The Biden administration is working quickly to make good on its rhetoric about making America’s alliance relationships great again. East Asia has been the primary theater for alliance repair work thus far. The new administration moved quickly to reach military cost‐​sharing agreements with South Korea and Japan, smoothing over a prominent source of friction left by the Trump administration.

Biden has made it clear that he wants the United States and its allies to move together when solving common problems, but this ideal is starting to run up against an inconvenient truth of divergent priorities in friendly capitals.

It may be impossible for Washington to keep both Seoul and Tokyo happy because each capital has very different ideas about what it wants out of U.S. policy toward North Korea. While both South Korea and Japan would prefer to see North Korea completely denuclearize, the two U.S. allies have different priorities and their approaches to the problem vary significantly.

Generally speaking, the Moon Jae‐​in administration in Seoul would like to do more to incentivize North Korea to improve relations with both South Korea and the United States. Getting rid of North Korea’s nuclear weapons is one of the major goals of South Korea’s strategy, but achieving denuclearization will require improvements in other policy areas along the way. South Korea’s efforts to reduce the risk of conventional military actions along the DMZ, plans for greater economic engagement and infrastructure improvements, and calls for a peace declaration to end the Korean War are examples of how Seoul prioritizes broader engagement efforts as a way to eventually achieve denuclearization. This approach enjoyed some early success in 2018, but after the failure of the U.S.-North Korea summit in Hanoi in February 2019, the North has effectively shut down the South’s engagement push.

Compared to South Korea’s approach, Japan’s position contains very little room for engagement with North Korea until it makes significant steps toward denuclearization. While South Korea and the United States engaged in summit diplomacy with Kim Jong Un in 2018, Tokyo reiterated that sanctions on North Korea should not be lifted until it gives up nuclear weapons. Engagement is not completely off the table. Former prime minister Shinzo Abe, for example, said that he would be willing to negotiate directly with Kim Jong Un without preconditions. This offer of a summit was the exception to the rule, however, and Japan’s approach to North Korea’s nuclear program has generally favored greater pressure over engagement.

This presents a frustrating choice for the Biden administration if it remains committed to working closely with allies to address North Korea’s nuclear program. Adopting policies that favor Seoul’s approach of greater engagement with North Korea and place denuclearization as one of many goals for diplomacy would necessarily place the United States at odds with Japan’s preferences for denuclearization first. Hewing closely to Tokyo’s approach would mean throttling back on the engagement efforts that South Korea favors.

Early signs suggest the Biden administration will favor Japan over South Korea in this dilemma. In a statement released after the first leader‐​level Quad summit on March 12, the United States backed away from the phrase “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” and instead committed to the “denuclearization of North Korea.” The former phrase was an important feature of both the April 2018 Panmunjom Declaration for Peace and the June 2018 Singapore summit joint statement, which South Korea participated in and strongly supported, respectively. The State Department repeated the “denuclearization of North Korea” formula in a March 14 press release that previewed an upcoming visit to Japan by the U.S. secretaries of state and defense.

Washington’s review of its North Korea policy is still ongoing but based on these recent statements it seems likely that the Biden administration will adopt a policy that is more closely aligned with Japan’s rather than South Korea’s preferences. This would be bad news for the Moon administration, which has consistently stressed the need for greater U.S. engagement with North Korea despite Kim going to ground after the Hanoi summit.

A tougher U.S. policy that brings Washington and Tokyo into closer alignment would help Biden differentiate himself from Trump, but it is unlikely to nudge North Korea closer to either denuclearization or arms control. Instead of trying to make allies happy, the Biden administration should focus on looking out for the best interests of the United States.

Just 36 days into his presidency Joe Biden has launched airstrikes against Iranian‐​backed militias in Syria. It is an ill‐​advised move for several reasons. Perhaps most troubling, it deepens U.S. military involvement in Syria’s murky civil war. Unfortunately, the latest step is symptomatic of the administration’s overall policy. In one of his first actions as president, Biden dispatched some 200 troops and 40 trucks of mostly military supplies to support Kurdish factions in eastern Syria.

Not only do the air strikes increase the likelihood of another bloody Middle East entanglement for the United States, they’re objectionable for other reasons. Russia is deeply involved in Syria to support Bashar al-Assad’s beleaguered regime. It is never a good idea for two major powers, especially two nuclear‐​armed powers, to be operating in the same arena to back opposing factions in an armed conflict. That situation creates a dangerous risk of clashes between U.S. and Russian forces. Indeed, there already have been at least two ugly incidents. Such an episode can easily spiral out of control.

