The New Yorker

Did Trump Just Make Iran More Popular?
By Robin Wright

On Monday, I sat in One U.N. Plaza, the high-rise hotel across the street from the United Nations, and watched a parade of European diplomats head into meetings with Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani. Boris Johnson, the blond-mopped British foreign minister, sauntered through the lobby in deep conversation with his delegation. The new French President, Emmanuel Macron, led by a military officer wearing the distinctive stovepipe kepi, and accompanied by a dozen aides and several photographers, scurried by next. One by one, the Europeans came to confer with the leader of a country that has been ostracized by the outside world, for decades, as a pariah. No longer.

The outside world now comes calling on Iran.

During his campaign and since taking office, President Trump has targeted the Islamic Republic with some of his most wrathful language. At his U.N. début, on Tuesday, he called Iran “reckless” and a “corrupt dictatorship” on a “path of poverty, bloodshed, and terror.” He has repeatedly implied that he wants to walk away from the Iran nuclear deal that was negotiated by the world’s six major powers in 2015. As required by Congress, the President must certify every ninety days that Iran is complying with the deal. Trump has certified twice but has indicated that he might change course in mid-October, which would undermine the most significant (whether you like the terms or not) nonproliferation agreement in more than a quarter century.

Trump’s tough talk and sophomoric antics may have had the opposite effect of what he intended, however. Across the board, the world’s other major powers, most of America’s closest allies, and the vast majority of governments at the United Nations this week made clear that they favor the deal. They are siding with Iran this time.

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https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/did-trump-just-make-iran-more-popular

The New Yorker

Trump Debuts War Doctrine at the U.N.
By Robin Wright

Donald Trump this week made his début on the world stage—on the same elegant green-marble dais, donated by Italy after the Second World War, that he had mocked in a 2012 tweet as ugly. “The 12 inch sq. marble tiles behind speaker at UN always bothered me,” Trump wrote. “I will replace with beautiful large marble slabs if they ask me.” Trump’s thoughts about the United Nations were bigger—and badder—this time around.

“Major portions of the world are in conflict, and some, in fact, are going to hell,” Trump declared. He vowed to “totally destroy” North Korea if it didn’t abandon its nuclear weapons and the intercontinental ballistic missiles that deliver them. He came close to calling for regime change in “reckless” Iran, for policies that “speak openly of mass murder, vowing death to America, destruction to Israel, and ruin for many leaders and nations in this room.” Trump called the nuclear deal—brokered by all the veto-wielding nations of the world body—“an embarrassment” to the United States, implicitly insulting the European allies that initiated the effort and the Security Council, which unanimously endorsed it. He implied a willingness to use military action in Venezuela “to help them regain their freedom, recover their country, and restore their democracy.” He blasted Cuba and took sharp digs at China and Russia.

The President also delivered a few campaign-style zingers—like his pledge to “crush loser terrorists.” About North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Trump pronounced, “Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.”

Trump reportedly insisted, over aides’ objections, that he keep the reference to the Elton John song in his speech. The line is sure to become part of U.N. lore—along with the Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s quip, in 1987, “Remember, President Reagan, Rambo only exists in the movies,” and the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s insult, the day after George W. Bush’s 2006 U.N. speech, “The devil came here yesterday, and it smells of sulfur still.”

For a body more accustomed to nuanced diplomatic speak, and now yearning for leadership in an unsettled world, Trump’s bellicose speech was his America First doctrine on steroids.

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https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/donald-trumps-war-doctrine-debuts-on-the-world-stage

The New Yorker

On the Anniversary of 9/11:

How Does Terrorism End?

The current spasm of international terrorism, an age-old tactic of warfare, is often traced to a bomb mailed from New York by the anti-Castro group El Poder Cubano, or Cuban Power, that exploded in a Havana post office, on January 9, 1968. Five people were seriously injured. Since then, almost four hundred thousand people have died in terrorist attacks worldwide, on airplanes and trains, in shopping malls, schools, embassies, cinemas, apartment blocks, government offices, and businesses, according to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. The deadliest remains the 9/11 attack, sixteen years ago this week, which killed almost three thousand people—and in turn triggered a war that has become America’s longest.

I’ve covered dozens of these terrorist attacks on four continents over that half century. After the Barcelona attack and the U.S. decision to send more troops to fight the Taliban, I began to wonder how terrorism ends—or how militant groups evolve. In her landmark study of more than four hundred and fifty terrorist groups, Aubrey Kurth Cronin found that the average life span of an extremist movement is about eight years. Cuban Power carried out several other bombings, but, in the end, it didn’t last a whole year.

In the run-up to the 9/11 anniversary, I reached out to eight terrorism experts who’ve long studied the phenomenon at the C.I.A., the F.B.I., the National Security Council, the State Department, the Rand Corporation, and in academia. They identified six ways terrorism evolves, fades, or dies—and under what conditions it succeeds.

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https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-does-terrorism-end

The New Yorker

What Would War With North Korea Look Like? 
By Robin Wright
Over the past half century, the United States has fought only one big war—in Kuwait, in 1991—that was a conventional conflict. The combat was quick (six weeks) and successful in its limited goal: expelling Iraqi forces from the small Gulf sheikhdom. Less than a hundred and fifty Americans died in battle.
America’s other big wars over the same period—in Vietnam, in the 1960s and 1970s; Afghanistan, after 9/11; and Iraq, on and off since 2003—have been unconventional. They pitted a well-trained army with the world’s deadliest weapons against insurgents, militias, terrorists, or a poorly trained army, all with far less firepower and no airpower.
In each, asymmetric conflicts stymied the United States. Wars dragged on for years. Death tolls were in the thousands—in Vietnam, tens of thousands. The aftermath—and unintended consequences—were far messier and bloodier. The price tags were in trillions of dollars.
A war with North Korea would probably be a combination of both types of conflict, played out in phases. The first phase would be a conventional war pitting North Korea against American and South Korean forces. It would almost certainly be deadly—producing tens of thousands of deaths just in Seoul, and possibly a million casualties in the South alone. It would likely play out for at least a month, and possibly many weeks more. 

As bad as the scenario for the first phase seems, the second phase could then get worse.
A conventional conflict could then devolve into the now familiar kind of insurgency that U.S. forces face in the Middle East and South Asia. Loyalists to the Kim regime would probably try to fight on in covert cells and costly guerrilla attacks.
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http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-would-war-with-north-korea-look-like