INCOMPETENT AND IGNORANT TRUMP´S HANDLING OF ASIAN AFFAIRS

The Worst Mistake of Trump’s First 100 Days

There’s plenty of blunders to choose from, but only one clear winner.

STEPHEN WALT, FOREIGN POLICY, VOICE

April 26, 2017  

 

After 100 days in office, what is President Donald Trump’s biggest foreign-policy mistake? I’m sure each of you will have your particular favorites. Personally, I’ve found there have been so many blunders it’s been a bit hard to keep track. Let’s consider the options.

Was his biggest error appointing an oddball like Michael Flynn to serve as White House national security advisor? Flynn lasted 20 days, which sounds more like a stint in rehab than a period of government service, and was ultimately done in by his dubious activities, his inability to tell a straight story about them, and a flood of leaks suggesting he had no idea how to do his job. His replacement, retired Army Gen. H.R. McMaster, has been cleaning house and made some mainstream appointments, but unqualified hacks like Sebastian Gorka still have jobs while dozens of other key positions at State, Defense, and other agencies remain unfilled.

Or did Trump err by failing to monitor, control, or straighten out his associates’ tangled connections to Russia, a failure compounded when people like Flynn and Attorney General Jeff Sessions proved unable to tell a straight story about them? We still don’t know what Trump’s connections in Russia really are, and it’s entirely possible that there’s no fire behind all the smoke. But the upshot of the whole debacle is that Trump couldn’t pursue a reset with Russia now if it wanted to. The whole mess is deeply unfortunate from a geopolitical perspective, because the United States could still use Moscow’s cooperation on a number of issues and there are some serious disagreements between the two states that need to be worked out in a disciplined and hard-headed fashion. Trump’s carelessness in this regard has constrained his diplomatic latitude significantly.

OCTOBER REVOLUTION, ONE CENTURY LATER

THE NEW YORK TIMES, The Opinion Pages.

Angels and Demons in the Cold War and Today

Stephen Boykewich

RED CENTURY MARCH 13, 2017

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 LOS ANGELES — George Kennan knew how to bring down the house. His lecture audiences started off skeptical about whether Russia really wanted to be remade on the American model. Then he told them about the Russian political prisoners who spent the weeks before the Fourth of July scrounging bits of cloth in red, white and blue. When the holiday came, they met their jailers by waving a sea of tiny hand-sewn stars and stripes through the bars.

It sounds like the perfect Cold War propaganda tale. But the Fourth of July that Kennan was referring to wasn’t during the 1950s — it was in 1876. And the George Kennan telling the story wasn’t the famous Cold War-era diplomat, but his distant relative and namesake, a journalist who had spent time in Russia before going on the lecture circuit in the 1880s.

The American narrative of the Cold War as a battle for the fate of humankind is a familiar one. From the establishment of the Truman Doctrine in 1947 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States portrayed Soviet Russia as not merely a geopolitical rival, but a spiritual foe. Journalists and policy makers veered between bitter demonization of the country and Messianic fantasies about remaking it in America’s image. But what’s surprising is how far back America’s evangelizing approach to Russia goes — and how it continues to distort our thinking today.

JOHN KASICH, THE REAL OPTION AGAINST TRUMP...AND HILLARY

LEADERSHIP ELECTION 2016

If Republicans Want a Remote Chance of Winning, They Should Get Behind John Kasich

FORTUNE,  

• Cyrus Sanati

• @beyondblunt

 MARCH 16, 2016.

The Ohio governor stands the best shot at appealing to moderates, which the GOP needs to win.

The Republicans are damned if they nominate Donald Trump, but only possibly damned if they don’t.

Governor John Kasich’s big primary win in his home state of Ohio on Tuesday night has increased the likelihood that none of the remaining Republican presidential candidates will have the votes necessary to win the nomination going into the Republican National Convention this summer. So, it is looking likely that the delegates at the convention will end up picking the nominee themselves.

In considering a candidate, the delegates will need to choose the person who best represents the views and values of the GOP, as well as someone who could take on and actually stands a chance at beating the Democratic nominee in the general election. While the delegates could technically nominate anyone they want, if they were to focus solely on the remaining candidates, they would bewise to choose Governor John Kasich.

While Governor Kasich will probably enter the convention with the least amount of delegates among the two remaining Republican candidates, Donald Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, he stands head and shoulders above both in terms of experience and electability. Despite his lackluster showing in the primaries, Kasich is the only Republican candidate left in the race who has consistentlyshown in poll after poll that he can beat Hillary Clinton in the general election—and do it by a healthy margin.

Kasich’s positive campaigning and record of fiscal discipline play well with voters of the “mighty middle,” which is made up of moderate Republicans, conservative (‘blue dog’ or Reagan) Democrats, as well as independents and the chronically undecided.

Winning the mighty middle is imperative for Republicans given the numbers. There are 41.5 million registered Democrats and only 30.5 million registered Republicans. So whoever ends up being the GOP nominee not only needs to turn out the party base in large numbers, they also need to win over the majority of the mighty middle, and even perhaps a few moderate Democrats as well.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to see either Trump or Cruz doing well with moderate voters, let alone winning them over. Many Republicans seem to relate to Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who said on the campaign trail in January that a choice between Trump and Cruz is like “being shot or poisoned.”