The airstrikes on pro‐​Iranian forces also greatly complicate the administration’s stated intention of reviving the multilateral agreement to impose limits on Tehran’s nuclear program. That effort already was faltering because each side has insisted that the other take the first substantive step toward a rapprochement. Washington’s new provocation further complicates an already fragile process.

Finally, the attack is another unhealthy manifestation of the imperial presidency. Once again, an occupant of the Oval Office has initiated military action against a sovereign country without even consulting Congress, much less asking for a declaration of war. Presidential arrogance has been especially pronounced with respect to Syria policy during the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations. Syria did not attack the United States, and Congress has never formally authorized military operations in that country. Yet the United States now has several thousand troops there, has provided material support to insurgent factions attempting to overthrow Assad, and now is engaged in combat operations against the Syrian government and its militia allies.

The decision to launch airstrikes is a worrisome omen with respect to the administration’s overall Syria policy. Key members of the president’s foreign policy team, including Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, are long‐​time advocates of a more concerted U.S. effort to oust Assad, even when Biden, as vice president, seemed more hesitant. Now, he needs to listen to that inner voice of caution and resist the poisonous advice of such hawkish advisers. The Syrian quagmire beckons, and the Biden administration is flirting with having the United States wade into it.

One criticism of Donald Trump’s foreign policy is that it was “transactional.” In 2020, Joseph Nye lamented Trump’s “transactional myopia.” And last week in his speech to the Munich Security Conference, President Biden argued that “our partnerships have endured and grown through the years because they are rooted in the richness of our shared democratic values. They’re not transactional.”

They should be.

To get this out of the way up front, transactional isn’t a perfect synonym for Trumpy. Complaints about Trump’s habit of describing alliances as protection rackets or his struggle to separate his interest from the national interest or his boorish style are separable from complaints about transactionalism. (All presidents use their own personal style and mental shortcuts, including Trump.) Trump’s idiosyncrasies aside, the alternative to transactionalism is sentiment and reflexive tribalism.

Think about international trade, or immigration, or international law. Free traders and protectionists both make their arguments in terms of what’s good for their country. Immigration restrictionists and liberalizers both argue that their preferred policies would benefit the country. Those who favor and those who oppose the International Criminal Court argue in terms of the national interest. It is hard to conceive of these openly transactional debates in any other way.

To suggest by contrast that international security–alliances, troop deployments, and wars–should be something other than transactional is bizarre. But huge swathes of the foreign policy establishment do it.

In 2010 remarks at the Brookings Institution, for instance, then‐​Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested that:

there are certain commitments, as we saw in a bipartisan basis to NATO, that need to be embedded in the DNA of American foreign policy and not sort of beginning and ending in fits and starts.

Similarly, in his presidential campaign Foreign Affairs article, Biden wrote that NATO:

transcends dollars and cents; the United States’ commitment is sacred, not transactional. NATO is… an alliance of values, which makes it far more durable, reliable, and powerful than partnerships built by coercion or cash.

This kind of thinking pervades the foreign policy establishment. In remarking on Biden’s Munich Security Conference address, Heather Conley of CSIS remarked that:

This was a homecoming speech — the prodigal American son has returned to the trans­atlantic family. This was not a time to raise family squabbles or traumas.

This is airy romanticism. If an alliance is embedded in our DNA, or if it is not secular but sacred, or if the alliance is a family to which we, the prodigal son, have returned, then it is impervious to critical scrutiny. (For readers reeling at the prodigal son metaphor, Patrick Porter has you covered.)

It should not require the CRISPR to examine or shrink America’s alliance commitments. Thinking of alliances as immutable and non‐​transactional is the antithesis of the founding admonition contained in George Washington’s farewell address of 1796 that:

It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world… Taking care always to keep ourselves, by suitable establishments, on a respectably defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.

There is no extraordinary emergency in Europe.

In a 1990 essay examining the meaning of the end of the Cold War, Jeane Kirkpatrick noted that “foreign policy elites often have different views than those of popular majorities,” warning against foreign policies lacking public support. She concluded that essay by arguing that “most of the international military obligations that we assumed were once important are now outdated. Our alliances should be alliances of equals, with equal risks, burdens, and responsibilities.”

