Anatol Lieven explains how strategic empathy is supposed to work:

This kind of empathy has very valuable consequences for foreign policy. It makes for an accurate assessment of another state establishment’s goals based on its own thoughts, rather than a picture of those goals generated by one’s own fears and hopes; above all, it permits one to identify the difference between the vital and secondary interests of a rival country as that country’s rulers see them.

A vital interest is one on which a state will not compromise unless faced with irresistible military or economic pressure. Otherwise, it will resist to the very limit of its ability, including, if necessary, by war. A statesman who sets out to challenge another state’s vital interests must therefore be sure not only that his or her country possesses this overwhelming power, but that it is prepared actually to use it.

American policymakers are notoriously bad at understanding how other governments perceive things and the reasons why they act in the way that they do, and we have seen on many occasions how this failure to understand the other side’s thinking has led us into one crisis after another. Our leaders often fail to grasp that they are threatening another country’s perceived vital interests, because they frequently deny that the other government has any legitimate interests at all. Instead of trying to see an issue from the other side, our leaders will often insist that there is only one acceptable way of seeing it and it is invariably the same as ours. If the other government responds angrily to this approach, they are then deemed hostile and “revisionist” rather than a normal state reacting as any other state would. Practicing this kind of empathy does not mean agreeing that the other government is right, but it does mean acknowledging what their actual position is rather than projecting one onto them.

H.R. McMaster likes to talk a lot about practicing strategic empathy, but in fact he refuses to understand how other governments see the world. He prefers instead to imagine that they are all driven to achieve ideological, expansionist goals just as he is, and then he warns about the aggressive intentions that he has imputed to them. This is exactly the opposite of what Lieven is talking about, and it is nothing more than reading his own hawkish inclinations into everyone else’s worldview. If McMaster were willing to see things as the Russian government or Chinese government did, he would understand that they perceive aggressive U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War as a threat, and at least some of their conduct over this same period has been in reaction to American overreaching. But McMaster doesn’t understand this at all. Instead, he insists that the behavior of other states has nothing to do with U.S. actions whatsoever, because to admit this would be to acknowledge that an interventionist foreign policy can create more problems than it solves.

Lieven points out how this lack of empathy has particularly poisoned our dealings with Russia over the last thirty years:

Straightforward Western prejudices (now dignified with the abominable euphemism of “narratives”) are part of the reason for these false perceptions derived from the Cold War. The collapse of Communism, however, also led to a growth in Western hubris that led Western policymakers to fail either to listen to their Russian colleagues when they stated Russia’s vital interests, or to study Russia in sufficient depth to understand that they were not bluffing but really meant what they said. Instead, you had the tragicomic picture of American officials lecturing Russian officials on the “real” interests of Russia.

This failure to listen and failure to understand account for a lot of the deterioration in U.S.-Russian relations. While Russia has contributed to this deterioration, the U.S. has repeatedly taken actions that our government knew would be perceived as provocations and threats and went ahead with them anyway. Promoting NATO expansion and promising that Ukraine and Georgia would eventually become members were some of the big provocations, but beyond specific issues there is the overarching conceit that Russian interests end at their border while ours are seemingly limitless. If we were in their position, we would have found this intolerable as well. Eventually, Russia was bound to push back, and that is what it has been doing for the last twelve years. Predictably, the pushback has been interpreted in the West as irrational aggression, and this is just more of the same failure to understand why other states act as they do.

If we would avoid unnecessary crises and clashes with other states, especially nuclear-armed major powers, our government has to begin paying closer attention to what other states say their vital interests are. There needs to be an understanding that the U.S. cannot cajole or sanction them into giving up those interests, and these interests will always matter far more to them than they do to us. Our leaders need to start understanding that and then adjusting our policies accordingly.

Eldar Mamedov warns against the push to get the U.S. to side with Azerbaijan in their attack on Karabakh and Armenia:

As fierce fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan continues into a second month, neoconservatives in Washington are pushing the United States to side with Azerbaijan. Their rationale – involving Iran and Israel, as so many of Washington’s priorities in the Middle East do – is facile, naïve and dangerous to the region’s minorities.