Cruz is by far the least electable of the two. The Texas senator takes pride in being an uncompromising religious zealot which, while great for the far right fringes of the Republican party, isn’t as attractive to moderates, let alone any voting bloc further to the left, which Cruz must win to have a shot at the White House. Cruz’s policy of undoing practically everything the Obama Administration has done over the last eight years may have played well with some, but it won’t do as well with moderate and conservative Democrats, especially those who are not religious. Furthermore, his tax plan is highly regressive, which is a turn off to conservative Democrats and low income voters. It would also add trillions of dollars to the national debt, which will not please fiscal conservatives, many of whom are Republican Party members. 

If it weren’t for the handful of right-wing billionaires who initially seeded his campaign with eight-figure contributions, Cruz would have never been able to raise the funds to run (thanks, Citizen’s United). If Cruz is the Republican Party’s nominee, Clinton would likely obliterate him in the general election.

To be sure, mighty middle voters have placed a few radical ideologues, like Cruz and Trump, into the White House over the years. But they have only done so when the economy was in serious trouble, which, despite all the chatter this election cycle to the contrary, really isn’t doing that poorly at the moment. Indeed, the stock market is strong and relatively stable, interest rates are low, credit is easy to access, unemployment is below 5%, and inflation is basically at zero.

Could the economy be doing better? Sure, economic growth has been anemic for a while, but it doesn’t appear as if the country is headed into a recession anytime soon. And while wages haven’t grown as fast as some would like (have they ever?), it isn’t crushing the purchasing power of Americans, as both inflation and gasoline prices remain relatively weak.

Despite the facts, though, Trump, has been trying to appeal to voters in the middle by playing fast and loose with the truth on the state of the economy. For example, Trump often tells voters in his stump speeches that the unemployment rate is far higher than what the government claims:

“Don’t believe those phony numbers when you hear 4.9% and 5% unemployment,” Trump told supporters in a victory speech following his win in New Hampshire. “The number’s probably 28, 29, as high as 35. In fact, I even heard recently 42%.”

Those numbers are beyond ludicrous. Even during the Great Depression, unemployment in the U.S. never topped 25%, let alone 42%. While there are many other ways to measure unemployment, the highest official rate (U6), which includes marginally attached workers and those working part-time for economic reasons, comes in at only 9.7%. Politifacts reviewed Trump’s quote and came to a similar conclusion, noting that the New York business man’s claim was “Pants on Fire,” meaning that it was a total and outright lie.

Nonetheless, Trump has been somewhat successful in convincing at least a few Americans that the economy is in dire straits. He does this not with facts but by saying that the nation’s leaders (the Obama Administration) are stupid. His merciless attack on free trade, foreigners, migrant workers, and undocumented immigrants have served him brilliantly. It has allowed him to play on the fears of a minority of white Americans who, and let’s just be honest here, aren’t fans of the growing racial diversity within the American population.

The truth is, only a small (very small) minority of Americans have recently lost their jobs to an immigrant or live in fear of losing their job to a foreigner in the wake of some errant trade deal. Consider some of the states where Trump has won big, like those in the deep South. It is strange how voters in these states identify with losing manufacturing jobs to Mexico when the number of such jobs are on the rise all across the region. For example, since 2010, Alabama’s manufacturing workforce has grown by 20,000, while those in Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina have grown by around 40,000 each. Ironically, many of these jobs have come courtesy of foreign automakers, like Mercedes, Hyundai, BMW, and Volkswagen, which have set up plants in the region to sell cars to Americans. Something else is clearly “angering” these voters.

Trump’s economic message ultimately rings hollow, while his other messages appeal to a small minority of Americans who still rue the day that President Lyndon Johnson betrayed the South and signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While you will find fans of Trump’s message everywhere in the country, they aren’t concentrated in large enough numbers in the swing states Republicans need to win to counter Hillary Clinton. Those conservatives who are unhappy with Trump’s message simply won’t come out and vote while the vast majority of those in the mighty middle will come out and vote for anyone who isn’t Trump. It would be a political bloodbath for Republicans and Hillary Clinton will be the beneficiary.

The only way the Republicans can salvage this election cycle is by supporting a moderate conservative, like John Kasich. The economy simply isn’t bad enough to warrant a radical shift to the right or the left. Furthermore, the Republican delegates at the convention should not fear Trump breaking away and forming a third party with his supporters. They should instead welcome the schism and say, “good riddance.” Catering to that vocal minority is the reason why the Republican Party is losing. It has alienated scores of conservatives who are embarrassed to identify themselves as Republicans. The conservatives lost in the middle will only come back to the party if it takes a strong line against the intolerance Trump has espoused. At this point, Kasich is the only Republican candidate who can bring his party members together.

BRIDGE OF SPIES AND ITS LESSON FOR THE POST COLD WAR

UNITED KINGDOM OUTSIDE THE EUROPEAN UNION?

