Trump's Open Diplomacy in the Middle East and Asia in Sharp Contrast to Obama's Secretive Style

Americans and the world have much more information today about what President Trump and his military are considering concerning the threats posed by Syria, Russia, Iran and North Korea than we ever had about any decisions made under the Obama presidency. • • • THE OBAMA "PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE STUDY." On February 16, 2011, the New York Times published a long article about a secret report ordered by President Obama in the face of potential Middle East uprisings. The report had been ordered in August 2010, to give the President insights into unrest in the Arab world, and it concluded that without sweeping political changes, countries from Bahrain to Yemen were ripe for popular revolt, according to administration officials quoted by the NYT. The Times said the PDS "identified likely flashpoints, most notably Egypt, and solicited proposals for how the administration could push for political change in countries with autocratic rulers who are also valuable allies of the United States." The 18-page classified report, the sources told the NYT, grappled with a problem that "bedeviled the White House’s approach toward Egypt and other countries in recent days : how to balance American strategic interests and the desire to avert broader instability against the democratic demands of the protesters." The Obama administration officials did not say how the report related to intelligence analysis of the Middle East, which then CIA Director Leon Panetta acknowledged in testimony before Congress, needed to better identify “triggers” for uprisings in countries like Egypt. A senior official who helped write the report told the NYT that Obama’s support for the crowds in Tahrir Square in Cairo, even if it followed some mixed signals by his administration, reflected his belief that there was a greater risk in not pushing for changes because Arab leaders would have to resort to ever more brutal methods to keep the lid on dissent : “There’s no question Egypt was very much on the mind of the President....Egypt is the anchor of the region.” In Yemen, too, officials said Obama worried that the administration’s intense focus on counterterrorism operations against al-Qaida was ignoring a budding political crisis, as angry young people rebelled against President Ali Abdullah Saleh. • The administration kept the project secret, officials said, because it worried that if word leaked out, Arab allies would pressure the White House, something that happened in the days after protests convulsed Cairo. The Times said that except for Egypt, the officials refused to discuss countries in detail. The report singled out four for close scrutiny, which an official said ran the gamut : one trying to move toward change, another that resisting any change, and two with deep strategic ties to the United States as well as religious tensions. Those characteristics suggested to the Times Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain and Yemen. • By issuing a directive, Obama pulled the topic of political change out of regular meetings on diplomatic, commercial or military relations with Arab states. The PDS also helped shape messages, like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's speech in Qatar in January, 2011, in which she criticized Arab leaders for resisting change. Obama apparently also pushed his advisors to study popular uprisings in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia to determine which ones worked and which did not. He was reportedly drawn to Indonesia, where he spent several years as a child, and where its longtime leader, Suharto, was overthrown in 1998. • But, for all the detail it might have provided about the Obama Middle East policy, that Obama PDS is still classified today, despite multiple attempts to get copies of it. All Americans know is what the unnamed Obama officials were willing to tell the NYT and whatever 'spin' the Times put on the information. • THE NYT ANALYSIS OF THE PDS. On the same day that the NYT carried the article about the PDS, it published another article about the violence spreading in the Middle East. It was what we called The Arab Spring. Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, and even Iran saw violent street protests. The NYT said : "On one hand, each protest was inspired by a distinctive set of national circumstances and issues -- dire poverty and a lack of jobs, ethnic and religious differences, minority rule, corruption, or questions of economic status. But there was also a pervasive sense that a shared system of poor governance by one party, one family or one clique of military officers backed by brutal secret police was collapsing. A new generation has served notice that the social contract in play in the decades since independence around World War II was no longer valid." • What we didn't know then and still do not know offically is that President Obama was apparently encouraging the Moslem Brotherhood to take the lead in the protests and establish replacement governments in several long-term, key US Middle East allies -- Egypt and Bahrain at the forefront. The Brotherhood actually took control of Egypt because Obama refused to help Mubarak, and the Brotherhood was ousted only after the Egyptian people rejected attempts by its leader Mohamed