The U.S. has no vital interests in this conflict, so it would be a serious mistake to take sides in it. If the U.S. were to tilt towards anyone in the conflict, it ought to be towards the Armenian side that came under attack, but neutrality is the wisest course. The best thing that the U.S. can do is to use whatever influence it still has with Turkey and Azerbaijan to halt the offensive, and to support Russian mediation efforts that have the best chance of succeeding in stopping the fighting. Armenian and Azerbaijani civilians will pay the heaviest price if the war is not stopped, and preventing further attacks on civilians should be the focus of U.S. diplomatic efforts. Azerbaijan is not an ally of the United States, and our government has no obligations to assist or defend them. While Turkey is formally an ally, they are acting as a regional arsonist and the U.S. should be reining them in rather than helping them.

The death toll from the conflict is already in the thousands, many of them civilians killed by indiscriminate use of missiles and shelling. Both governments have launched unacceptable, illegal attacks on civilian areas, and the U.S. should warn both governments against further such attacks. There are credible reports of war crimes being committed against Armenian prisoners of war by their Azerbaijani captors. Ethnic cleansing of Armenians in parts of Karabakh has already been carried out by Azerbaijani forces:

7 Diplomacy is still missing in action sadly. No predictions then, only to say that outsiders should pay close attention to events around Shusha/i, despite all else that’s going on in the world.

— Thomas de Waal (@Tom_deWaal) November 5, 2020

Siding with Azerbaijan makes no sense for American interests. It is being promoted by Iran hawks that hope to use this conflict as part of their fixation on destabilizing the Iranian government and potentially breaking up Iran’s territorial integrity. Michael Doran is one of the leading hawkish cheerleaders for Azerbaijan, and he has been making the case for siding with Baku explicitly for quite some time. In the quoted tweet, he is promoting Azerbaijan on account of its supposed diversity and tolerance:

Yes, Azerbaijan is a "bastion of diversity and tolerance" under Aliyev in the same way that, say, Franco's Spain, Pinochet's Chile, and Mobutu's Zaire were also "bastions of diversity and tolerance." https://t.co/gJASTMQads

— Casey Michel 🇰🇿 (@cjcmichel) November 6, 2020

Calling for the U.S. to side with Azerbaijan because Armenia is aligned with Russia and Iran is absurd. Armenia at least has a democratic government, and Azerbaijan continues to be ruled by the same kleptocratic family dynasty that has been in power since the collapse of the USSR. Armenia aligns itself with Russia and Iran because these are the only states in the region that support them at all. Armenia has been economically isolated by Azerbaijan and Turkey for decades, and so it seeks assistance where it can. That doesn’t make them our enemy, and it shouldn’t lead our government to back Azerbaijan. On the contrary, the U.S. needs to suspend all military assistance to Azerbaijan and Turkey so that it is not used in the commission of war crimes.

The hawks hope to use Azerbaijani nationalism to fracture Iran, and Mamedov spells out how this would encourage anti-Armenian hatred:

Doran, Luttwack and Schaffer may be excited about the prospects of Iran’s disintegration, but they don’t publicly consider the potential consequences for Iran’s other ethnic and religious groups, such as Christian Armenians and Assyrians.

That silence is not surprising. Any honest analysis would recognize that fueling ethnic Azerbaijani nationalism in Iran could endanger local Armenians. Such an admission would put this group at odds with an administration that portrays itself as a defender of Christians worldwide.

To understand how the rise of Azerbaijani nationalism in Iran could impact the Armenian community there, look a little further north, to the Republic of Azerbaijan. There, a legitimate desire to retake territories occupied by Armenian forces for a quarter century has metastasized into an official policy of anti-Armenian intolerance and prejudice. The State Department has reported that people with Armenian-sounding names have been routinely denied entrance to the country; the government has purposefully erased Armenian heritage, destroying traditional tombstones in Nakhchivan; and in a clear example of hate speech, senior officials in the ruling party declared this year that alongside coronavirus, Azerbaijan also had to fight the “Armenian virus.”

It is because of this intense anti-Armenianism that Armenians are understandably afraid that the assault on Karabakh could turn into the beginning of another Armenian genocide. The hatreds stoked by the new war are already exposing Armenians in other countries to threats and violence, as we saw recently when a mob in Lyon, France attacked local Armenians in the streets. The U.S. should obviously have no part in anything like this, and it should not be encouraging nationalist fanaticism that might lead to it.

