Maximum pressure tactics are incoherent
By Ishaan Tharoor
June 21 at 12:59 AM
... “Maximum pressure” — primarily through muscular sanctions but also, of course, incendiary presidential tweets — was brought to bear against the pariah regime of North Korea, compelling the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, to enter talks with Trump. It underlies Trump’s squeezing of the Palestinians in a bid to force them to make further concessions to Israel. So, too, the White House’s approach to the crisis in Venezuela, where it loudly denounced the regime of President Nicolás Maduro, slapped sanctions on top officials and continues to attempt to unseat Maduro in favor of the political opposition. And it’s on display in the White House’s campaign against the Islamic Republic, as it seeks to strangle the Iranian economy by cutting off its oil exports.
In these cases (not to mention Trump’s separate trade spats with China, Europe and now also India), the president insists he’s compensating for the leniency of his predecessors. In Trump’s view, his domestic opponents were and are still too naive, too gullible, too soft; thorny geopolitical challenges confronting the United States require his distinct brand of forceful, unilateral action. Although that may not mean war — something Trump insists he doesn’t want — it does mean a set of aggressive actions that impose Washington’s will on the world.
But it’s becoming clear that, whatever Trump’s bluster, his “maximum pressure” efforts aren’t producing the results he says he wants — and, in some instances, are actually backfiring and complicating matters for the United States and its exasperated allies ...
The “strategy-free zone” extends beyond the Persian Gulf. Maximum pressure tactics against the Palestinians — including the closing of certain diplomatic channels and cutting of aid — has only doomed any chance of their cooperation with a Trump-led peace initiative. After talking tough on Venezuela, Trump is believed to be losing patience and interest with the U.S. pressure campaign against the Maduro regime ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/06/21/trumps-maximum-pressure-tactics-are-incoherent/?utm_term=.38d4fbea395d
