There is considerable debate in both academic and policy circles about the utility of nuclear weapons. Of what use are they? Some say just about all nuclear weapons are good for is self defense. States that possess them can more easily deter attack or invasion. Others argue that possessing nuclear weapons also gives states added leverage to get their way in international politics. In this conception, nuclear weapons add to the ability to coerce other states. Not only can they deter actions we don’t like, but they can help compel others to take actions that we do like.

A new and important book, Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy by Todd S. Sechser and Matthew Fuhrmann, evaluates the empirical record to test whether or not nuclear weapons aid in coercive diplomacy. Their findings are clear: no, nuclear weapons do not have much coercive utility. States with nukes don’t have more leverage in settling territorial disputes, they’re not more likely to initiate military challenges, they are not more likely to escalate ongoing disputes, and they are not more successful in blackmailing rivals. 

This has significant implications for U.S. foreign policy. What do these findings suggest we should expect from our nuclear-armed rivals, like Russia and China? Does it make sense to undertake preventive military action against nascent nuclear weapons programs in countries like North Korea? If Iran were to get nuclear weapons once the time-limited restrictions in the JCPOA expire (as critics of the deal suggest), how would that influence its behavior in the region?

The authors are coming to the Cato Institute on March 7 to discuss their book and explain their theoretical and empirical findings. Matthew Kroenig will be a discussant and offer comments on the book. You can register to attend the event here. 

During Trump’s surprising presidential campaign, pundits became fond of pointing out that Trump’s supporters took his often-shocking rhetoric seriously, but not literally, whereas his opponents took his rhetoric literally, but not seriously. Today, however, it is obvious that one should take Trump’s words both seriously and literally. In his first month Trump has been busy matching actions to words, temporarily banning immigration from seven Muslim-majority nations and ordering sanctuary cities to detain illegal immigrants, launching work on the U.S.-Mexican border wall, and preparing to lift the ban on the CIA black sites where the United States carried out “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

For those who voted for Trump this first month must surely be a heady viewing experience. For much of the country, however, Trump’s efforts are taking things in the wrong direction, as even his most extreme campaign proposals become reality. From the perspective of the polls, Trump’s first month has met decidedly mixed reviews.

On immigration, for example, Trump signed a short-lived executive order threatening to halt federal funding to so-called “sanctuary cities” that offer protection to illegal immigrants if they do not detain illegal immigrants and turn them over to federal authorities. And before signing two executive orders directing the construction of the U.S.-Mexican border wall, Trump argued that the United States is “in the middle of a crisis border” and that “A nation without borders is not a nation.”

Most Americans see things differently. When asked about illegal immigrants currently living in the United States, a CBS News Poll this month found that 74% of the public thinks they should be allowed to stay, while just 22% thinks they should be required to leave. 61% believe illegal immigrants should eventually be allowed to apply for citizenship. The same poll found that 59% oppose Trump’s plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, with 37% favoring it.

On the question of torture Trump faces a polarized public. Just yesterday Trump reaffirmed his belief in the utility of torture, telling an interviewer that the United States must “fight fire with fire” and that “Absolutely I feel it works.” Many Americans, however, are not so sure. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center finds that 49% of the public does not believe there are any circumstances that justify torture; while 48% believes that there are some circumstances that do. When asked about specific interrogation techniques, Americans have tended to be even less supportive. Gallup polls from 2005, for example, found 82% opposed water boarding, 79% opposed keeping prisoners naked and chained in uncomfortable positions. 62% felt it was wrong to threaten to transfer a prisoner to a country know for using torture – relevant given Trump’s order to reestablish overseas CIA black sites, which were used for just such purposes.

On the question of banning Muslims from entering the United States Trump’s support is far from overwhelming. Earlier this month a Quinnipiac University poll found that 48% support suspending immigration from “terror prone regions” compared to 42% who oppose doing so. This represents a slip from the summer of 2016, when a NBC News/​Survey Monkey poll taken days after the Orlando nightclub attack found 50% support for Trump’s call for a ban, with 46% opposing.

It is too early to make bold predictions about the popularity of Trump’s policies down the road or what the polls today might tell us about how the polls will look two or four years from now. Even so, though Trump is enjoying the rush of power that comes with the Oval Office, his administration would do well to take these poll numbers both literally and seriously. Racking up policy “wins” that don’t have majority support is a sure way to lose political capital in Washington and a terrible strategy for getting reelected.