To judge what are equal risks, burdens or responsibilities requires transactional thinking: What assets and liabilities do we have, what do they have, and is an alliance in our interest? The alternative is romance and sentiment.

Diplomacy with Iran has been stalled since President Biden came into office, largely as a result of Biden’s tough opening position. The administration has insisted that, although Trump abrogated the nuclear deal when Iran was fully compliant, Iran must make the first move in bringing its nuclear program back within the limits of the JCPOA before the United States will even consider lifting sanctions. In response, the Iranians proposed a step‐​by‐​step process by which each side simultaneously puts an end to their violations and restores the agreement. Biden’s hardline position, probably intended to placate hawkish critics on Capitol Hill, was so stubbornly unmoving that it seemed to dismiss the notion of formal negotiations — at least until Iran satisfied this petty insistence to move first.

Fortunately, Biden has softened his position…somewhat. It might be more precise to say that the administration is offering a few diplomatic carrots in hopes that Iran will accommodate its demand to move first. In a strong signal of their desire to deal, Biden’s State Department announced that the United States would accept an invitation from the EU to attend a meeting of the P5+1 and Iran to discuss reviving the deal. The administration also rescinded Trump’s stated policy of re‐​imposing UN sanctions (which the Security Council had rejected anyways) and loosened Trump’s travel restrictions on Iranian diplomats in New York.

Once negotiating parties actually get together for talks, diplomacy can become a lot easier because leaders can communicate real positions and intentions with less concern about audience costs. To the extent that the parties see cooperation as mutually beneficial, direct talks can allow them to find face‐​saving ways to move forward without triggering hawkish objections within their respective domestic constituencies (or even among their respective allies). With luck, this dynamic can help overcome what remains an obstinate set of opening demands on the part of the Biden administration.

From the New York Times (emphasis mine):

The first obstacle to restoring the deal may be a delicate political dance of who acts first. Mr. Blinken said this week that the Biden administration believed simply restoring the old deal was insufficient. He has other goals that include extending and deepening the agreement in an effort to rein in Iran’s growing missile ability and its continued support of terrorist groups and the Syrian government of Bashar al‐​Assad, issues that Iran has said are not on table.

It’s important to remember that many of the officials who negotiated with Iran and worked on the JCPOA in the Obama administration, and vigorously defended it in subsequent years, are the very same officials now saying the JCPOA alone is insufficient. Some future arrangement that expands on the JCPOA is not an inherently bad thing, in theory. But given the immense distrust between the U.S. and Iran, reinforced by the Trump administration’s JCPOA delinquency and outright aggression towards Iran, one wonders why the Biden administration would so explicitly reject the adequacy of simply returning to the status quo ante. And why insist on objectives that are obvious non‐​starters for Iran? In this case especially, leaving well‐​enough alone is an important diplomatic tenet that the Biden administration may want to seriously consider.

In all likelihood, what’s driving the administration’s recalcitrant position on Iran is politics. On the one hand, Biden feels pressure from hawks in Washington and in the capitals of America’s Middle East “partners,” to be tough on Iran. On the other hand, the baseless pathology that Iran presents a significant national security threat to the United States pervades official Washington, including Biden’s executive branch. Erroneous beliefs about the supposed threat posed by Iran’s missile capabilities (intended to deter their better‐​armed regional adversaries) can easily lead Biden to make more maximalist demands at the outset. As with the Obama administration, these pressures make a successful deal harder (but still possible) to achieve. A further strain may be Biden’s own ambition: isn’t it better for a president’s legacy to achieve a new and better deal than to simply revert to the achievements of a previous administration?

Disentangling America from the morass of the Middle East will be very difficult to achieve unless the enemy image of Iran loosens and Washington’s inflated security concerns are to some extent assuaged. Diplomacy is the route to satisfying those objectives. If the Biden administration wants that, it is there for the taking. But it is highly unlikely that their hardline posturing will appease the hawks they are trying to placate. With luck, the direct talks that the Biden administration has now opened the door to will enable the U.S. and Iran to overcome their respective domestic liabilities and reach an agreement they both want.

