The powerful meet, but to what end?
President Donald Trump was traveling this week, with mixed results for all concerned. It was his second trip to Europe as president, and the journey would take him first to Warsaw, Poland, and athen to Hamburg, Germany.
The ostensible reason for the trip was to attend the annual meeting of the 22 countries with the biggest economies in the world, held this year in Hamburg, the massive port city on the Baltic Sea that is a powerhouse in the German economy, the fourth-biggest in the world. But attention centered on Trump’s side meetings, first with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Europe’s most powerful leader, followed the next day with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the macho leader with great pecs and a penetrating gaze.
It was hard to know which side visit was more important for American interests, the one with Merkel, who by all accounts views Trump with the deepest suspicion and a large measure of German contempt (and there’s no contempt like German contempt, just ask the bankrupt Greeks) but whose strong leadership everybody in NATO needs in these days of random but deadly terrorist attacks. Or, there was the meeting with Vladimir Putin, whose attempt to undermine the American electoral process is vouched for by the U.S. intelligence services and by almost all the other intelligence agencies in the Western world. About the only leader who doesn’t believe interference happened is Trump.
Putin is known for taking the measure of other foreign leaders. Merkel, for example, is known to be nervous around dogs. With that in mind, Putin brought in his giant Labrador to sit next to him during one meeting with her. The German chancellor was not amused. On the other hand, she speaks excellent Russian, having achieved first place in her Russian class years ago in Communist East Germany. Putin was impressed. One tends to doubt that Trump speaks Russian, although one hopes he likes dogs.
Nevertheless, Trump delivered a remarkably good speech in Warsaw, spoiled only by one of his relentless attacks on the media and rambling views on Russian intervention in American politics.
The biggest foreign policy issue that hung over the meeting, however, had nothing to do with Europe but with North Korea and the July Fourth launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching North America, in this case, Alaska. In other words, it was a real game changer, and nobody seemed to know what to do about it. The options for the U.S. and its allies, Japan and South Korea, are terrible, and they aren’t much better for China, almost an ally and — potentially — the main diplomatic player in the game.
The United States could launch a limited military strike against North Korea, but the problem is that there is almost no such thing as a limited strike. The North Korean army numbers well over 1 million men, with thousands of artillery pieces, all close to the South Korean border. Even if North Korea chose not to use nuclear weapons, Seoul could be devastated by North Korean artillery, with tens of thousands of civilian casualties as well as enormous property damage. The 30,000-strong U.S. military would practically be hostages to North Korean firepower. All of Japan’s major cities would be within reach of North Korea’s nuclear weapons.
The consensus of all those countries involved seems to be greater Chinese involvement. Certainly this is what the United States would prefer. But the Chinese do not seem to be particularly anxious to get involved. If the North Korean regime collapses, China would be faced with a huge refugee problem on its northern border. And if the regime does indeed collapse, then China could have the U.S. or its South Korean ally on its northern border. The options for Beijing are also unpalatable. As they are for us. And for everyone else. These are uncomfortable days.
Bill Stewart writes about current affairs from Santa Fe. He is a former U.S. Foreign Service officer and worked as a correspondent for Time magazine.