THE MEANING OF BREXIT

AN INTERVIEW WITH IAN BREMMER

THE ECONOMIST, Feb 23rd 2016, 13:55 BY BAGEHOT

DAVID CAMERON completed his EU renegotiation just days ago and yet, as some of us predicted, already it is receding into the distance. As the campaign gets underway, the focus has moved off the prime minister’s respectable but inevitably modest achievements in Brussels and onto the big arguments. What would a Brexit mean for the country, and for Europe? Would it leave it stronger or weaker? What sort of role should Britain seek to play in the world over the coming decades? One particularly lively fault line in Westminster (albeit perhaps not on the doorsteps) divides those who would leave the EU to forge better relations with Anglophone and emerging powers on other continents from those who believe Britain’s EU membership is a stepping stone to the wider world. 

To help make sense of these choices, last week (as Mr Cameron was finalising his renegotiation) I sat down with Ian Bremmer, the president of Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy, and a foreign policy guru. I asked him about what Britain’s decision on June 23rd would mean for its role on the global stage and why partners like the United States are taking such a close interest in the outcome. His answers together amount to a grave warning of the risks of an “Out” vote. 

Mr Bremmer argued that:

• Brexit would bring the “further marginalisation of Britain as a power with influence”
• the prospects of TTIP (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) and the attractiveness of the British market would be hit “very dramatically” by Brexit
• given the uncertainty about the EU’s future, now is a “very bad time for a referendum”
• for that reason, and given the way the state is changing, it cannot be assumed that the referendum will settle the European question
• another referendum in the medium term is a possibility
• in a “world with more currencies” it is entirely possible for Britain to thrive in the EU without adopting the Euro
• Britain should be doing “so much more” and “everything possible” to improve its relationship with India rather than obsessing about China, for which Germany will always be the best European partner
• the notion of an “incredibly overbearing” EU getting in Britain’s way does not match the weak reality: “I really would not be very worried that the EU is stopping Britain from accomplishing so much”
• Japan, not Britain, is best placed to sell services to the Chinese
• by backing out of Europe and thus making itself a “second tier power”, Britain is undermining its own attempts to attract Chinese attention and investment 
• it is dangerously short-termist for Brits to put “all of your eggs in the China basket”
• London’s concentration on winning small concessions from Brussels illustrates its lack of ambition on the world stage: “The very debate that is being had over this referendum proves my point that Britain is not as relevant as it used to be”
• Britain should be looking to set Europe’s course: “if you vote to stay in the EU the Brits can and should embrace a leadership role in what is a weaker Europe that needs Britain"
• Brexit could put off Eurosceptics in other EU countries, because they will see how “painful” and “technically difficult to engineer” leaving the union is
• Brexit would contribute to a much broader trend: the hollowing out of the transatlantic relationship and America’s associated turn towards the Pacific

NB: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

BAGEHOT: What would Brexit look like for Britain? What does it mean if we vote to leave?

IAN BREMMER: Well first of all it probably means a couple of years to unwind. The level of distraction, technically, to figure out how to do it with the Europeans is going to involve an enormous amount of political effort and resource, at the exclusion of many other things. We had a Supreme Justice who just died two days ago in the United States.

BAGEHOT: Scalia.

IAN BREMMER: Think about how much time that’s going to take; every other piece of legislation that you thought was relevant is suddenly thrown under a bus until they get through that discussion. Well, it’s that times ten. I think that’s one thing. The second thing is that it’s the further marginalisation of Britain as a power with influence, whether that is true diplomatically, economically or militarily (with the United States or more broadly). Now the US relationship is already weaker than it used to be, because the US see the Germans as generally more important and relevant, and the Brits have wanted to make themselves China’s best friends in the West. 

BAGEHOT: I joined George Osborne on his recent trip to Beijing. It was a whole different approach.

IAN BREMMER: It was quite something. I don't support that approach, for what it’s worth. But I do think, whether it means getting the TTIP done (which is important for the global economic architecture, the alignment of the West and trying to stop the fragmentation of values and standards in the international economy) or the attractiveness of the British market; all of these things will be hit very dramatically by Brexit. And that’s leaving aside the presumption that Scotland would leave Britain after Brexit (there would certainly be another referendum, because it reopens everything). So as much as I understand that Europe looks bad right now (and it does), I think that Brexit would be a truly unfortunate decision for the British nation.

BAGEHOT: Let’s pick over a couple of the counter-arguments put by the Eurosceptics. The first is that Brexit might seem like an uncertain prospect, but the status quo is not a known quantity either, in that Europe is changing, the Eurozone is trying to integrate, where Europe will be in five to ten years we don't exactly know…

IAN BREMMER: Sounds like a very bad time for a referendum. That is a very good argument for having the referendum when it is less politically expedient for Cameron. Unfortunately political figures are politicians, and that is their priority in all counts.

BAGEHOT: But Cameron having chosen to have the referendum now… What is the counter-argument to the “it’s riskier to stay in” objection?

IAN BREMMER: Have another one. If things get really ugly for you in five years time can’t you have another referendum? Are you legally blocked from having one?

BAGEHOT: Not at all, it’s up to the government of the day.

IAN BREMMER: Then explain to me why that argument [that Britain cannot hold another referendum in a few years] holds any water whatsoever. I just haven’t heard anyone actually say: “well why don’t you do one then”! I just don’t understand it. There’s nothing stopping you.

BAGEHOT: Eurosceptics would say that the Europhile establishment has somehow been pressured into giving us this referendum now, but that it won’t give us another one in five years. 