This goes double for Trump, given his historically low approval and favorability ratings. Trump is the first elected president with an approval rating under 50% (42% in the latest Gallup poll) and the latest Pew Research Center poll has his net favorable/​unfavorable rating at minus 16%. Trump, with his mobile phone and millions of Twitter followers, may believe he can use the bully pulpit to win hearts and minds. In this, however, he will learn that he is sadly mistaken. Scholars of presidential communication have long since shown that presidents with approval ratings below 50% find their ability to move public opinion vastly diminished, if not completely destroyed.

At his current approval levels, it doesn’t matter how many tweets Trump fires off, he is unlikely to turn opposition toward unpopular programs into support. On the other hand, Trump will fare much better as he moves on to policies that enjoy majority support to begin with like his infrastructure package, tax cuts for the middle class, spending more for defense, or improving veterans’ services.

In the final analysis, assessments of Trump’s presidency won’t hinge primarily on attitudes towards specific policies but on the public’s judgments of the broader sweep of economic and social trends over his time in office. And for that we shall have to wait. 

Donald Trump has of late been complaining that the media has been underplaying the threat presented by Islamist terrorism. 


Although one could question whether a hazard that has inflicted six deaths per year in the United States since 9/11 actually represents something that could be called a “threat,” the New York Times in its Sunday, February 5 edition presented on its front page an exercise in terrorism fear-mongering that should surely warm Trump’s heart, if any.


The article, “Not ‘Lone Wolves’ After All” by Rukmini Callimachi seeks in the most ominous tones to demonstrate “How ISIS Guides World’s Terror Plots From Afar.” 


The article does an excellent job at showing how a few ISIS operatives have been trying through internet communication to stir up violence by sympathetic would-be jihadists around the world. However, the evidence from the article includes enough information to indicate that this effort has been an abject, even almost comedic, failure.

The information could have been framed that way, but, one darkly suspects, it might not have made the Sunday front page if it had been.


Callimachi argues that “a pattern has emerged.” In this, a supporter “initially tries to reach Syria, but is either blocked by the authorities in the home country or else turned back from the border.” 


This could be taken to be an indication of the pronounced decline ISIS is experiencing. After all, the group’s whole point and appeal, proclaimed repeatedly for years, is to establish a viable caliphate in the Middle East.


But Callimachi espies a nefarious upside for the vicious group: “Under the instructions of a handler in Syria or Iraq, the person then begins planning an attack at home.” 


The article is centered on an effort by “virtual coaches” in ISIS over no less than 17 months to get the apparent leader of a small band of sympathizers in India to commit some violence in its name. Apparently working with a congenial criminal network in India, one of the coaches was able to supply the distant conspirators with two pistols that proved to be rusty accompanied by 20 essentially irrelevant bullets. 


And only at the end of the article do we find out that the police were able through wiretaps to close down the whole scheme shortly after the boys in the band found they could not fabricate bombs from material surreptitiously supplied by their handler following the instructions he apparently posted on YouTube: “We could not succeed in making powder, as it became jellylike paste,” one lamented. Far from dedicated jihadists, the plotters cooperatively spilled all they knew about the plans and connections to the authorities after they were arrested. 


The article is peppered with similar tales. One guy shoots himself in leg, another was supposed to drive over people but attacks with an ax instead because he didn’t have a driving permit, a third detonates a bomb prematurely killing only himself, and an explosive in a suicide vest proves insufficiently lethal to smash a nearby flowerpot. 


About the only “success” for what Callimachi calls the “cybercoaches” seems to have been the slitting of the throat of an 85-year-old priest in northern France—perhaps the most pointless and thoroughly counterproductive act of terrorism in history. That is, really, really stupid.


The only example of cybercoach work in the United States that is dealt with in any detail in the article is a case in Rochester, NY, in which the 25-year-old Emanuel Lutchman, looking for ways to get to Syria, was encouraged by his ISIS handler to do some local terrorism to demonstrate his devotion to the cause. The idea was to launch a machete attack on a bar on New Year’s eve somehow killing, in the words of his distant, disembodied coach, “1000000s of kuffar”—infidels.


Left out of the article is that Lutchman was rather inadequate for the mission. He had spent most of the previous ten years in prison for various infractions, the first of which was robbing a man of such unimpressive items as his cell phone, baseball hat, bus pass, library card, and cigarettes. He was also mentally ill and was apparently no longer taking his prescribed medication. He had tried to commit suicide several times, most recently by stabbing himself in the stomach. He had no money, job, or resources, and he was given to picking up cigarette butts outside the targeted bar from which he had repeatedly been shooed away by its irritated owner who characterized him as an “aggressive panhandler.”