Morsi to install radical islamic rule. Egypt returned to military rule while a new consitituion led to presidential and parliamentary elections. Morsi is still in prison. Many of us in the West, myself included, encouraged the young people asking for better lives and jobs. We never knew that President Obama was tied to the Moslem Brotherhood and its radical views. Perhaps if the PDS had been made public, it would have revealed things that would have explained to us why we were always so perplexed by Obama's choices for action and inaction. Perhaps it would have saved us from a disastrous second Obama term. • • • TODAY IN SYRIA. That classified PDS could have told us a lot about Barack Obama and his views about the Middle East and radical Islam. But, the world has never had the chance to read the 2011 report or evaluate its positions. • Today, there is a dramatic change in presidential style. President Trump and his administration team are open about their actions and reasoning. For example, on Tuesday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the reign of the Assad family is ending, aligning himself with statements from US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley -- after the two top diplomats had seemed to take different views publicly toward the Syrian regime’s future. Tillerson had said on CBS Face the Nation : “We are hopeful” about navigating a “political outcome in which the Syrian people, in fact, will determine Bashar al- Assad's fate and his legitimacy.” But Haley, on CNN, bluntly said they expect regime change : “There's not any sort of option where a political solution is going to happen with Assad at the head of the regime.” After Haley's remarks, Tillerson aligned himself with her when he spoke to reporters in Italy before boarding a plane for Moscow. While the Secretary did not speak directly of regime change, as Haley had, he telegraphed to the Kremlin that that is his view : “It is our policy for a unified Syria that is governed by the people of Syria....It's clear to all of us that the reign of the Assad family is coming to an end. But the question of how that ends, and the transition itself, could be very important, in our view, to the durability, the stability inside of a unified Syria....But I think it is clear that we see no further role for the Assad regime longer term, given that they have effectively given up their legitimacy with these type[s] of attacks.” In Moscow, in what is the first trip to Russia by a Trump Cabinet official, Tillerson will have a tough test as the US pushes for Russia to split with Bashar al-Assad, while Russia blasts the US over last week's Syria missile strikes. Broadly, Tillerson will ask Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, with whom he is meeting, of whether Moscow is looking to shift from its current alliance with the Assad regime -- along with Iran and Hezbollah -- to one with the US and other Western and Middle Eastern countries. On Tuesday, Tillerson said to the media in Italy : “Russia has really aligned itself with the Assad regime, the Iranians and Hezbollah. Is that a long- term alliance that serves the Russians' interest? Or would Russia prefer to realign with the United States, with other Western countries, and Middle East countries who are seeking to resolve the Syrian crisis?” • That is pretty straightforward stuff coming from a US Secretary of State. • • • AL-ASSAD'S REASONS FOR USING SARIN GAS. There is no classified PDS that contains secret ideas about Trump's emerging Middle East policies, as there was with Obama in 2011. Russia has been advised and the Putin government will have decide where its interests lie. But, over the past week, even Russia has said it cannot control every al-Assad regime act, and perhaps this is the crack in the door that will geve the US and Russia room to find a solution that saves face for Russia by preserving its Mediterranean naval base and easing Bashas al-Assad out without making Russia look like the Black Hat. • But, there is a lot of second-guessing al-Assad's resons for the sarin gas attack itself, explained in a New York Times article. Some say the attack is consistent with al-Assad’s calculated strategy of attempting to drive out the civilian population in rebel strongholds through bombing neighborhoods and civilian targets. Infowars and others point to social media posts from Feras Karam, a reporter for Orient News, as evidence of a "false flag" hoax concocted by the US and Russia to make Trump look anti-Russian -- but Karam was referring to a different attack : “Tomorrow is the launch of a media campaign to cover the intensity of the airstrikes on the countryside of #Hama and use of #poison_chlorine against civilians,” Karam wrote on Facebook and Twitter on April 3, but it was sarin gas that hit the town of Khan Sheikhoun early on the morning of April 4, a place 36 kilometers north of Hama. And, chlorine attacks, as The New York Times has reported, are less deadly and have been almost routine in Syria. Another Infowars claim is that the White Helmets were the real culprits : “The White Helmets, an al-Qaida affiliated group allegedly funded by George Soros and the British government, have reportedly staged another chemical weapon attack on civilians in the Syrian city of Khan Shaykhun to lay blame on the Syrian government.” There is no evidence for this claim. The White Helmets are