IAN BREMMER: If if becomes obvious that things are getting much worse… Look, I think it’s fair to say that the grounds for Euroscepticism have been getting larger over time. If Europe continues to deteriorate, that will not change. So it may be easier now to have a referendum than any time before - until tomorrow. I would think you would want as many referenda as possible. At the end of the day Quebec wasn’t satisfied with just one.

BAGEHOT: The “neverendum”.

IAN BREMMER: The neverendum! That’s right.

BAGEHOT: I think we need to use that word more. But you’re right: even if we vote to stay in by quite a large margin (which it might not be), the idea that this is going to settle anything is nonsense.

IAN BREMMER: It is! It’s dangerous to assume these things are settled. And I say that in particular because what it means to be a state is changing quickly. And that itself is going to have an impact on these discussions. There is so much decentralisation of power happening.

BAGEHOT: Within states?

IAN BREMMER: Within states. In terms of municipalities.

BAGEHOT: That’s certainly true here.

IAN BREMMER: And it’s true in the United States too. And in states in the United States. There’s just a lot of decentralisation. And I don’t see anything slowing that down. Again, in five or ten years time, if large democracies continue to see themselves as being controlled by special interests, incredibly ineffective, very slow moving, unable to respond to the demands of their constituents, then I think we have a whole different set of issues on our plate than the nature of Britain’s affiliation with the EU. You want to understand what the hell Britain is, and how it works. I think those are more fundamental questions.

BAGEHOT: To put another anti-EU argument to you, the Eurozone is going to have to integrate in some way, at whatever level. Britain is outside the Eurozone; Cameron claims to have some sort of protection built into the renegotiation. Formally, at least, every EU country but two (Britain and Denmark) is obliged to join the Euro eventually and although the likes of Sweden may take a long time about that it is possible to imagine a future in which the Eurozone and the EU look more and more identical. Admittedly, it’s quite an optimistic one from the Brussels point of view, but it is conceivable. Where does that leave a country like Britain, that looks extremely unlikely to join the Euro at any time in the next couple of generations? And a country that trades so much on its financial prowess?

IAN BREMMER: As long as you have a common market and the financial regulations themselves are more and more harmonised (between Britain and the rest of the European Union), then that actually allows London to stand quite significantly as a global financial centre. It is true that we are seeing more fragmentation, of the world over the long term, away from the dollar. Now in the last few years since the financial crisis the dollar has actually strengthened and more people have held it, but as the Americans unilaterally use the dollar as a tool of coercive diplomacy and use financial institutions (what I call “the weaponisation of finance”), lots of people are going to hedge. And they’re going to hedge towards the RMB (particularly as they [the Chinese] reform more). It’s going to be a world with more currencies. And I don’t necessarily believe that means that it’s a mistake for Brits to want to be in the EU but not have the Euro. I think that’s OK.

BAGEHOT: On that point about the country’s place in the world, some say Britain should cut itself free from the sclerotic EU and use the freedoms that it wins by leaving the union to build better relationships with the rising markets, with the Commonwealth. For example, because we get so much immigration from the European countries we can’t take as many computer engineers from Bangalore, or whatever. Do you see any merit in that argument? In the idea of Britain as a truly global rather than European player, aided by leaving the EU?

IAN BREMMER: I think the Commonwealth is extraordinarily important to Britain, and the Brits should invest more in it. The very fact that they decided to spend less on the Foreign Office and were able to coordinate their embassies and share resources with the Canadians and the Aussies and the Kiwis… I would have preferred it if the Brits had spent more themselves. But I’d still want them to be doing that sharing. I think it’s hugely important, like the Five Eyes agreement on cyber, which has been very helpful to the United States as well. You look at Britain’s ability to develop a stronger relationship with a country like India, given its ties, and it should be doing so much more. Because India is a rising country, a vibrant democracy and is finally starting to get governance in place. Right now the best relationship India has in the world is with Japan. Britain should not be happy about that. Britain should have been doing everything possible to get in that position; as opposed to China, where the Brits are never going to be able to compete with the Germans. The Germans will always have a better relationship with China than Britain.

BAGEHOT: But are you convinced that Britain staying in the EU doesn’t inhibit that?

IAN BREMMER: Not to a meaningful degree. Not to a degree that matters, compared with the dangers and downsides of leaving. Let’s be honest with ourselves: it’s not like the EU is getting stronger. The EU is getting weaker. Schengen is falling apart and countries are increasingly looking to themselves. Common values in Europe are falling apart. So in the EU that the Brits are thinking about leaving—because ostensibly it is so incredibly overbearing—those things are eroding. Europe doesn’t stand for what it used to. I happen to think that’s sad, because of course the supra-national, democratic identity that Europe took on was in many ways the most bold and courageous experiment that advanced industrial democracies have ever embarked upon. They failed. And you see that in Europe with governments moving away from rule of law, moving away from an independent judiciary. You see it in Hungary, in Poland, in Greece. You see it with the rise of populism in many of the larger European economies as well. In this regard, I really would not be very worried that the EU is stopping Britain from accomplishing so much.