Interventionist policies have already done tremendous harm to Christian communities in Iraq and Syria, and it would be disastrous if the same thing were to befall Armenian communities in Iran and elsewhere because of a twisted Iran obsession in Washington.

Subscribe on


iTunes
Spotify
Show page

On Wednesday afternoon, seven states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—remain in play according to most mainstream sources. A Biden win in North Carolina is a pipe dream, so it’s pretty much safe to say that only six remain genuinely undecided. Georgia looks safe enough for Trump, too, but there may be some cause for concern, as we’ll see.

In just about every one of these states, Republican leaders have voiced concern over widespread allegations of Democratic misconduct. Many, including your friendly neighborhood censors at Twitter and Facebook, have been quick to denounce such claims as disinformation, misleading, or “disputed.” Twitter in particular has not hesitated to block or limit posts questioning discrepancies in Michigan and elsewhere, while allowing announcements of a Biden victory in Arizona—a genuinely disputed claim, to say the least—to go unchecked.

While the picture remains incomplete, and we should be careful about coming to any conclusions, we can hardly dismiss these concerns so handily as many have. Let’s take a brief look at the troubles in each of the six states in play—where there’s cause for concern, what’s being done about it, and whether Trump still has a path to victory in each.

Arizona

One way or another, it looks like Arizona is shaping up to be the story of the election. Called early for Biden on Tuesday evening—notably by Fox News, whose decision-maker Arnon Mishkin is catching plenty of flak today—it looks like the Southwestern state is far from settled after all.

This morning, buzz from the Trump campaign suggested that the president would come out on top by just under 30,000 votes—a claim that seemed to be backed by an ever-narrowing gap as numbers continued to update. This may be due to the fact that AZ counted mail-in ballots first, which have long been expected to favor Biden heavily; once election day tallies started to flow, the trends shifted pretty dramatically. There was also a major snafu in the data: mainstream media reported that 98% of the vote had been counted, casting a Biden win as a sure thing, when reporting was in fact only at 86%. That’s tough to ignore—it’s going to happen nationwide, but Arizona in particular may force a reckoning for our data models, and our data professionals.

Beside reporting errors, Arizona has seen some of the most significant allegations of misconduct over yesterday’s voting practices. Concerns over Sharpie markers—whose bleed might invalid a ballot—being provided instead of ballpoint pens have swept the internet since early this morning. Even if Trump doesn’t pull ahead in the current counts, that means a heated contest can be expected over potentially trashed (or sabotaged) ballots from election day. As of this afternoon, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich has demanded answers from Maricopa County election officials, and it’s entirely possible that a flip back to red could result from the Sharpie scandal.

Arizona’s 11 electoral votes open the easiest path to a Trump victory. Doubt over the early call is a bad omen for media trust this election season, and a complete tally alone may flip the state back red. But if not, reports of malpractice are widespread, with state and national leaders joining in on calls for accountability. Republican demonstrations are expected in Maricopa County today, and a fierce legal battle may be in the offing. If Arizona turns out red (whether by tabulation or litigation) either Pennsylvania or Michigan will be enough to secure Trump’s win.

Georgia

Of the six states remaining, Georgia is the most likely by far to go for Trump—with 93% reporting, he’s up by about two points and 78,000 votes. To pull out a win, Biden would need spectacular numbers in the suburbs around Atlanta. That’s not impossible, but it’s hardly likely.

Nevertheless, concerns in Georgia are big, and they’re coming from big places. State GOP chairman David Shafer has been tweeting today about some of his concerns. The most significant is that, according to Shafer, “Fulton County told our [i.e., GOP] observers last night to go home because they were closing up and then continued to count ballots in secret.” That’s a bad look any way you slice it. On a smaller scale, but no less concerning: “A few minutes ago in Chatham County, our observers watched an unidentifiable woman mix over 50 ballots into the stack of uncounted absentee ballots.” That’s from 3:28 this afternoon.

Again, it’s highly unlikely that Biden turns Georgia blue. But these allegations are important, not least of all because they’re coming from Georgia’s GOP chair and not from keyboard pundits. That’s not a source we can dismiss out of hand, and it’s not a good sign for what might be happening elsewhere.

