Over the cliff
I’ve been arguing with people from the DC policy community, and the joke that I make is that they are trying to convince politicians whereas I am writing for future historians. I am completely shocked, because in my worst moments, I could not imagine US policy being this incompetent, and one reason I am interested in the reaction of the DC folks is that I am wondering what THEY are thinking about this. This would be the time to write stuff in diaries that you can’t write outloud.
The thing that confuses me, and will confuse future historians is how Trump just kept shooting himself. You have someone with a loaded gun and they are playing Russian roulette, and you manage to get the gun away from them, and then they pull it back and shoot themselves in the head. Alternatively, you can imagine this being a junkie that ends up in a hospital after shooting up. You’d think after a near death experience they would stop using heroin but they can’t.
Trump is a big part of it, but what I am fascinated by is the blind spots of the Washington policy community. I do not think that future historians will look kindly that right before the world just went over the cliff, that the big policy effort was to get Germany to restrict the imports of EV’s. I would expect that in six months when the oil runs out, that the Europeans will be clammering for Chinese EV’s.
At this point I don’t see how we can AVOID a major disaster. What Trump wants is to do some symbolic military strike and declare victory. The problem is that once you do that and then three months later you attack again, after a while the other side isn’t going to give you any face. The problem is that there is nothing that Trump can do by military means to get the Iranians to open up Hormuz, and at this point the Iranians will want to make the West suffer a bit.
The fundamental problem is that Trump and the Washington elite like to rewrite history so that they won. And so over the last year, the Iranians have been nice enough to give in, to save the US face and let the United States declare victory and move on. The problem with all of this is that while Iranians and Chinese seem to have the concept of “face,” Americans don’t, and so the fact that the Iranians have been willing to make concessions is a sign of weakness and a sign that the US should just tear up the deal and attack again in three months.
The result of which is that the Iranians are not going to give in this time. Iran has to make it absolutely clear that they won the war, so we are going to go over the cliff.
The reason I don’t think this is only a Trump problem is that this is a Washington problem has to do with the argument that I have with Brad Setser over the Chinese economy. Basically, I can’t get him to see that he is vastly underestimating the strength of the Chinese economy, and vastly misreading the public mood in China. One thing that shocks me is how can someone who is very intelligent and skilled who is part of one of the premier thinktanks in Washington, be so out of touch with the situation in China, and this seems to be the case with the situation in Iran.
The good thing about the Chinese situation is that it’s not the end of the world. One reason that I am telling Setser and the EU is to just do it is that we are not talking about kinetic warfare, and I am pushing them to do something because the disaster that results will convince people not to do things.
However, the problem with this theory is that the US has gone through several near-disasters with Iran and US is still pushing the envelope. At this point, I don’t see any reason why Iran should accomodate the United States, and I think that Iran will keep Hormuz closed until people in the West understand how incompetent their leaders are.