BAGEHOT: You mention India and China. The argument for the great Osborne charm offensive towards the Chinese is that their economy is evolving: where once it had a seemingly unquenchable thirst for the machine goods, the hard engineering exports, in which Germany specialises, now as its middle class grows, as it starts building up a welfare state, Britain’s strengths come into play. Financial, educational, business services are suddenly a larger part of China’s imports. And Osborne’s thinking is that now is therefore the time to try and beat the Germans at their own game. What’s the counter argument?

IAN BREMMER: There are a few. One is that the Chinese take advantage of you when they think you’re desperate. And the Brits smacked of desperation a bit. Not just in joining the AIIB [the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank] but joining it first and saying: “you see, we made this happen for you.” They drive tougher commercial bargains when that happens. The second point is that, long-term, the major economy that the Chinese will ultimately need the most is not Britain. It is Japan. Because Japan has by far the oldest population, they have a healthcare system that really works, they’ve got the most resilient infrastructure in the world. They know how to market to a much older population, develop consumer goods for it. And they’re right there. So good luck to Britain on that one. 

The third point is that, unlike Germany, the Brits actually play a geopolitical role. The Brits are much more interested in talking about human rights internationally, things like the Dalai Lama, Taiwan, Hong Kong. It is true that, for the time being, you have a British government that has jettisoned all that in favour of the Chinese. What happens when the next British government gets elected? Is Cameron able to promise that everyone who comes after him is going to have an equally benign view of a communist China? The Chinese absolutely know that what the Germans do is industrial policy. That’s what they focus on. So the Chinese feel much more certain, long term, that the Germans are not just a good bet; they’re a safe bet. Not only are the Brits not as good a bet, but they’re a very unsafe bet!

BAGEHOT: Let me play devil’s advocate. Britain is progressing towards a less geopolitically significant role. You’ve been saying that in this interview.

IAN BREMMER: Yes, I agree.

BAGEHOT: Meanwhile Germany at least seems to be aware of the fact that there is now more pressure on it, more expectation of it, to lead. The US picks up the phone to Germany rather than Britain for a reason. And OK, Cameron can’t bind his successors, but it looks like the Tories will be in power for quite a while. Aren’t we moving towards a place where Britain can play Germany at its own game?

IAN BREMMER: We are. I think those are both really good points. But I also think that you aren’t going to change a country’s stripes over a couple of years. This British charm offensive was virtually overnight. And British role on Hong Kong and Taiwan lasted a little longer than that. Those are places that are going to get more problematic over time. Yes, the Germans will play a more significant—even military—role. But the British role is more significant militarily in NATO, in the Middle East than Germany’s is today, and it will be in two years and in five years. The fact that the Americans are closer to the Germans is not because the Germans are doing so much militarily. In fact, in part it’s because Obama is becoming more German and the United States is moving in that direction. And also because Germany is clearly the leader of Europe, which by the way is the same reason the Chinese want to be with Germany; if you can make only one stop in Europe where do you go? You’re going to go to where things matter. To whoever’s taking a leadership role. 

The Brits are basically saying: you know what? We’re a second-tier power. Well the Chinese are very likely to take you as a second-tier power. And that’s not where they spend their money, it’s not where they spend their time. Let’s not pretend China is changing its SOE [state owned enterprise] stripes overnight, and the relationships that they continue to have with the big German manufacturers are going away; there’s still an awful lot the Chinese want to learn from and steal from them. And in that regard the fact the Brits are very aligned with the Americans on things like cyber, and the Germans are not, is also useful from the German perspective. Huawei can get into Germany.

BAGEHOT: Ironically one of ways the Germans are different to the Brits is their wariness about the surveillance state. Funny how these things work out.

IAN BREMMER: It is. It’s very ironic, is it not. Look, I’m very sympathetic to the Cameron-Osborne notion that Britain needs to have much better relations with rising powers. I’m very sympathetic to the notion that the Brits need to hedge and that the United States right now doesn’t really know what it is. And so the Special Relationship is not all that special. I get that. I think the China decision is a mistake. What you do is not put all of your eggs in the China basket. What you do is you play very hard with the fact that you’ve got the Commonwealth, in India and you basically do what the Japanese have been doing, which is that you go around planting flags and engaging. But it really should not be: “hey, the Chinese are writing cheques so let’s get the money now.” That’s a short-term strategy. That’s the kind of thing you do if you are the CEO of a company and are planning to retire in a couple of years. It’s not what you do if you’re the prime minister of a country and are looking for your legacy.

BAGEHOT: I think they’re almost explicit about that comparison: the chief-executive prime minister going around cutting deals and flogging British goods.

IAN BREMMER: That’s the problem. The average CEO lasts for less than five years, so they’re all looking at: what do we do to ensure we maximise shareholder value for now? How to we pump those stocks? Gotta make sure we make that money and right now. Doesn’t matter what it means in five or ten years. The problem is the British people are around longer than shareholders. And you can’t do that to your constituents, to your voters. That’s why this is not something they should be embracing. 

BAGEHOT: You mentioned the idea that Britain is becoming marginal and a “second-tier power”. To put the counter-argument, it’s spending its 2% of GDP on defence, it is an international aid superpower, Osborne has stopped the haemorrhage of funds out of the Foreign Office. Britain is still on the UN Security Council, we’re still in the EU. Is it exaggerating to say that the country is pulling back from the world?