Michigan

Michigan may be the key to the race. Trump carried the state narrowly in 2016, a flip that has often been considered the defining moment in 2016. Early returns last night showed something extraordinary: Trump was outperforming his 2016 numbers in key districts by double digit margins.

Late in the night though, Biden started winning big. The abruptness of the turnaround has sparked widespread concern on social media, and there may be something to this. Tabulation in many locations halted in the middle of the night, only to resume a few hours later with massive, sudden gains for Biden. Speculation that old-school Democrat-machine vote-harvesting may be underway in cities like Detroit may be unfashionable, but it’s hardly out of the question.

Even outside of the blue cities, Michigan has seen some problems. Antrim County, a Trump stronghold, is inexplicably supposed to have gone big for Biden. Most observers expect that this is an error, and an impending correction could net Trump an extra 5,000 votes in this key state. That’s not enough to close the gap on its own, but combine it with doubt over Biden’s late-night urban gains, and the state hardly seems as settled as many now assume.

Michigan’s 16 electoral votes are the biggest cache left after Pennsylvania, and could push either candidate over the finish line in a number of likely scenarios. At the moment, many outlets have already forecast Michigan for Biden, and with current numbers his lead seems pretty firm. But a legal challenge is sure to come from the Trump campaign, and we shouldn’t be surprised if it’s followed by a sizable reshuffling of the numbers—and maybe a flip in the state, back toward early-Wednesday, pre-pause ranges.

Nevada

Trump lost to Hillary here by just over 27,000 votes in 2016. This time around, he’s picking up big-time, trailing Biden by less than 8,000 with 75% reporting, according to the Wall Street Journal. Most of the votes we’re waiting on are in Washoe and Clark Counties—two blue spots that house Reno and Las Vegas, respectively. But a number of precincts across the state are yet to be reported, including 9 of 42 in populous, deep-red Elko County.

That means Trump’s odds in Nevada aren’t great, but they’re far from nil. And if Arizona doesn’t swing back red when all the votes are counted, a Nevada flip could prove vital—just Nevada and Pennsylvania would be enough to deliver a Trump victory, even without a breakthrough in the Upper Midwest.

Pennsylvania

Of the few real nail-biters in this race, Pennsylvania has seemed by far most likely to go for Trump. In-person voting on election day was a blowout: Trump finished the night with about a lead of about 700,000 votes.

That lead has narrowed substantially as mail-in ballots have started to rack up. The New York Timespredicts that, if early trends hold, mail-in totals could deliver Biden a two-point lead in the state.

Republicans are calling the bluff on that one. Rudy Giuliani is heading to Philadelphia—a big, blue city that remains Biden’s best hope of pulling this crucial state—and GOP poll watchers are going to be hypervigilant in Pennsylvania.

There’s good reason for that. Allegations are running rampant online that Democratic campaigning is happening not just illegally close to some polling places, but actually inside. A number of reports have been made that poll watchers are being illegally denied access to polling locations, and one video shared by Human Events‘ Will Chamberlain shows a poll watcher with a confirmed certificate being forced out of a Philadelphia polling place by poll workers.

Combine this with Democratic PA Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s public announcement that Trump would lose the state (on October 31st) and something stinks. A controversial ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that ballots without a postmark will still be counted after election day is almost certain to head to SCOTUS—especially if Biden sees another vital surge in the eleventh hour.

Trump still has a very good chance of pulling off a win in Pennsylvania. But if Biden comes up from behind, the legal challenges are going to come quickly and come in force. With widespread documentation of misconduct, especially in Biden’s key city, the Democrats’ chances in a court dispute aren’t looking good.

With 20 electoral votes up for grabs, Pennsylvania is the most important state remaining by far. If Trump holds on to his lead, either Arizona or Nevada will deliver him a victory, even if Biden’s disputed claims in Michigan and Wisconsin are left standing.

Wisconsin

Speaking of Wisconsin, there’s an emerging consensus that the state is in the bag for Biden—but it has also produced some of the most significant misconduct concerns of any battleground.

