent in grants while the poorest might receive 50 percent.

3. Establish a common refugee fund

* Inaugurate a modern 'Marshall Plan' for the countries of the Middle East and Africa, to create realistic prospects of local employment.
* Open our markets for duty-free access so that poor countries can export goods to us instead of people.
* The road to Europe should go through embassies, airports and neigbourhood camps, not be by means of overcrowded inflatable boats, with huge numbers drowning in the sea.
* Europe should be open to legal visa access, so we can close down the illegal immigration industry that robs and exploits immigrants.
* The EU budget should finance the cost of refugees and allow communities, organisations and companies across the EU to compete in offering solutions to the migration problem.

4. Enforce efficient border control and the right to welfare

* The common external borders must be effectively and humanely monitored with the help of EU budget subsidies. It is not fair to leave the bill and the trouble to the most vulnerable EU countries such as Italy and Greece.
* Ships with immigrants in them should be returned to where they came from. That is not pretty but it is necessary. Then it would be enough to have mild and friendly border controls at the Union's internal frontiers which would give greater security to citizens, for example by automatic scanning of car license plates.
* Member states themselves should have the right to restrict immigration by setting rules for minimum wages and distribution of domestic welfare benefits.
* The rules on free movement of people should be changed, so that citizens in different countries can willingly accept them.
* The EU must also act more effectively against cross-border crime, so that people can feel more safer and secure.

5. Open up and democratise the EU

* All EU meetings should be open to citizens and any document produced by the institutions should be publicly available unless a law or specific decision allows for exceptions.
* The EU Ombudsman, the Court of Auditors and the European Parliament's budget control committee must have the right to check all expenditures.
* All laws should be adopted by the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers together and should be open to further amendment on the initiative of the Commission, the Council of Ministers, the European Parliament or the national parliaments.
* Delegated acts should also be open to amendment by a majority in the elected bodies. We can no longer have laws and regulations that cannot be changed by voters and their elected representatives.
* The European Court of Justice should avoid judicial activism and stop effectively making laws through its judgments. Laws should always be adopted by elected representatives who are subject to voter control. We cannot have far-reaching judgments laying down rules that can never be amended by the European Parliament, the Council of Ministers or the national parliaments.

6. We must be able to choose our leaders

* National Commissioners should be elected directly at the same time as elections to the European Parliament.
* It will be devastating for citizens' confidence if/when we must change to a smaller Commission in 2019. Smaller countries should feel represented in the government of the union by having their own Commissioner.
* A Commission that is without participation by every member state will lack legitimacy when the Commission adopts 70 percent of all laws on its own, and has the exclusive right to propose all others.
* The president of the Commission should be elected by the European Parliament and the presidents and prime ministers in the European Council together, as long as there is no European people ready to support direct elections of an EU president, as in the United States of America.

7. Begin reform with the national parliaments

* National parliaments should adopt the EU annual legislative programme and become better at implementing the principle of subsidiarity. It is not Brussels that should decide. The desirable direction should always be bottom-up rather than top-down.
* Adoption of laws should not primarily be a matter for ministers, officials, experts and lobbyists. The elected representatives of national parliaments should decide and control their countries' input into the decision-making process of the EU. National parliaments and voters must have co-influence and co-responsibility.
* All proposals for EU legislation could have a first reading in the national sectoral committee, a second reading in the European affairs committee and a third reading with the adoption of each countries' position in the national parliaments. Thus the voters can see whom to punish or reward on the next polling day.

8. Limit EU bureaucracy

* Laws and allocations of money should be adopted with a designated expiry date, so they expire automatically unless explicitly renewed.
* Rules for public procurement rules should be changed so as to create less frustration and more competition. Small and medium-sized enterprises should have better chances of winning tenders than they have now.
* All laws should be accessible by the citizens. It should be possible for citizens to read and understand legislation in whatever area they are interested.
* The many thousands of EU laws and even more numerous rules and regulations should be collected under the main legislative act, with appropriate attachments. Suggestions for changes in laws must be made visible. Today even experts often have difficulty figuring out the actual legal situation in relation to some EU laws.
* Knowledge of EU relations has become a specialty for lawyers and the 30,000 or so paid lobbyists in Brussels. European laws and their creation should in principle belong to all of us.

9. Greater freedom for member countries

* The Commission and the European Court of Justice should only be able to intervene in member states' decisions in instances where there are clear cross-border effects.
* This could be done by means of a European 'Freedom Act' that would limit the impact of the Union's 144,000 or so laws, rules, standards and judgments so that they only apply in relation to cross-border issues.
* Harmonisation needs to take place so that businesses and citizens experience the benefit of having one good standard rather than 28 different sets of rules.
* Common minimum rules should allow countries to adopt additional protection, for example in relation to climate, the environment, health and consumer safety.

10. Peace and free trade

* The EU should contribute to international peacekeeping and development by strengthening and supporting the UN and respecting the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
* The EU should defend and respect human rights, both inside and outside the union.
* The member states should continue to decide whether they will participate in the EU common defence and Nato.
* The EU should remove customs and quantitative restrictions on the importation of goods as much as possible and enter into free trade agreements with every possible country and area.
* Trade agreements should consider the degree of development of different countries and respect the climate, environment, health, safety and public policy of the participating states and the EU.
* Mediation and financial compensation should be used wherever possible, instead of leaving decision-making and judicial authority to mainly multinational companies and their lawyers, as was the case in the proposed TTIP agreement with the United States of America.

Uffe Ostergard is a professor emeritus at Copenhagen Business School and the author of What Next, EU?

23Share