IAN BREMMER: Philip Hammond’s speech at Munich was a hell of a lot better than the British statements last year. So I do think there’s something to it. I’m the one who tweeted that the most influence Britain has these days is what’s written in The Economist. And I meant it. Precisely because that is soft power, it does matter and Britain is seen as much more relevant on stuff that it has done for a long time than on what the British government is coming up with these days. The fact that you’re in the Security Council? Who cares. It’s an irrelevant, feckless organisation. 

Look, I think that there’s something to be said: if you vote to stay in the EU the Brits can and should embrace a leadership role in what is a weaker Europe that needs Britain. That needs Britain. Why is it that this entire debate is only about what Britain needs? That shows how much smaller Britain has become.

BAGEHOT: Insecure? 

IAN BREMMER: The very debate that is being had over this referendum proves my point that Britain is not as relevant as it used to be. It needs to get beyond that and say: Britain can be there for others and the Europeans need Britain. The Europeans really need Britain. The Germans, Merkel, need Britain. The French need Britain. The Italians need Britain. And Britain’s not there. Britain doesn’t care. (They need America too, and America’s not there.) Is that the world we want? I wrote about the “G-Zero”, so I’m fully invested in the fact that that’s the way the world is going. But I don’t like it. I don’t think it’s good. I don’t think it’s good for Britain.

BAGEHOT: At the start of this I asked you what Brexit would mean for Britain. What would it mean for the rest of the world? Why is there so much concern in Washington?

IAN BREMMER: There isn’t enough concern in Washington about this! Kerry made his first significant statement on this in Munich.

BAGEHOT: A “strong UK in a strong EU.”

IAN BREMMER: Exactly. And Obama’s going to make a statement, I’m sure. But this has been irrelevant to the Republican and Democratic primaries. There’s been a lot of debate on foreign policy but not on the transatlantic relationship. We [Eurasia Group] set out our top risks for this year and number one was the “hollow alliance”. We believe that it is weaker than at any point in the last 75 years. And it’s precisely because of all the dangers around the EU, including Brexit, that we wrote that. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, I think, is the single biggest thing Obama has done in seven years on foreign policy. It’s something that not only brings America closer to like-minded countries in the Pacific, but it will also, ultimately, help the Chinese integrate in that direction as well, because they don’t want to be left out. Let’s keep in mind that America is relatively new as an Atlantic power. Before World War Two it was focussed more on the Pacific. And it will be again, and it will be much more if Britain leaves the EU.

BAGEHOT: So Britain leaving the EU would help the “pivot”?

IAN BREMMER: Absolutely. The Europeans will be seen as less relevant as allies to Americans. Especially because so many bad things are happening in Europe. All of the geopolitical issues that don’t wash up onto American shores. People say they do, but ISIS is so much less of a problem for America than it is for Europe. Britain leaves the EU, and that is going to be even more so.

BAGEHOT: The fact that Trump is concentrating on Mexicans is telling. 

IAN BREMMER: Sure. That’s because we have an ocean; where with Mexico there’s actually a border.

BAGEHOT: Do you think that Brexit would create a domino effect in the EU?

IAN BREMMER: I certainly believe that other countries would look into having their own referenda; that that political process would gather steam. I don’t necessarily think that Britain leaving would suddenly lead to a wave. I don’t think it would lead to the end of the EU. Because people will also see how painful it is. And they’ll also see how technically difficult it is to engineer. I think that will scare them.

BAGEHOT: How do you think Cameron has handled this whole issue?

IAN BREMMER: He’s a strong prime minister. The Labour Party has imploded. His alliance with the Lib Dems has left the Lib Dems much the worse for it. I think you could say that politically he has handled things extremely well. His cabinet is mostly behind him. He’s a strong premier. But in terms of what that’s meant for Britain as a country, I think it has come off the worse. 

BAGEHOT: Ian Bremmer, thank you.

IAN BREMMER: Thank you.

INSIDE IRAN: THE DEBATE ABOUT THE NUCLEAR DEAL WITH UNITED STATES

What the Iran-Deal Debate Is Like in Iran

The agreement has divided Iranians into camps that could shape the future of the country.

ABBAS MILANI - MICHAEL MC FAUL, THE ATLANTIC, AUGUST 11, 2015

The nuclear deal with Iran has sparked a vigorous debate not only in the United States, but in Iran as well. The discussion of the agreement among Iranians at times echoes the American discussion, but is also much deeper and wider. Reports in Iranian media, as well as our own correspondence and conversations with dozens of Iranians, both in the country and in exile, reveal a public dialogue that stretches beyond the details of the agreement to include the very future of Iran. And it seems that everyone from the supreme leader to the Iranian American executive in Silicon Valley, from the taxi driver in Isfahan to the dissident from Evin Prison, is engaged. The coalitions for and against the deal tend to correlate closely with those for and against internal political reform and normalized relations with the West.

The mere fact that there is such a debate says something about the nature of the Islamic Republic of Iran today. Iran is a dictatorship. One man, the supreme leader, has most of the power. He is the commander in chief and thus formally controls the military, the very powerful internal militia, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and its external wing, the Quds Force. The supreme leader appoints the head of the judiciary, the head of the Iranian national radio and television organization, and most of the National Security Council—an advisory body similar to the U.S. National Security Council. He also controls tens of billions of dollars in revenues from religious endowments and foundations. And, as stated in the constitution, he is the spiritual leader of the country, combining religious and political power in one office.