The big question mark here is voter turnout. Claims were making the rounds early on today that there were more votes than registered voters in the state. That’s not true, and it seems to have been based on 0ld registration data. But the turnout numbers are mind-boggling nonetheless: about 89.25% of registered voters. Of course, this is technically possible, but to say that this would be record-shattering turnout would be a whopper of an understatement. Caution is key here, but the question needs to be asked and answered.

As with Michigan, a big early lead for Trump was quashed by heavy, late night/early morning drops for Biden in the major cities. This isn’t entirely unexpected, but it’s sure to be challenged in the Trump campaign’s coming fight in the state. As of today, they’ve already called for a recount. Wisconsin alone won’t save the day for Trump, but like Arizona and Nevada, an upset against the Democratic lead could be the final straw in a close race.

What it Means

Though many seem ready to call the race, there are quite a few paths to victory remaining for Trump. The good money is on a GOP win in Pennsylvania, which means only one more state needs to turn red for the president to secure a second term. Arizona seems likely, and the challenges against Biden’s claim there look serious, to say the least. These are the two states that we need to watch, and we need to watch them closely. Valid concerns in Michigan and Wisconsin keep the outside chance of a red flip there alive, but we shouldn’t hold our breath.

Even if none of the expected challenges are successful—or even if they are, and Trump emerges victorious—the accusations that arose today cannot be easily dismissed. We may get the White House, we may not. But we better get answers either way.

Back in March, I wrote a column in these pages about the Chinese business entanglements of major media companies in the U.S. By far the most seriously entangled is Comcast, the owner of NBCUniversal, parent company of NBC and MSNBC, which is in the process of opening a Universal Studios theme park in Beijing.

Portions of Hunter Biden’s hard drive have now been shared with TAC. On the drive is an email from president of Rosemont Seneca Eric Schwerin, a company co-founded by Hunter and John Kerry’s stepson, saying that Chinese state-owned enterprise CITIC was hoping they would make introductions with Universal employees and propose the Beijing theme park.

“They’d like an introduction to Universal (Comcast) as they’d like to open a Universal Studios China theme park outside of Beijing,” Schwerin writes. “As I said, that one should be easy via Melissa Mayfield/David Cohen [two Comcast executives].”

“She said they’d like to pay us for our help on these — I told her we’d discuss whether we could do that — but were sure we could figure something out even if it was success fee based on the US side but that I would talk to you,” Schwerin added.

To what extent this was followed up on is at this point unclear. However, what it indicates is that a company founded by two Democratic political scions was willing to facilitate a deal for their friendliest media network, a network that has been unrelentingly hostile to Trump and more or less completely ignored recent Hunter Biden disclosures. If Hunter helped facilitate a sweet deal like this, it’s only fair that they scratch his back too.

On this edition of Empire Has No Clothes, Matt, Kelley, and Daniel speak to Stephen Wertheim, deputy director of research and policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He discusses his new book, Tomorrow, the World, the rise of American global supremacy, and why that idea is now breaking down. We also talk about the foreign policy presidential debate that wasn’t and the upcoming election.

Listen to the episode in the player below, or click the links beneath it to subscribe using your favorite podcast app. If you like what you hear, please give us a rating or review on iTunes or Stitcher, which will really help us climb the rankings, allowing more people to find the show.

Subscribe on
iTunes
Stitcher
Spotify
Show page

In our last episode before Election Day, Arthur and Ryan talk about the suppression of the Hunter Biden story, and what to watch for in early voter data, especially in Florida, that might hold the key to how the election will turn out. And in the interview segment, we speak to Phil Magness, historian and Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, about his criticisms of Nikole Hannah-Jones and the 1619 project.

Subscribe on


iTunes
Spotify
Show page

The U.N. issued a new warning this week about acute malnutrition among Yemen’s youngest children that threatens to kill nearly 100,000 children under the age of five:

“Yemen is on the brink of a catastrophic food security crisis. If the war doesn’t end now, we are nearing an irreversible situation and risk losing an entire generation of Yemen’s young children,” said Lise Grande, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for the country.

“Acute malnutrition among children is hitting the highest levels we have seen since the war started.”

