Commander-in-Chaos

For diplomatic negotiations to take place successfully, negotiating counterparties need to be able to offer credible commitments. After a negotiation, when the two sides leave the room, each must have a certain degree of confidence that the other will follow up on what was agreed. If an agreement has yet to be finalized – for instance, if negotiators need to take an agreement back to their principals for approval – then the credibility of leaders is particularly valuable.

In late-2019, it’s apparent that for the United States the ability to offer credible commitments in a negotiation is severely compromised. That had been apparent under the presidency of Donald J. Trump for some time, but the collapse of working-level talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan in early September offered the sharpest case yet. Zalmay Khalilzad, Trump’s special envoy, had been shuttling between Kabul, Doha, and Washington, D.C., seeking an agreement with the Taliban.

From public reporting, the contours of Khalilzad’s deal were far from ideal for either the United States, the Taliban, or the Afghan government, but they represented a broad compromise that could lead to the drawdown of U.S. troops from their longest-standing involvement in any conflict zone. More than 18 years since the September 11, 2001, attacks that spurred the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan later that year, American troops remain in the country.

In a series of tweets on the week preceding the 18th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Trump said he had decided to call off something remarkable: A secret Camp David meeting with Taliban representatives and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. He made his decision following a Taliban-claimed attack in Kabul that killed a U.S. service member, a Romanian soldier, and 10 Afghan civilians. “If they cannot agree to a ceasefire during these very important peace talks, and would even kill 12 innocent people, then they probably don’t have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway,” Trump added.

Just like that, U.S. Afghan policy had done yet another 180-degree turn under Trump, who had in August 2017 announced a policy toward the country that privileged a troop surge – taking the 8,400 troops that had been left by Obama to around 14,000 – and an open-ended campaign against the Taliban and the Islamic State. Khalilzad’s efforts were borne of another turn, deciding apparently that the time had come to end the U.S. presence in the country. But Trump’s tweet – seemingly the product of no interagency consultation – blew it all up.

The decision was an exceptionally telling moment about the nature of American foreign policymaking within this administration. The Camp David reversal also marked the straw to break the camel’s back on John Bolton’s tenure as Trump’s national security adviser. Bolton, a perennial hawk, had opposed the idea of hosting the Taliban at Camp David days before the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. While that decision may have represented good judgement, he also broadly favored continued U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. Trump fired Bolton – by tweet – demonstrating once again the discord at the highest levels of his administration.

These contradictions manifest continuously. On September 15, Trump took to Twitter to condemn the “Fake News” for reporting that he had said he would meet with Hassan Rouhani, the president of Iran, with no conditions. In fact, the U.S. president was on video saying those very words. Pompeo, too, had conveyed that message on his behalf just five days before his tweet, saying such a meeting was possible on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in late September in New York.

For American adversaries and friends alike, the signals this administration sends continue to be highly unreliable. The Trump administration’s apparent struggle with itself will continue to manifest. Right as Trump announced the cancellation of the Camp David meeting with the Taliban, North Korean’s Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui issued a statement proposing a return to talks with the United States.

Working-level talks between the United States and North Korea were supposed to resume after the June 30 meeting between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the inter-Korean Demilitarized Zone. They did not; instead North Korea carried on with missile testing. If Choe’s opening does lead to a resumption of talks – which it might by October – then the lead U.S. negotiator, Stephen E. Biegun, may find himself facing the same problems that befell Khalilzad.

Biegun’s task negotiating with the North Koreans will be to line up a deal that can then be implemented between the two sides – one that will hopefully see the North Koreans make some verifiable concessions on their nuclear program. Biegun had one real shot at working-level talks with the North Koreans in the past, in early 2019, but that process was highly limited. In effect, Biegun was a glorified summit logistics planner for Trump. The two leaders’ summit meeting in late February in Hanoi ended in failure.

For the North Koreans, Trump’s caprice and willingness to undercut his own staff represents a feature and a bug. Firstly, as Hanoi demonstrated, Trump does not always override his staff. There, instead of agreeing to a deal with North Korea that would have exchanged capacious sanctions relief for some concessions on Pyongyang’s nuclear facilities at the well-known Yongbyon nuclear complex, Trump sided with Bolton and his staff, saying that it sanctions relief was premature.

But last year, in Singapore, Trump behaved differently. After meeting Kim Jong Un, he called off U.S.-South Korea exercises – calling them provocative “war games.” That was a win for Pyongyang. Now, with Bolton out of the picture, the North Koreans might expect a new U.S.-North Korea summit meeting to go down more like Singapore and less like Hanoi. This time, they may even expect a better payoff yet.

There are risks for the North Korean side, however. In April this year, Kim Jong Un said that the United States had a limited timespan by which to change its policy. Kim indicated that he would change course after the end of the year, potentially by resuming activities that the United States interprets to be more provocative, such as long-range missile tests and possibly even nuclear tests.

If no deal materializes by the end of the year and Kim does change course, he might find himself experiencing the kind of shift in tone from Trump that Chinese President Xi Jinping did. Xi, once described by Trump as a “friend,” became an “enemy” this summer. If that were to happen, the United States and North Korea might find themselves on a quick path back to the dark days of 2017, when both sides traded nuclear threats. The fundamental problem underlying the Trump administration’s foreign policy today continues to be the president himself. With the inability to offer credible commitments, Trump introduces chaos at every turn, leaving American friends and adversaries alike guessing at what comes next.