And yet nowadays the supreme leader does not decide everything on his own. Some formal institutions of the Iranian regime, and a myriad of informal interest-group networks, also play a role in shaping policy, including on the nuclear deal. Most importantly, the Iranian president has some political autonomy. Through his control of the Guardian Council—a committee of 12 men that among other things must approve every candidate wishing to run for elective office—the supreme leader decides who is allowed to run for president. But once the list of candidates is determined, the vote is usually competitive, giving the chief executive an electoral mandate directly from the people. In the last presidential election, candidates ideologically closest to the supreme leader garnered only a few million votes, while the one candidate running as a reformer, Hassan Rouhani, received more than 18 million votes. Rouhani’s wide margin of victory strengthened his position as a partially independent actor within the Iranian regime.

In addition to the president, other groups have obtained some political autonomy within Iran’s fractured authoritarianism. Civil society is constrained but still fighting. A vibrant underground of publishing, theater, music, and poetrycontinues to spread. Divides exist even among the clerics. Conservatives still dominate, but several top clerics have voiced their support for Iran’s reformist forces and criticized—sometimes openly, sometimes more discreetly—conservative policies. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s own brother, Hadi Khamenei, recently described the eight-year presidency of Rouhani’s predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as some of the “darkest [years] in the history of the country,” adding that the conservatives are trying to “give a bad image to the reformists.” This political system—authoritarian but with pockets of pluralism—has created the relatively permissive conditions for a serious, public debate about the nuclear deal.

Moreover, in refraining from taking a firm public position for or against the agreement, Khamenei himself has encouraged this debate. Given the extent of Khamenei’s control, the Iranian negotiators could not have signed the accord without his approval. In public, however, the supreme leader has refrained from praising the work of his negotiating team, saying only that the deal must be ratified through the proper “legal channels” and will not change Iranian policy toward the “arrogant U.S. government.” Khamenei’s mixed signals have allowed others to speak out more forcefully on the nuclear pact.

Those supporting the deal include moderates inside the government, many opposition leaders, a majority of Iranian citizens, and many in the Iranian American diaspora—a disparate group that has rarely agreed on anything until now.

First and most obviously, the moderates within the regime, including Rouhani and his close friend and political ally, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, negotiated the agreement, and are now the most vocal in defending it against Iranian hawks. Rouhani crushed his conservative opponents in the last presidential election in 2013 in part because he advocated for a nuclear deal. This agreement is his Obamacare—his major campaign promise now delivered. Former Presidents Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, as well as moderates in the parliament and elsewhere in government, have also vigorously endorsed the accord. During the negotiations, Rafsanjani, for example, celebrated the fact that Iran’s leaders had “broken a taboo” in talking directly to the United States. Since the agreement was signed, he has said that those within Iran who oppose it are “making a mistake.”

Second and somewhat surprisingly, many prominent opposition leaders also support the deal. Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a popular presidential candidate in 2009 who is now under house arrest for his leadership of the Green Movement protests against Ahmadinejad’s reelection, backed the pursuit of the agreement, albeit with some qualifications. He’s joined by other government critics, some only recently released from Iran’s prisons. Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human-rights activist and Nobel laureate now living in exile, expressed the hope after an interim agreement was reached in April that “negotiations come to a conclusion, because the sanctions have made the people poorer”; she labeled as “extremists” those who opposed the agreement in Iran and America. Akbar Ganji, an Iranian journalist who spent more than six years in prison in Iran, also praised the agreement, writing that “step-by-step nuclear accords, the lifting of economic sanctions and the improvement of the relations between Iran and Western powers will gradually remove the warlike and securitized environment from Iran.”

Polls show that most Iranians agree with these positions, and public opinion is apparent not just in the Iranian government’s numbers but also in the results of earlier surveys conducted by the University of Maryland and Tehran University. The sentiments of many ordinary Iranians were manifest in the spontaneous demonstrations of joy that took place in many Iranian cities after the agreement was announced.

A new poll also indicates that two-thirds of Iranian Americans favor the agreement, and our own conversations with members of the Iranian diaspora bear this out. The Islamic Republic has long enjoyed some defense from a handful of non-governmental organizations in the West, but support for the nuclear deal stretches much deeper into the diaspora and includes those who despise Tehran’s theocracy. For instance, many prominent Iranian American business leaders have told us they approve of the accord. Iranian American foundations and community-service organizations have issued statementsbacking the deal, while also calling for renewed focus on political reforms inside Iran. Even many of those who had to flee the country after the 1979 revolution, and have since helped fund projects to encourage democracy inside Iran (including, in the past, our own Iran Democracy Project at Stanford’s Hoover Institution), support it. There are exceptions. Some in the diaspora still believethat only more pressure, and if need be a military attack, will bring down the Islamic Republic. But the number of Iranian Americans who are at once critical of the regime and supportive of the nuclear deal is striking.