Lutchman attracted the attention of the FBI when he mindlessly posted favorable commentary about violent jihad and about ISIS on the web, and he soon found himself at the center of a terrorist cell of four. The other three were all FBI operatives. They worked to facilitate his (or his handler’s) addled fantasies, even shelling out the $40 Lutchman didn’t have to buy a machete and other terrorist equipment from a local Walmart.


Any terrorist “threat” presented by the hapless Lutchman and his remote cybercoach, then, was pretty modest. But you’d never know that by reading Callimachi. Or by listening to Trump.

Despite making numerous comments during the 2016 presidential campaign that indicated he favored a much more realistic foreign policy for the United States, Donald Trump continues to beat a hasty retreat from that position. His actions once he became president point to a continuation of the stale, needlessly confrontational approach that his predecessors adopted—an approach that has caused so much grief for the American people.

I’ve discussed elsewhere the fawning efforts of Trump and Secretary of Defense James Mattis to “reassure” free-riding U.S. allies of the administration’s undying devotion to the status quo. Those actions followed an extremely belligerent stance adopted toward Iran, the country that policymakers who are determined to perpetuate America’s foolhardy entanglement in the Middle East view as their favorite designated enemy.

Even Trump’s repeated calls during the campaign for a cooperative relationship with Russia, which outraged American hawks, now seem on the verge of abandonment. Instead of pursuing a policy toward Moscow based on realist principles, the president is drifting toward a stance based on the same lack of realism that plagued the Obama administration. 

Obama and his advisers, especially the infamous Victoria Nuland, the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, apparently believed that Washington and the European Union could back anti-government demonstrators in Ukraine in their campaign to oust the elected, pro-Russian government without Russia lashing out in response. They were soon disabused of that notion when the Kremlin promptly seized control of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and subsequently backed rebel forces in eastern Ukraine against the new regime in Kiev. Washington and its NATO allies responded by imposing economic sanctions on Moscow, and relations with Russia have deteriorated rapidly since then, with alarming deployments of both Russian and NATO military forces.

President Trump still insists that he wants to get along with Russia, but his lack of realism about the underlying issues will likely preclude a rapprochement. In a new briefing, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer insists that the president expects Vladimir Putin not only to reduce Moscow’s support for the Ukrainian separatist rebels, but to return the Crimean Peninsula to Ukraine unconditionally.

The first demand is a stretch, but the second one is a nonstarter. There is virtually no chance that Russia will disgorge Crimea. Not only do most Crimean residents apparently favor an affiliation with Russia rather than Ukraine, but Moscow is determined to secure its longstanding naval base at Sevastopol. Having that crucial base end up in a foreign country occurred because of the breakup to the Soviet Union. Moreover, Russians point out that Crimea was part of Russia from the 1780s until 1954, when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred control to Ukraine. Since Ukraine and Russia were both part of the Soviet Union, that decision didn’t seem to matter much at the time. But now both Russians and Americans might well ask why so many U.S. political leaders and policymakers regard with apparent reverence the arbitrary edict made by the communist dictator of a defunct country.

President Trump and other U.S. leaders need to accept the reality that Russia will not relinquish Crimea. Nor will Serbia be able to reclaim Kosovo, Syria regain the Golan Heights from Israel, or Tibet again become independent from China. The legality (much less the justice) of all of those territorial changes via conquest are certainly open to question. But a foreign policy based on realism must accept facts on the ground and deal with situations as they are, not how we might wish they would be. If the Trump administration truly wants a cooperative relationship with Russia, it must abandon its unrealistic demand regarding Crimea.

Michael Flynn’s resignation as National Security Advisor is good news, mostly because it makes it slightly less likely that the Trump administration will blunder into a foolish war, especially with Iran. It won’t be the end of the scandal though, as it is hard to believe that the President was totally unaware of Flynn’s actions.

Flynn’s fall is surprising only for its speed. Since he gained prominence as a Joint Special Operations Command intelligence officer in Iraq for helping to develop the “find, fix, and finish” method of seizing or killing suspected insurgents and terrorists, Flynn has, to put it mildly, showed a deficit of the sound judgment needed in a National Security Advisor.

As head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Flynn apparently pushed analysts to hype Iran’s malign influence and to find evidence that it had a hand in the 2011 Benghazi attack, feuded with senior staff, demonstrated hostility to dissent, favored conspiracy theories, and got fired for some combination of those things and generally poor management.