The people of Yemen have been starved for the last five and a half years by a combination of Saudi coalition blockade, economic war, and bombing. The crisis has worsened recently because of shortfalls in international funding, rising prices, and the suspension of U.S. aid to Houthi-controlled areas where the overwhelming majority of Yemenis live. Humanitarian relief organizations called for a resumption of U.S. aid earlier this year to no avail. Restoring that aid is imperative if our government is to help stave off a worse disaster that has resulted from an indefensible policy of backing this war.

The worsening conditions in Yemen are preventable, but it will require sufficient funding to keep the aid projects going:

Funding shortfalls have disrupted the implementation of many aid projects, including emergency food assistance. Malnutrition treatment programs also could be curtailed if funds are not received soon. As of mid-October, only $1.43 billion of the $3.2 billion needed in 2020 had been received, the UNICEF press release said.

U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen Lisa Grande said the inability to increase humanitarian efforts in Yemen because of insufficient funding is “heartbreaking.”

The misguided use of humanitarian relief funding to punish the Houthis is only harming innocent and powerless people. The civilian population always bears the brunt of these heavy-handed pressure tactics, and so it is again in Yemen.

The country’s health care system has been similarly ravaged by the conflict and overwhelmed by multiple outbreaks, including COVID-19 over the last six months. Most of the population cannot get proper treatment because half of all facilities have been destroyed or damaged:

The World Health Organization warns nearly 18 million people in Yemen are unable to get treatment for deadly diseases because years of war, economic distress and a chronic shortage of money have led to a collapse of the country’s healthcare system.

More than five years of escalating conflict have devastated Yemen’s economy and ability to provide enough food and medical care to keep its population healthy.

World Health Organization officials report only half of the country’s health facilities are fully functioning. And those that remain open suffer from severe shortages of qualified staff, essential medicines and supplies.

A shortfall in funding for the WHO is making matters worse, and if nothing is done another nine million people will lose health services this year:

Jasarevic says WHO is critically short of money to fund its humanitarian operation. He says the agency has received less than half of the $164.5 million it needs. Unless money is urgently received, he warns nine million people will lose access to basic health care services by the end of the year.

In addition, he says as many as 18 million people, including six million children will be deprived of the life-saving vaccines to immunize them against deadly diseases such as measles and polio.

Yemen suffers from the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, and it is an entirely man-made crisis. The principal cause of this crisis is the U.S.-backed war. Our government must halt its support for the Saudi coalition and resume its former aid funding. The U.S. has helped drive Yemen towards the abyss, and it is incumbent on our government to help pull them back from the edge.

Tom McTague and Peter Nicholas review Trump’s foreign policy record, and at one point they make a very peculiar claim:

Those close to Trump and those who had interacted with him—officials, aides, diplomats—described another impulse: an apparently genuine desire to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Trump, many of them told us, does not care about Iranian aspirations for Middle East hegemony, nor the philosophy of its regime (in the same way, we were told, that he does not care about Russia’s or China’s aspirations, only each regime’s willingness to trade). But he does fear Tehran’s getting the bomb. “He was obsessed about nuclear weapons and getting rid of them,” Fiona Hill, Trump’s adviser on European and Russian affairs until July 2019, told us.

This may be what the reporters were told, but it doesn’t make any sense to say that Trump desires the elimination of nuclear weapons. Everything he has done since becoming president has been to wreck the arms control agreements that exist to constrain the number and deployment of these weapons, and his foreign policy has been defined by the effort to blow up the nonproliferation deal negotiated by the previous administration. His decision to renege on the nuclear deal with Iran was a direct attack on a successful nonproliferation agreement that blocked every path to an Iranian nuclear weapon. He has repeatedly mused about pursuing a massive nuclear build-up to undo all of the work of arms controllers for the last fifty years, as he did in a meeting in 2017:

President Donald Trump said he wanted what amounted to a nearly tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during a gathering this past summer of the nation’s highest-ranking national security leaders, according to three officials who were in the room.

Trump’s comments, the officials said, came in response to a briefing slide he was shown that charted the steady reduction of U.S. nuclear weapons since the late 1960s. Trump indicated he wanted a bigger stockpile, not the bottom position on that downward-sloping curve.

This hardly sounds like someone who seeks the abolition of nuclear weapons. Whatever the reason for it, it sounds as if he wants the opposite.

If preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon was his main concern, he would have kept the U.S. in the JCPOA and done nothing to jeopardize the agreement. Instead, he has relentlessly sought to destroy one of the best nonproliferation agreements ever negotiated. So I don’t believe for a minute that he is obsessed with getting rid of nuclear weapons. Even his mishandling of North Korea negotiations confirms that he is more concerned with the public relations side of that problem than he is with reducing or capping North Korea’s arsenal.

The sections in the Atlantic article on the nuclear deal and arms control with Russia don’t line up at all with what we know about the administration’s policies. Trump does not act like someone obsessed with getting rid of nuclear weapons. He acts like someone who wants to knock down all of barriers that currently limit the number and type of deployed nuclear weapons. It is credulous in the extreme to claim that he seems like a “nuclear-zero guy” when he is doing everything possible to detonate the last remnants of arms control. It is not an accident that he has filled his administration with hard-liners that want to get rid of arms control, because he seems entirely in agreement with their goal.

The farcical negotiations connected with the renewal of New START are a good example of what I mean. If the president had a far-reaching goal of eliminating nuclear weapons, he would have seized on the chance to extend the treaty years ago and then built on that foundation. Instead, he and his officials have dragged their feet and run out the clock with the poorly-concealed intention of killing the treaty. Killing New START clearly doesn’t move the world towards a future free of nuclear weapons, and it very likely means the start of a new and very expensive arms race.

The authors explain the contradiction between Trump’s record and his supposed desire by claiming it is overridden by his desire to dominate, but the simpler explanation is that Trump’s real intentions are reflected in what he does and not what he sometimes says he wants. It may be that Trump has said that he wants good relations with Russia, but he has done almost everything he can to make sure those relations remain poor. Arms control is one area where he could have pursued cooperation with Russia without controversy, and he would have even received praise for doing the responsible thing, but this is one area where he insisted on sticking to a hard-line position. For all intents and purposes, Trump acts like someone who wants a new arms race, and he has done all that he can to make that happen.

The article tries to square the circle by giving Trump undue credit for wanting the right things but going after them in the wrong way:

This gets to the heart of Trumpism as a foreign policy. The president appears to have had genuine bipartisan goals of reducing the risk of nuclear weapons, and identified strategic flaws—whether on Iran, multilateralism, overextension, or bipartisan naïveté about China. But in trying to address these issues, he focused solely on using unilateral strength, and instead exacerbated some problems.

As far as arms control and nonproliferation are concerned, this conclusion doesn’t hold up. He didn’t share “genuine bipartisan goals of reducing the risk of nuclear weapons.” He deliberately tore up a working nonproliferation agreement, quit an advantageous arms control treaty when he didn’t have to, and refused to extend another one that was working perfectly. He brought the U.S. closer to nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula than it had ever been before. These are not the actions of someone who wants to reduce the risk of nuclear weapons, so let’s not credit him with good intentions when he has been operating in such obvious bad faith.

Miles Taylor, a former department of Homeland Security chief of staff who has built a profile in recent months in anti-Trump media, revealed Wednesday that he was so-called “Anonymous.”

“Issuing my critiques without attribution forced the president to answer them directly on their merits or not at all, rather than creating distractions through petty insults and name-calling,” Taylor said Wednesday. “I wanted the attention to be on the arguments themselves. At the time I asked, ‘What will he do when there is no person to attack, only an idea?’ We got the answer. He became unhinged.”

The former official penned an anonymous article in September 2018 while in government service. He attacked the president as broadly unfit. But the decision by the New YorkTimes, the most powerful and circulated paper in the United States, to publish the piece raised eyebrows, even at the time. The Times acknowledged the move was a “rare step.” And it set up a veritable manhunt within the administration to find the source of the article, which was unsuccessful. 

“We have done so at the request of the author,” the Times explained then, in a disclosure. “A senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers.”

Importantly, the Times identified Taylor as “a senior official in the Trump administration.” 

The classification “senior administration official” is frequently used to veil sources in media reports, especially during the Trump administration — which leaks promiscuously — but is also rarely defined, leaving the reader to do considerable guesswork from outlet to outlet. 

Taylor served three secretaries of Homeland Security: John Kelly, Kirstjen Nielsen and acting secretary Chad Wolf, including the latter two as chief of staff. Taylor exited government in 2019.