volunteers that act as emergency medical workers in Syria, and allegations about their ties to terrorists and complicity in the chemical attack are unproven. But, Bashar al-Assad himself accused the White Helmets of being “al-Qaida members” without evidence in an interview in March with RT, a news outlet funded by the Russian government; and so the reasoning is that given Russia’s support of Assad, casting doubt on the White Helmets could alter the flow of aid, allowing depopulation the area enabling al-Assad forces to take back control of the territory. Another theory found on websites suggests that al-Assad couldn’t have been capable of launching the attack because President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry declared Syria’s stockpile eliminated in 2014. We now know that this was a sham operation faked by Russia after Obama agreed to give the job to Putin. There are also suggestions that rebel forces were behind the attack, but this has been disproved because of the nature of sarin and the difficulty in assembling it for actual use as a chemical weapon. • Perhaps, as one of our blog commenters occasionally reminds us, there is a thing called Evil, and there is no accounting for its deranged acts. • • • RUSSIA, SYRIA AND IRAN THREATEN RETALIATION IF THERE IS ANOTHER US STRIKE. On Monday, the military forces of Russia, Syria, and Iran warned the US that any further military action would cross "a red line" and be met with a military response. The Daily Mail said : "In an ominous threat raising the prospect of war, they said the US President had crossed a 'red line' with his surprise missile bombardment on Bashar al-Assad's forces. 'From now on we will respond with force to any breach of red lines and America knows our ability to respond well,' the military chiefs said in a joint statement with militant group Hezbollah. The Russian Embassy in London suggested on Sunday night there could be 'real war' if Moscow is presented with an ultimatum over Syria. But UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson will lead a push on Monday for Russia to face tough new sanctions unless it withdraws its support for Assad." Johnson did call for the sanctions at the G7 meeting in Italy, threatening Russia with isolation from the international community and numerous economic punishments. He also cancelled a planned trip to Moscow. UK's Defense Secretary Sir Michael Fallon said Russia was responsible for "every civilian death" in Assad's chemical weapons attack on his own people. And, America warned Moscow it faces a "relationship of competition and potential conflict" unless it stops supporting Assad's "murderous regime." The Daily Mail concluded : "The US has assets all over the Middle East that would be vulnerable to an attack by Russia or, more likely, Hezbollah. Iran could even use Shia militias under its control in Iraq to target US forces. And, of course, there are a couple of thousand US troops in Syria that are at risk if the Trump administration launches another strike at Syria. But Putin is no fool and doesn't want to force a confrontation with the US. But can he trust his ally Assad not to seek out a confrontation with the US by initiating another gas attack? From Assad's point of view, a Russia-US conflict would mean more Russian military assets sent to Syria. But it would also mean that the US would make a concerted effort to remove him from power....In the end, it doesn't seem likely that Assad will risk such a confrontation and President Trump won't attack unless his hand is forced. But the battle lines have been drawn and any kind of misunderstanding or miscalculation could lead to a war neither side wants." • • • NORTH KOREA LOOMS. The Trump White House also spoke directly when it told North Korea it should take US missile strikes against Syria as a warning that America is prepared to take military action against countries which break international agreements. Zero Hedge reported last Sunday that : "One day after NBC reported that the National Security Council had presented Trump with three options vis-a-vis North Korea, namely i) put American nukes in South Korea , ii) kill Kim Jong-un or iii) use the CIA to infiltrate North Korea to sabotage or take out key infrastructure, a US carrier group has departed Singapore and is headed for North Korea. According to Reuters, a US Navy strike group is moving toward the western Pacific Ocean near the Korean peninsula, as concerns grow about North Korea's advancing weapons program. The Carl Vinson strike group includes an aircraft carrier and will make its way from Singapore toward the Korean peninsula. The move of the USS Carl Vinson "is in response to recent North Korean provocations," an American official told CNN, "We feel the increased presence is necessary," citing North Korea's "worrisome behavior." The Vinson strike group will operate in the Western Pacific rather than executing previously planned port visits to Australia, Pacific Command said. Trump’s national security advisor HR McMaster told Fox News Sunday the strike group had been moved because “it is prudent to do it”. • This year North Korean officials, including leader Kim Jong Un, have repeatedly indicated an intercontinental ballistic missile test or something similar could be coming, possibly as soon as April 15, the 105th birthday of North Korea's founding president and celebrated