He wrote an overwrought book with Michael Ledeen which includes various dubious and unsubstantiated claims, especially about Iran, including that it is allied against the United States with jihadists, North Korea, China, Russia, Syria, Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

In his speech at last year’s Republican National Convention, Flynn essentially accused Hillary Clinton of treason for her email server debacle, despite his own dubious record in handling classified information. And, while receiving classified intelligence briefings along with Trump, Flynn was secretly employed as a lobbyist for Turkish interests, a fact that he hid while taking Turkey’s line in an op-ed endorsing the extradition of Fethullah Gulen. Around that time, Trump was attacking lobbyists and subsequently pretended to bar them from his administration.

Maybe surviving and even profiting from those misjudgments encouraged the reckless and possibly illegal actions that led to Flynn’s resignation. As everyone that reads the news knows, Flynn may have violated the Logan Act, which bars unauthorized citizens from meddling in U.S. diplomacy, when on December 29, in a series of calls, he told Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that the Trump administration would reverse the sanctions that the Obama had just imposed on Russia for its pro-Trump hacking and leaking.

You don’t have to be a former head of the DIA to know that U.S. intelligence agencies intercept the Russian ambassador’s cellphone calls. That’s why it’s baffling that Flynn lied to Vice President Pence (and the media) about the content of the calls, which created concern among Justice Department officials that he could be blackmailed by Russians. That lie, more than Trump’s concern about propriety, seems to be why Flynn was likely to be fired, and thus preemptively resigned.

We shouldn’t expect too much from Flynn’s replacement, given who is picking and the fact that most qualified candidates, having seen the Trump White House in action, will want no part of it. Still, at the risk of sounding like the president, it’s hard to see how it could get worse. The retired generals that Trump is predictably considering for the post are less belligerent and better-suited to deflect his worst instincts.

Flynn’s resignation probably won’t end the scandal. It’s doubtful that his pre-inaugural talk with the Russian ambassador was a one-off. According to intelligence reports cited by the Washington Post, Flynn was communicating with Kislyak during the campaign. Nor is it likely that Flynn acted without Trump’s approval. Note that the president-elect tweeted his approval of Russia’s non-response to the sanctions on December 30. It is possible that Flynn’s actions were part of the broader set of conversations between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, now the subject a counterintelligence investigation.

Maybe Flynn will have something to say about all that now that he’s out of a job. He ended his resignation letter like a good Trump soldier, calling on Americans to work to “Make America Great Again.” But otherwise he sounded petulant and barely contrite, admitting only to “inadvertently briefing” Pence and others with “incomplete information,” and blaming his error on the “fast pace of events.” 

I’m tempted to say that no one would so blatantly work with a rival state to undercut U.S. diplomacy. Why not at least use intermediaries outside the campaign, like Nixon did in 1968 when he undermined U.S. peace talks in Vietnam to beat Hubert Humphrey? But, if we didn’t know it three weeks ago, it’ become clear that under Trump, incompetence can’t be underestimated.

Donald Trump’s comments about U.S. foreign policy during the 2016 election campaign offered some promise of a policy bright spot in what was otherwise likely to be a dismal, if not alarming administration. Trump condemned the Iraq War for the folly it was and he displayed a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the entire concept of nation building. He also subjected Washington’s long-standing alliances in Europe and East Asia to withering criticism. Trump quite accurately termed NATO “obsolete,” and he took allies in both regions (as well as countries such as Saudi Arabia) to task for shamelessly free riding on America’s security exertions. Such comments continued even when he became president-elect.

Unfortunately, hopes for a more focused and enlightened U.S. foreign policy are fading fast. Trump administration officials had barely arranged the personal photos in their new offices before adopting a belligerent policy toward Iran. The imposition of new sanctions on Tehran threatens to derail a bilateral relationship that had shown cautious signs of improvement under Barack Obama. Trump seems even to be backing away from his call for improved relations with Russia. Expectations for an easing of sanctions against Moscow are at least on hold, and the president’s initial telephone conversation with Vladimir Putin apparently included comments sharply criticizing the New Start Treaty on nuclear weapons as unfairly limiting Washington’s ability to modernize and possibly expand its nuclear arsenal. That’s not a very astute way to begin a process of rapprochement.

Worse yet, as I discuss in a new article in the National Interest Online, Trump and his advisers are beating a rapid retreat from his critical comments about Washington’s alliances. One of his first actions as president was to reassure German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders that he regarded NATO as having “the utmost importance.” Why an alliance that he had repeatedly termed obsolete now possessed such importance Trump did not explain.

