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John Feffer
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John Feffer
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On November 6, U.S. voters will go to the polls in the first nation-wide opportunity to support or reject Donald Trump, his party, and his policies.
Until recently, it looked as though the opposition Democratic Party would win back the House of Representatives and have a good shot at seizing the Senate as well.
But the president is currently enjoying a bump up in his approval ratings to the highest level they’ve been since he entered the White House. The confirmation of Brett Kavanagh to the Supreme Court, despite concerted opposition, has strengthened the president’s popularity in rural areas and in red states more generally.
Foreign policy is not a major issue in these mid-term elections. The president is running on the economy, namely strong growth and low unemployment. With his tax cuts, Trump has pumped an enormous amount of money into the economy, which has sustained the economic expansion that started under his predecessor.
It’s not a sustainable economic approach. Budget deficits have grown significantly, and soon all but the wealthiest Americans will start to feel the consequences of cutbacks in government programs. But this delusional economic program will win votes for the Trump agenda in the next election and, if the inevitable crash doesn’t come before 2020, in the elections after that as well.
The election will also hinge on the strength of the evangelical community, which focuses in particular on the composition of the Supreme Court and Trump’s views on issues such as abortion and LGBT rights.
Finally, the president has continued to play up the threat of immigrants flooding over the border with Mexico, even suggesting that “unknown Middle Easterners” are part of a caravan of migrants traveling north through Central America. But this isn’t so much a foreign policy issue as a way to assuage the racial and religious anxieties of his white base.
If foreign policy played a larger role in the election, then the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul should have pushed the president’s popularity rating downward. After all, Trump has aligned U.S. policy even more closely with an authoritarian country that is waging a horrific war against one of the poorest countries in the world, Yemen. Saudi Arabia continues to export its religious extremism, Wahhabism, around the world. It is violating a wide spectrum of human rights at home, denying women the vote, criminalizing the LGBT community, and executing oppositionists.
The Trump administration, particularly the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, decided to make a strategic alliance with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the likely next king of Saudi Arabia, against Shia Iran and, to a certain degree, against the variant of political Islam in Turkey as well. Although the crown prince has instituted a few superficial reforms – such as permitting women to drive and showing Western films – he has focused on concentrating power in his own hands and going after critics domestically and abroad.
The assassination of Jamal Khashoggi was a logical consequence of these policies, not an exception. Khashoggi was not a vehement oppositionist. He’d worked inside the Saudi system for years. But he despaired of seeing any significant change, particularly under Mohammed bin Salman, so he fled the country.
The crown prince could not tolerate even Khashoggi’s mild criticism. So he sent a team to Turkey to eliminate the journalist. After vigorous denials, the Saudi government now admits that it killed Khashoggi, but only as part of a “fistfight.” The Trump administration has largely accepted this bogus explanation (though many Republican legislators have publically expressed skepticism and dismay).
The Khashoggi case demonstrates the consequences of Trump’s preference for dealing with autocrats. He has displayed an all-too-comfortable relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. He has also talked about North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as if the two were involved in a secret love affair.
All of this should hurt Trump and the Republican Party at the polls. But the president and his party have gambled that the base of their support cares little about democracy and only about power.
The Democratic Party has tried to embarrass Trump by linking him to all these dictators. It has criticized the administration for its utter disregard for human rights. These are fair criticisms.
But in general, the Democrats have failed to understand the situation on the Korean peninsula. Even Bernie Sanders, who gave an impressive foreign policy speech last month, implicitly criticized the Trump administration for not penalizing North Korea for its failure to negotiating more seriously. Sanders said:
As we did with Iran, if North Korea continues to refuse to negotiate seriously, we should look for ways to tighten international sanctions. This will involve working closely with other countries, particularly China, on whom North Korea relies for some 80 percent of its trade.
First of all, North Korea is taking these negotiations very seriously. But it’s not going to give up any key element of its nuclear program without some quid pro quos. So, if the Democrats want to criticize the current discussions between Washington and Pyongyang, they should point out that the Trump administration is refusing to break from the old, tired, and demonstrably unsuccessful game plan of insisting that North Korea do everything first before it can get anything in return. They should also point out that the Trump administration is actively impeding inter-Korean cooperation by refusing to exempt joint economic plans from sanctions and opposing the inter-Korean agreement to establish a no-fly zone above the border.
If the Democrats do win back the House, they won’t have much influence over Trump’s foreign policy, which he has been conducting outside of congressional oversight and often without substantial input from his advisors. But they will have an opportunity to hold hearings and make more noise. It would be a shame if they make all the wrong noises, like Sanders, about more sanctions against North Korea when they should be talking about how to facilitate closer inter-Korean relations.
By John Feffer, director of Foreign Policy In Focus
The views presented in this column are the writer’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those of The Hankyoreh.
Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]