The global semiconductor shortage roiling the U.S. automotive industry has become the latest pandemic‐​induced supply chain disruption embraced by economic nationalists to justify their preferred trade and industrial policies — policies that would renationalize global supply chains and supposedly improve America’s economic “resilience” during future emergencies. President Biden is also reportedly considering an executive action to address the issue. Leaving aside the fact that the auto industry’s semiconductor problems are in large part “self‐​inflicted” (and not shared by better‐​planning car companies), or that North American producers are among the least‐​affected automakers in the world, or that automotive companies primarily need low‐​margin commodity chips made by older equipment (not the bleeding‐​edge chips/​equipment that the U.S. military needs or that the federal government wants to subsidize), the nationalist argument suffers from a fundamentally flawed premise that I detail in a new policy analysis. In particular, there is ample evidence that, while re‐​shoring supply chains might insulate U.S. producers and consumers from external shocks like foreign wars or natural disasters, those same policies can actually make the U.S. economy less resilient — especially when the shock is domestic.

And this very flaw just revealed itself in the case of semiconductors:

Severe weather conditions hitting much of the U.S. have caused some semiconductor companies to idle production capacity, threatening to exacerbate a chip shortage that has already prompted car makers to curtail output at some plants.

South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. , one of the world’s biggest chip makers, operates two factories in Austin, Texas, and was asked by local authorities to shut those down on Tuesday, said a company spokeswoman. Samsung expects to resume production as soon as possible and, the spokeswoman said, was waiting for electricity provider Austin Energy to advise when the chip maker’s operations could start up again.…

Dutch chip company NXP Semiconductors NV said Wednesday that it had to scale back work at two facilities in Austin. “Affected customers are being notified directly by NXP of the potential for supply disruptions,” the company said. NXP makes chips for the automotive industry. Automotive sales comprised $1.19 billion of the company’s fourth‐​quarter revenue, roughly half of the overall figure.…

Other large customers of Austin Energy have also shut down because of the storm, according to a statement from a consortium of those customers. Germany‐​based Infineon Technologies AG , a car‐​chip supplier, has manufacturing facilities there that Citi analysts say mainly produce memory chips critical for automotive and industrial markets that accounted for about 5% of the company’s revenue last year. Infineon said it shut down its Austin plant on Tuesday after authorities said power supply would be interrupted.

As I explain in my paper, openness to global trade and investment can mitigate domestic shocks like the current winter storms by providing alternative sources of supply during an emergency and helping the nation recover thereafter. Such policies also tend to strengthen the domestic economy more broadly and make armed conflicts less likely. Of course, no strategy will produce perfect outcomes at all times — particularly when a surprise global pandemic causes both supply and demand to go haywire almost everywhere. But it’s nevertheless essential for policymakers to understand that attempts to forcibly renationalize supply chains in the name of “resiliency” carry their own risks and could end up making the U.S. economy less, not more, secure in both the short run and long.

And the semiconductor shutdown in Texas provides the latest proof.

Bloomberg reports that American steelmakers are imperiling President Biden’s goal of boosting the U.S. manufacturing sector and might, in fact, cause more industrial offshoring:

Producers that shut furnaces in response to falling demand during the early stages of the coronavirus are still operating plants at well below pre‐​pandemic levels, even as recovering economies and tight supplies drive prices higher. The benchmark price for American steel is at an all‐​time high.

Companies including Cleveland‐​Cliffs Inc. and U.S. Steel Corp. have kept blast furnaces idled on expectations that prices are likely to recede at some point, which would squeeze margins and potentially force expensive shutdowns again at those furnaces. While that tack bodes well for steelmaker profits, customers in industries from automobiles to appliances to machinery say they can’t get enough metal, and may need turn to overseas suppliers.

“That’s just blowing a giant hole in the idea of reshoring, where if you want to support U.S. manufacturing you need to have competitively priced inputs,” Josh Spoores, the principal steel analyst at CRU Group, said in a telephone interview. “It’s primarily steel and energy, and if either of those is out of whack and it’s not competitive where it is elsewhere, you’ll see manufacturing move to lower‐​cost areas.”

As the article notes, U.S. manufacturers struggling to get enough steel would in normal times turn to foreign suppliers, but there’s one big, expensive impediment to doing so today: President Trump’s 25% “national security” tariffs on most imported steel, which remain in force and make imports artificially expensive for U.S. consumers (including some steelmakers that import semi‐​finished slabs). As a result of these tariffs, favored U.S. steel companies can extract extra profits from downstream manufacturers by continuing to restrict output and charging obscenely high prices (now almost as high as the tariff‐ and transportation‐​adjusted price for imported steel). And their executives are quite open about this profit‐​taking strategy:

Lourenco Goncalves, the chief executive officer of Cleveland‐​Cliffs, has told investors that he will focus on a quality over volume approach. The Ohio‐​based company bought AK Steel Holdings Corp. and ArcelorMittal USA assets in 2020.

