.. Using the phrases “axis of adults” and “adults in the room” has become a common trope in Washington these days
.. But in Tillerson’s case, being a diplomat goes hand-in-hand with serving as the janitor, on hand to clean up the mess.
When Trump’s adversarial telephone conversation with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was leaked, Tillerson and Mattis teamed up to offer assurances that the longstanding relationship between Washington and Canberra was and will remain solid.
.. At the same time that Trump was calling North Korean leader Kim Jong-un names and tweeting that Pyongyang would be destroyed if it dared to threaten the United States, Tillerson was dialing back the rhetoric
.. Kim Jong-un is obsessively paranoid about the possibility of a U.S. invasion, so Tillerson’s State Department released statements expressing the clear view that Washington has no interest in overthrowing the government in Pyongyang or converting North Korea into some kind of U.S.-imposed democratic utopia. All Washington wants, Tillerson said, was the Kim regime’s denuclearization.
Gaming out the North Korea crisis: How the conflict might escalate
The pathways that have been examined fall into four main categories:
- doing nothing,
- hitting Kim Jong Un’s regime with tougher sanctions,
- pushing for talks, and
- military confrontation.
- In a launch from North Korea, a nuclear-tipped missile could reach San Francisco in half an hour.
- A nuclear attack on Seoul, South Korea’s capital of 10 million people, could start and finish in three minutes.
.. Luring the North Koreans to the negotiating table is perhaps the most popular pathway among many experts, who advocate a “freeze-for-freeze” option, in which the United States might promise to restrict military exercises in the region or eschew new sanctions against Kim’s regime, in exchange for North Korea agreeing to halt expansion and testing of its nuclear capabilities.
Former defense secretary Robert M. Gates, for example, has suggested promising not to seek regime change in North Korea in exchange for Kim committing to a cap on his nuclear program.
the Trump administration rejects the idea of freeze-for-freeze, calling it a false moral equivalency.
.. A military confrontation could start with a U.S. effort to force regime change, either by taking out the Kim regime or by fomenting a rebellion among elites in the isolated dictatorship.
“But it’s hard to imagine that scenario ending with anything other than the North Koreans deciding to light up Seoul,”
.. In a conventional war, heavy casualties would likely result as North Korean troops poured into the South, using tunnels the North is reported to have built under the demilitarized zone between the countries. In addition, North Korea is believed to have a stockpile of several thousand tons of chemical weapons
.. In war games played out at Washington policy institutes, even minor confrontations have led to a nuclear exchange.
.. North Korea might attempt to spread fear through an act of terrorism, said Patrick Cronin, an Asia-Pacific security expert at the Center for a New American Security. “A few grenades in downtown Seoul will absolutely close down the city out of fear,” he said.
.. North Korea has “proven adept over the years at using force in pretty calibrated ways to achieve political objectives,” said Thomas Mahnken, president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, which does war-game planning. He said the North takes advantage of the relative unwillingness of the United States and South Korea to risk war.
Goldman Sachs Begins Selling Some of Controversial Venezuelan Bonds
Goldman Sachs Asset Management has begun selling some of the $2.8 billion in Venezuelan bonds it acquired in a deal involving the country’s central bank
.. The Wall Street firm’s asset-management arm sold at least $300 million face amount of the bonds to a small group of hedge funds in recent days
.. GSAM’s purchase of the bonds in May drew harsh criticism from Venezuelan opposition leaders and some investors for supplying cash to the authoritarian regime of President Nicolás Maduro.
.. Four or five hedge funds in London and New York bought the bonds of state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA, or PdVSA, due in 2022 from Goldman for about 32.5 cents on the dollar, slightly more than the 31 cents the firm paid when it purchased the bonds from Venezuela’s central bank in May
.. Goldman sold the debt to promote trading of the bonds, which the firm hopes will push prices up and legitimize the securities in the eyes of other investors
.. some firm executives have said privately that Goldman’s chief mistake wasn’t in buying the bonds—which it felt it obligated to do on behalf of clients in its funds—but in going it alone, buying nearly all of the $3 billion issuance.
.. Goldman and the new buyers of the debt are betting that a regime change in Venezuela could lift bond prices even if the country defaults.
Bannon’s Out. But Did H.R. McMaster Win?
in mid-March, General McMaster tried to fire Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence programs at the National Security Council. Mr. Cohen-Watnick, a holdover from Michael Flynn’s aborted stint as national security adviser, complained to Mr. Bannon and Jared Kushner, who prevailed on Mr. Trump to have him reinstated.
The idea that the 30-year-old Mr. Cohen-Watnick should be senior director for intelligence programs — a position held by senior career C.I.A. officers in the Obama administration and others — is dubious. Furthermore, General McMaster’s decision to get rid of Mr. Cohen-Watnick was well within his pay grade.
.. A few days after his reinstatement, Mr. Cohen-Watnick was one of three White House staffers who facilitated a briefing to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes on the “incidental surveillance” of Trump campaign staff members, which Mr. Nunes used to distract news media and public attention from the committee’s investigation of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government to influence the outcome of the presidential election.
A little unpacking revealed how artlessly pretextual this distraction was: Mr. Nunes professed the need to learn new information about surveillance to warn the president, yet that very information was in the possession of the White House and accessible to Mr. Trump without Mr. Nunes’s intervention.
.. One defensible inference is that Mr. Trump wanted to keep a pliable ally as the White House’s principal liaison with the intelligence community.
To arrange Mr. Trump’s reversal of General McMaster’s dismissal of Mr. Cohen-Watnick, Mr. Bannon required no formal position on the National Security Council. Indeed, Mr. Cohen-Watnick’s other inside patron — Mr. Kushner — had no such position.
.. Rex W. Tillerson blithely channeled buzz phrases like “win-win solutions” and “mutual respect” in describing United States-China relations. The phraseology seemed to signal United States capitulation to China’s sphere-of-influence geopolitical stance
.. Matt Pottinger, the senior director for Asia at the National Security Council, had warned in a memo against using such language. The fact that no one seems to have paid him any heed suggests how little the council matters in the Trump White House.
.. Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, implied it would be “silly” to advocate regime change due to the absence of practical alternatives. The next day, Nikki Haley, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, in an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council, struck a very different chord by condemning the regime and saying that the United States could take unilateral action should the Security Council fail to respond effectively. (Mr. Trump then dialed up his own language, saying his attitude toward Syria had “changed very much.”)
In each case, the stated position of one national security player did not mesh with that of another.
Among the National Security Council’s key tasks is to help the president arrive at a consensus on a given foreign policy issue by soliciting the views of different agencies and orchestrating compromises in formulating a clear and integrated approach.
.. And perhaps a lack of policy coordination is just the way it is in the Trump administration. But if that is the case, the situation calls into question the National Security Council’s very utility.
..
But for the institution to have real value, regardless of who the players are, Mr. Trump himself needs to respect it more than he apparently does.