This coalition has multiple motivations for favoring the deal. A number of Iranians simply want sanctions lifted. Some moderates within the regime may want to reduce international pressure on Iran as a means to preserve the power structure. And it’s safe to assume that a few Iranian American business leaders see new trade opportunities in the diplomatic achievement. But the agreement could also serve as a first step in alleviating the problems of ordinary Iranian citizens. If the deal represents the beginning of Iran’s reengagement with the outside world—more trade, more investment, more space inside Iran for the private sector, more travel, more normalcy—all of these trends would undermine the ideological, emotional, and irrational impulses of the theocracy. Especially in the context of an aging supreme leader, a newly elected reformist president, and a young, post-revolutionary population, the nuclear deal offers an opportunity for Iran to modernize politically and economically. Even dissidents sitting in jail or exile have expressed these views. Ganji, for instance, argued that “if there are friendly relations between Iran and Western powers, led by the United States, the West will be able to exert more positive influence on Iran to improve its state of human rights.” Conversely, members of this coalition have voiced fears that a collapse of the deal would only reaffirm the United States as the enemy of Iran—the Great Satan—and thereby strengthen the hardliners internally. Issa Saharkhiz, a journalist who spent four years in prison, recently warned that such a collapse could bring “Iranian versions of ISIS”—a reference to Shiite conservatives and their militant allies—to power in the country.

And that’s exactly why the most militantly authoritarian, conservative, and anti-Western leaders and groups within Iran oppose the deal. This coalition is formidable and includes former President Ahmadinejad, the Iranian leader who denied the Holocaust and called for the elimination of Israel. Fereydoon Abbasi, who directed Iran’s nuclear program under Ahmadinejad, and Saeed Jalili, the former nuclear negotiator, have repeatedly sniped at the deal. In a biting interview, Abbasi ripped into every facet of the talks, saying that the negotiators, “especially Mr. Rouhani ... have accepted the premise that [Iran] is guilty.” Several conservative clerics and IRGC commanders have expressed similar sentiments. One prominent critic of the deal claimed that of the 19 redlines stipulated by the supreme leader, 18 and a half had been compromised in the current agreement. Many publications considered close to Khamenei—including most noticeably the daily paper Kayhan—have been unsparing in their criticism.

Conservative opponents of the deal tend to emphasize its near-term negative security consequences. They point out that the agreement will roll back Iran’s nuclear program, which was intended to deter an American or Israeli attack, and thereby increase Iran’s vulnerability. They have denounced the system for inspecting Iranian nuclear facilities as an intelligence bonanza for the CIA. And they have issued blistering attacks on the incompetence of Iran’s negotiating team, claiming that negotiators caved on many key issues and were outmaneuvered by more clever and sinister American diplomats.

And yet such antagonism appears to be about more than the agreement’s clauses and annexes. The deal’s hardline adversaries also seem concerned about the same longer-term consequences that the moderates embrace. For instance, IRGC leaders must worry that a lifting of sanctions will undermine their business arrangements for contraband trade. In a not-too-discreet reference to these concerns, Rouhani declared them to be “peddlers of sanctions,” adding that “they are angry at the agreement” while the people of Iran pay the price for their profiteering. Over time, more exposure to the wider world of commerce is likely to diminish if not destroy the IRGC’s lucrative no-bid government contracts for infrastructure and construction projects.

Perhaps more threatening for this coalition is the loss of America as a scapegoat for all domestic problems. The conservatives need an external enemy to excuse their corrupt, inefficient, and repressive rule. Some have even suggested that the United States is trying to do to Iran what it did to the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev foolishly trusted U.S. President Ronald Reagan and sought closer ties with the West. The result was the collapse of the Soviet regime. In a remarkable letter from Evin Prison written after the nuclear deal was announced, Mustafa Tajzadeh, once an influential deputy minister of interior during the Khatami administration and now a defiant dissident behind bars, criticized the leader of the conservative faction in Iran’s parliament, who had openly warned against the danger of a ratified nuclear deal as a prologue to a more dangerous domestic challenge from democratic forces. Foreign crises, the conservative parliamentarian had opined in a statement, are “easier to manage.”

Conservatives in Iran may be right. Iran’s opening to the outside world may weaken the ruling regime, as eventually Mao Zedong’s opening to the West did in the 1970s in China, and Gorbachev’s opening to the West did in the 1980s in the U.S.S.R. But these historical analogies also suggest that Iranian hardliners may be wrong. China’s overtures to the West undermined communist ideology and practices, but have proved essential in keeping the Chinese Communist Party in power so far. Gorbachev’s bold steps toward international integration eventually allowed both market and democratic institutions to take hold in Russia and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. Yet the current counterrevolutionary backlash inside Russia suggests that the struggle for democracy, markets, and integration there will be long and tumultuous. There is no guarantee that Iran’s will be any less so.

No one knows what scenario will unfold in Iran. But the debate inside the country should inform America’s own debate. If the deal, as some American critics claim, sells out Iranian democrats and strengthens theocrats, why do so many Iranian reformists, democracy activists, and even dissidents support it? If it represents a financial windfall for Iranian conservatives and their terrorist allies abroad, why are Iran’s most conservative politicians so passionately against it?

Maybe Iran’s democrats are naive. And maybe the conservatives are playing a clever game of deception. Yet given America’s less-than-sterling track record of supporting Iran’s reformers, perhaps this time it’s worth listening to and betting on those in the country whom the United States claims to champion.