“Under my watch, Cliffs had never been and will never be tempted by the stupidity of volume for volume’s sake,” Goncalves said on a call with analysts in October. “We will continue to manage our business in the most quality‐​focused and cost‐​efficient ways, always reaching for real value and return on invested capital.”…

“The demand is not pre‐​Covid levels, but it’s just more than what we have in production today,” said Dan DeMare, a regional sales manager for Heidtman Steel, a service‐​center customer of U.S. Steel. “The steelmakers are going to make a load of money, but the stress it puts on the market is insane.”

Restricted domestic steel production, of course, also means few (if any) additional steel jobs.

As I explained in a new paper, President Trump’s tariffs helped cause the U.S. manufacturing sector’s decade‐​long upswing to stall out in 2019, and repealing them — which President Biden could do with a stroke of a pen — would accelerate the sector’s post‐​pandemic recovery. Repeal would also help achieve Biden’s own economic and foreign policy goals, while correcting one of Trump’s most baseless invocations of “national security.” Unfortunately, the Biden administration seems in no rush to change course and may, in fact, be copying Trump’s economic nationalist playbook. It’s a frustrating case of politics and bad economics trumping (no pun intended) common sense — at least so far.

But, hey, at least some U.S. steelmakers are making a “load of money.”

In his first discussion of the Iran nuclear deal since taking office, President Biden stepped on his toes. The question is whether it’s indicative of something amiss with the policy substance, or if he just misspoke. Or both.

In a brief exchange with Norah O’Donnell, the only discussion of Iran in their interview, this happened:

NORAH O’DONNELL (CBS EVENING NEWS): Will the U.S. lift sanctions first in order to get Iran back to the negotiating table?

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN (CBS EVENING NEWS): No.

NORAH O’DONNELL (CBS EVENING NEWS): They have to stop enriching uranium first?

At that point Biden nodded, which you can see in O’Donnell’s tweet of the interview.

This is worrisome, because zero enrichment was never part of the agreement and is exceedingly unlikely to be part of a resuscitated Iran deal. Iran watchers jumped on the statement, and an unnamed Biden official responded by walking back the remark, stating that Biden meant to say complying with the enrichment limitations embodied in the deal.

The broader worry here is that the Biden team seem to be taking their sweet time working out their Iran policy, and they may not have as much time as they think. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly told Iran envoy Rob Malley to bring in some voices that are “more hawkish” on Iran. For his part, Malley told Axios just before being named Iran envoy that both sides have incentives to get a return buttoned up by the June presidential election in Iran, but that that election shouldn’t “act as a gun to the Biden administration’s head—that they need to reach a deal before then or otherwise they’re not going to reach one.”

In fairness to the Biden people, there was an awful lot going on behind the scenes to lay the groundwork for the negotiations that were to become the JCPOA, and there may be a lot that we’re not seeing here. But based on what we do see, there are a couple of reasons for concern:

First, letting this run up to, or through, the Iranian election may not have good results. A lot of thinking has Rouhani being replaced by a more hardline president no matter what happens with the nuclear deal. But letting nationalists make hay over the suffering from American sanctions and reneging on the deal seems unlikely to help anything. The fact remains that the IAEA confirmed Iranian compliance with the deal until the Trump administration left it in 2018. People in Iran could be forgiven for believing that the United States is inherently hostile and cannot be trusted. You don’t want to see that result in an Iranian election, notwithstanding the fact that the Supreme Leader is the ultimate decider, and obviously not elected.

Second, we may already be at the point that we’re running up to the Iranian election. Ernest Moniz, a nuclear expert who helped negotiate the deal under the Obama administration, guesstimated that it would take roughly four months, with conservative assumptions, to get Iran back into compliance. But given the likely rigamarole of “who does what first, then who does what in response, over what period…” and so on, this could take much longer.

Blinken—or somebody—should probably give a clear speech with some content about what they’re doing here. Right now, it’s hard to tell from outside.