Since then, he has revealed his dissatisfaction with the administration, and worked with the anti-Trump ad juggernaut the Lincoln Project, and endorsed Democratic challenger Joe Biden for president. Taylor alleges serious government malfeasance, starting at the top. “The California wildfires — he told us to stop giving money to people’s whose houses hard burned because politically it wasn’t a base for him,” Taylor said.   

On Wednesday, Taylor revealed the broader apostasy. 

He told the Times Michael D. Shear: “More than two years ago, I published an anonymous opinion piece in The New York Times about Donald Trump’s perilous presidency, while I was serving under him. He responded with a short but telling tweet: ‘TREASON?’” 

Taylor said: “Trump sees personal criticism as subversive.” In a subsequent book on the topic, “A Warning,” also published anonymously, Taylor wrote that “I have decided to publish this anonymously because this debate is not about me.”

The reality of Taylor’s identity was objected to by reporters from the Washington Post, Politicoand the Atlantic on Wednesday.Taylor has issued a longer statement to the Times and readers can view it here. 

But Taylor and the Times were attacked along several lines Wednesday, notwithstanding the serious allegations he’s leveled at the president. 

First, the decision to unveil his identity now, at this point, has attracted controversy. A.J. Delgado, a former Trump campaign official who is now sharply critical of the president, attacked the revelation as occurring too late: nearly 70 million Americans have already voted. Some may have voted one way if he voiced his objections openly earlier. But perhaps other voters thought he was someone more important.

Because second, many question the classification of Taylor by the Times as a senior official in the administration. Taylor’s opinion piece appeared during an administration in which Cabinet officials and senior political aides to the president were known to be regularly talking to the press with perhaps unprecedented frequency. But “Trump couldn’t pick this guy out a line-up,” Delgado contended. Taylor has appeared publicly at events where the president has spoken. But his lack of prominence during this period remains a sticking, to his critics, at least.

The frequent use in the original op-ed of the word “steady,” a favorite of then-secretary of Defense James Mattis, led to intrigue that the official was truly high up the chain. Such speculation undermined the retired general’s standing with the White House. Mattis has since denounced Trump, but he has done so openly and after his government service. 

Third, Taylor did attack Trump on fitness grounds, but he did so in a conflationary way. He made policy objections. He cited John McCain, a known Trump rival. Trump “complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia,” Taylor wrote. “And he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken.”  

Such lines of argument belie the fact that many renowned foreign policy experts are skepticalof a belligerently hawkish policy toward Moscow, (the considerable) controversy over Russia’s interference in the 2016 election aside. 

Trump also openly campaigned on a more amicable relationship with Russia. He defeated other Republicans, most of whom were of Taylor’s view (he once worked for Vice President Dick Cheney). And such a policy was also attempted by the Obama administration early in its first term, and strenuously defended as the 44th president won re-election. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the subject waded into murky behavior by the president’s entourage and but did not result in the president’s impeachment (a later scandal did) and removal. 

In other words, a perspective on Russia that is straight out of the realist school of foreign policy has been ratified by three successive votes of the Electoral College. Americans may yet vote Trump’s challenger Joe Biden into power, in part out of concern over Trump and Russia, but Taylor’s contention came as he insisted he was “rising above politics.”

Fourth, many in the president’s base distrusted Taylor’s principal boss, Nielsen. Pressures from the immigration restrictionist right helped force her from office in April 2019. This story would have taken on a different connotation if it Taylor worked for an official Trump had a more stable relationship with, such as secretary of State Mike Pompeo or secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin.

Finally, it’s not exactly news that Trump has clashed heavily with his own officials over philosophy. Trump has shown that he favors putative personal loyalists over the necessarily like-minded. Defenders of the president volunteer that he has a “team of rivals” perspective, but it’s clearly frequently backfired. 

In addition to Mattis, and Kelly (later chief of staff), former national security advisor John Bolton has also weighed in harshly against the president, saying he shouldn’t be re-elected. While Bolton attacks Trump’s character, he also intones against the president on policy grounds, signaling his disgust that he is not of the Reaganite mold. But Bolton has identified himself publicly from the start, has declined to collaborate with groups flamboyantly dedicated to the destruction of the president and was actually a senior administration official.