annually as "the Day of the Sun." At the end of March, satellite images collected by "38 North" suggested that North Korea was actively preparing for a nuclear test. • Late last week, President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Florida, where Trump pressed Xi to do more to curb North Korea's nuclear program, after Trump's national security aides completed their review [see above] of US options to try to curb North Korea's nuclear and missile programs, that, according Zero Hedge, also include economic and military measures but lean more toward sanctions and increased pressure on Beijing to rein in its reclusive neighbor. Last weekend, Trump told the Financial Times in an interview : "if China is not going to solve North Korea, we will." Although the option of pre-emptive military strikes on North Korea is not off the table, the review prioritizes less risky steps and de-emphasizes direct military action. In other words, acording to Zero Hedge : "with Syria down, it's now North Korea's turn. Considering recent developments, Kim Jong-Un would be well advised to keep a lower profile for the next few weeks." The problem is that Kim seems to thrive on these sorts of confrontations, because they help him appear to be a player on the world stage. But, the unbalanced North Korean leader may seek a confrontation at sea with the Vinson strike group. The North Korean navy has very little as a surface fleet but has several submarines that, while posing little threat to the strike group, might be used by Kim to make a point about North Korean sovereignty. There is also the possibility that during routine carrier operations, the North Korean air force might make its presence felt. But unless Kim does something radically stupid, Zero Hedge believes that "the US Navy is not likely to see any action. Meanwhile, lessons from the bombing in Syria are not lost on the North Korean leader. A message has been delivered. But is Kim listening?" • Here is what the Guardian quotes NK's Korean Central News Agency as saying : “We will hold the US wholly accountable for the catastrophic consequences to be entailed by its outrageous actions. [North Korea] is ready to react to any mode of war desired by the US.” The spokesman cited Washington’s refusal to rule out a pre-emptive strike against North Korean missile sites as justification for its nuclear program : “The prevailing grave situation proves once again that [North Korea] was entirely just when it increased in every way its military capabilities for self-defense and pre-emptive attack with a nuclear force as a pivot. We will take the toughest counteraction against the provocateurs in order to defend ourselves by powerful force of arms.” • The threat of unilateral action by the US is weakened because most of the US national security establishment that any preventative strike aimed at North Korean missile and nuclear facilities could trigger devastating reprisals against South Korea, Seoul in particular which is very close to the NK border, and US bases in the region. China’s foreign ministry, meanwhile, has played down reports that Beijing has deployed 150,000 troops to its border with North Korea. Hua Chunying, a foreign ministry spokesperson, told reporters she was “not aware” of such a mobilisation by the People’s Liberation Army along the 880-mile border. In the past, similar reports had been proven “groundless and false,” Hua claimed. However, with regional tensions building ahead of Saturday’s Kim Il-sung commemorations, Hua said China was “closely following” developments on the Korean peninsula : “We believe that, given the current situation, all relevant parties should exercise restraint and avoid activities that may escalate the tension.” • • • DEAR READERS, just how open is the Trump administration about its actions and reasoning? Here is a clue. Secretary Tillerson told CBS Face the Nation, in an interview broadcast last Sunday, that when Donald Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping met at the Mar-a-Lago resort this week, they “had extensive discussions around the dangerous situation in North Korea." Tillerson added : “President Xi clearly understands, and I think agrees, that the situation has intensified and has reached a certain level of threat that action has to be taken.” Tillerson described a “shared view and no disagreement as to how dangerous the situation has become.” But, said Tillerson, in view of the regional threat now posed by North Korean missile tests and nuclear ambitions, the Chinese “do not believe the conditions are right today to engage in discussions with the government in Pyongyang. We’re hopeful that we can work together with the Chinese to change the conditions in the minds of the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] leadership. And then, at that point, perhaps discussions may be useful. But I think there’s a shared view and no disagreement as to how dangerous the situation has become. And I think even China is beginning to recognise that this presents a threat to even to China’s interests as well.” • That is open diplomacy. Will Tillerson become more reticent as he matures in the job of Secretary of State? Or have President Trump, Tillerson and the national security advisory group decided that open diplomacy is the best approach because it leaves nobody in doubt about US foreign policy and its military component.