OPINION – It was supposed to be Senate confirmation hearing for Stephen E. Biegun to be confirmed as Deputy Secretary of State, but really, it was President Trump’s Foreign Policy that was on trial in Washington last week.
“This administration’s actions have undermined our ability to promote American foreign policy and national security interests, betrayed our values, and made our citizens, our partners and the world less safe,” Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said last Wednesday during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing for Stephen E. Biegun to be Deputy Secretary of State.
A partisan Democrat and former chairman of that Senate committee, Menendez then added, “Far from America first, it is leaving America isolated, corrupted, and behind.”
Menendez, described the current time period as “a time of unparalleled chaos in American foreign policy, the likes of which I can’t recall in my more than three decades in Congress.”
He then listed countries and areas where American influence had declined.
He pointed to Venezuela where Trump had at times threatened military action to bring down the harsh Maduro regime, but where today millions had fled as refugees, hundreds of thousands of which “are in the United States in desperate need of Temporary Protected Status.”
Menendez talked about Trump’s attempts to end migration and drug trafficking on the U.S. southern border while at the same time he “has repeatedly tried to cripple our counter-narcotics, law enforcement, and development operations in the Northern Triangle and Mexico.”
Menendez also mentioned that “from climate change, to the United Nations, to human rights we are abdicating American leadership.”
His greater focus was first on Russia. “Everywhere we turn it is hard to imagine a bigger winner these past several years than Mr. Putin,” Menendez said.
In the Middle East, Russia has become a leading force as Washington’s influence has declined.
Despite Trump’s early wooing of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, each has turned to Putin for assistance.
Netanyahu flew to Moscow to meet with Putin last April, five days before an election the Israeli prime minister won. On September 12, Netanyahu met with Putin in Sochi, again five days before an Israeli election. At that time, Putin referred to 1.5 million former Soviet citizens living in Israel and voiced his hope that future Israeli legislators “will move forward with us in developing Russian-Israeli ties.”
On September 17, with Israelis going to the polls, Putin told a visiting Jewish group he “looked forward” to visiting Israel in January 2020 to open a memorial in Jerusalem to World War II victims on the 75th anniversary of Red Army troops liberating the concentration camp at Auschwitz.
Erdogan’s Turkey bought Russia’s S-400 anti-air system in the face of U.S. objections, and has begun installing it. Nonetheless, Trump has limited economic sanctions against Turkey, and currently has Robert O’Brien, his new National Security Advisor, working with an Erdogan advisor to find ways around the Pentagon’s cutoff of Turkey’s participation in the U.S. F-35 program, which was done to protect secret elements of America’s stealthy, fifth generation fighter from falling into Russian hands.
In addition, last month, the Turkish president met with Putin in Sochi to work out a joint deal for control of northern Syria, replacing the previous U.S.-Turkish plan for that area.
Needless to say, some Democrats have speculated how much Trump Organization investments in Turkey have affected President Trump’s failure to take a tougher stand against Erdogan.
Last month, Crown Prince Salman and his father, King Salman, hosted Putin in Riyadh where they signed deals worth $2 billion and invited the Russians to join in the investigation into the alleged Iranian September 14, attack on Saudi oil fields. In addition, the Saudis discussed their possible purchase of the S-400 air defense system. All this took place just days after the Trump administration announced it was sending an additional 3,000 U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia along with Patriot missile batteries.
But remember, Trump said the Saudis would be paying for those troops, which led critics to say the President was turning U.S. forces into mercenaries.
Trump’s so far unsuccessful efforts to reach a denuclearization deal with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un were raised at the Wednesday confirmation hearing because of Biegun’s role as chief negotiator with Pyongyang.
Biegun admitted there had been no progress to date on getting a written agreement on any of the U.S. key demands, starting with North Korea providing an accounting of its nuclear facilities, fissile material and weapons. Biegun even cautioned that an artificial, year-end deadline that North Korea had recently set for the U.S. to show flexibility could lead to Kim taking “provocative” steps.
Faced with the threat from North Korea, The U.S. postponed a recent planned joint air exercise with South Korea in hopes of breaking the gridlock on negotiations. In response, Kim held a quick North Korean military exercise of his own and his aides repeated their demand for U.S. flexibility in its denuclearization demands.
With North Korea continuing to build up its nuclear stockpile and acting with arrogance toward Washington, Trump has alienated South Korea, America’s long-time ally.
Senators on Wednesday questioned Biegun about the Trump administration’s decision to suddenly break off and walk out of negotiations in Seoul last week over Washington’s demand that the South Korean government increase from $900 million to $5 billion its annual contribution to support the 28,500 American troops stationed in that country.
South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in immediately protested, having already faced criticism at home for his own increase in its own defense spending by seven percent over the past two years to over $43 billion. That amounted to 2.6 percent of the country’s GDP, the highest of any U.S. ally and above the two percent goal set for NATO partners to spend on defense.
At the hearing, Biegun admitted that "South Korea is among our most important alliance partners," but then said, "That doesn't mean anybody gets a free ride."
Not mentioned was that South Korea over the past ten years had paid 90 percent of the $10.8 billion cost of Camp Humphreys, the new home in that country for U.S. troops and the largest U.S. base overseas.
Looking at the world, and thinking of Trump's America, it’s the unpredictable, often thoughtless foreign policy that Stephen Biegun will need to navigate.
Read more Fine Print by National Security Coumnist Walter Pincus in The Cipher Brief