The president also dispatched Secretary of Defense James Mattis on a trip to East Asia to reassure both Japan and South Korea of America’s undying devotion to their security. Trump himself did the same during his just-completed summit meeting at the White House with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Such a retreat from the positions Trump advocated during the campaign is unfortunate. The Mattis “reassurance tour” provided a green light to Seoul and Tokyo to continue underinvesting in their defense and perpetuate their policy of free riding on the United States. It also encouraged Japan to take uncompromising positions toward China that Tokyo cannot back up with its own military resources. That point is most evident regarding the territorial dispute between the two countries over the Senkaku/​Diaoyu island chain in the East China Sea. Mattis reiterated the foolish commitment that Obama administration officials had made that the U.S.-Japan defense treaty covered not only indisputable Japanese territory but those highly disputed islets. In the event of an armed conflict, America would be putting its security at risk to defend a pile of uninhabited rocks whose rightful ownership is uncertain.

That is not the hallmark of a new, more focused and realistic foreign policy. Instead of putting America first, Trump’s policy appears increasingly to be a continuation of the status quo of incurring risks to validate the sometimes parochial interests of allies. Washington needs to reassess all of its security commitments, even to longtime allies. The world has changed a great deal since those alliances were created. Trump’s retreat from his campaign positions also threatens to continue America’s foolhardy entanglement in the murky conflicts of the Middle East. The administration’s immediate obsession with and hostility toward Iran is especially worrisome.

Trump’s retreat and the adoption of his revised approach to foreign policy is extremely unwise. It is a blueprint for perpetuating America’s strategic overextension and wasting even more of this country’s blood and treasure.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly complained that the United States carries too much of the economic and military burden in NATO. He has even gone so far as to call the European alliance “obsolete” and to suggest that his administration might not fulfill the treaty’s Article 5 obligation that commits NATO countries to come to the defense of any member that is attacked (Note: administration officials have repeatedly sought to reassure NATO allies that we remain committed to the collective defense of Europe, and Trump has contradicted himself on this score).

Many think this provocative rhetoric is just a ploy to get our NATO allies, who habitually underspend on defense and free-ride on America’s security guarantees, to pay more of their fair share of the burden. At the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog, Andrea Gilli argues this approach is unlikely to jolt NATO allies into spending more on defense, though. Among other reasons, most NATO allies “face financial and political constraints to increasing military expenditure” in part because U.S. security assurances “have freed up state funds in Europe for other priorities, including a robust system of social services.” And since cutting welfare benefits is typically a political non-starter, we shouldn’t necessarily expect NATO countries to boost defense spending due to Trump’s abrasive rhetoric.

But the historical record seems to contradict Gilli’s argument. According to the RAND Corporation, Europe has historically spent between 43 percent and 78 percent of U.S. spending on defense. The ratio reached its peak in 1980, and then again in 2000 — years that were at the tail end of periods of defense budget cuts. And according to the RAND report, one of the the most successful techniques in getting NATO allies to share more of the burden was “threats by Congress to withdraw its troops from Europe.”

The only period of signficant real growth in European defense spending was during the 1970s; otherwise European defense expenditure has been remarkably flat in real terms…

Historically, efforts to create incentives or to manage the burden-sharing problem have taken four different approaches. The first approach (1966 to the mid-1980s) was based on the threat of U.S. troop withdrawals. With a series of resolutions and amendments from 1966 to 1975, Senator Mike Mansfield sought to use the threat of U.S. troop withdrawals to force Europe to contribute more and to lessen U.S. costs. As noted, that effort—plus other factors relating to economic growth and the Soviet threat—may have had a positive effect: European defense spending grew by 44 percent between 1970 and 1984.

Certainly other factors contributed to this period of growth in NATO burden sharing — higher rates of economic growth, increased perceptions of the Soviet threat, defense budget cuts as we withdrew from Vietnam, etc. But U.S. threats to pare back its commitment to the region seem to have had a significant impact.

That said, European defense spending may never reach the levels that the Trump administration, or for that matter the Washington foreign policy community generally, would prefer. And while U.S. security guarantees are surely one reason for this, it also may be the case that European countries aren’t boosting defense spending levels because they don’t face any major threats. Increasing defense spending to 2 percent of GDP or higher won’t do much about the terrorism problem European countries face. And the supposed geopolitical threat from Russia, meddling in Georgia and Ukraine aside, is consistently exaggerated.