And Do What Instead?

President Donald Trump (R) says he’ll pause US efforts at peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia over the latter’s barbaric invasion of the former, if those efforts don’t start bearing fruit.

Russia has refused, and it continues to refuse, to agree any ceasefire unless and until its demands for “root cause” questions are addressed and its terms for peace are agreed—terms that amount to abject surrender to Russia and to Russian control by Ukraine.

It’s entirely appropriate that we—and Europe and Ukraine—should walk away from the effort in the face of Russian studied intransigence. Given the barbarian’s steadfast refusal, it’s long past time we should have walked.

But then what?

For my money (literally and otherwise) both the US and Europe should step up—drastically—the amount and type of military and fiscal support and heavily accelerate the pace of their delivery for Ukraine. There is no other way to drive the barbarian back out of Ukraine, and by extension, prevent the barbarian’s subsequent moves into the rest of eastern and central Europe in furtherance of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s avowed goal of reconstituting the erstwhile Russian empire. And his likely continued expansion beyond that.

What Guarantees Would We Have?

Iran wants guarantees.

Iran is planning to set out a series of proposals for a new nuclear pact, including guarantees from the Trump administration that the US won’t leave a future accord….

And this:

In addition to the guarantees, the Iranians expect to discuss ways that their current stockpile of enriched uranium could be managed under a deal. They also plan to discuss a process for lifting economic sanctions….

What guarantee is Iran offering that it won’t violate any new nuclear pact? What guarantee is it capable of offering, given its history of routinely violating the prior pact—which has continued in force with the other signatories after the US withdrew from it?

Even before the US withdrew, Iran routinely hid accord-inspectable sites from inspectors, denied inspector accesses to other sites, and continued enriching uranium far beyond accord limits.

Today, the only way to handle that enriched uranium is to transfer all of it out of Iran into and under the control of a separate, neutral nation. Switzerland comes to mind, if it’s will to accept the responsibility. Otherwise, the enriched uranium must be destroyed altogether.

Today, the only guarantee Iran could offer—to the extent it would honor even this—would be, in addition to provably ridding itself of all of its uranium, enriched or still in the ore, is to have all of its centrifuges shipped out of Iran to that neutral nation, or destroyed. In conjunction with that, Iran must allow inspectors access, on a no-notice basis, to any location those inspectors decide they want to look into, and those inspections must be carried out without Iranian escort whatsoever; the only escort must be protection-capable teams from non-Iranian signatory nations. Those teams also must be authorized to and capable of destroying on the spot any violations they discover.

Sanctions then might be liftable, but only after a period of years of Iranian proven performance under this new deal, a performance that must be unanimously agreed by the non-Iranian signatories. Given trustworthiness of the current Iranian government incumbents, that period of years clock cannot begin until after the current incumbents—every single one of them—is replaced by the Iranian people themselves, whose choices must be from a slate of candidates uninfluenced in any way by the government’s candidate selection committee.

Iran’s claim that its nuclear program is entirely for peaceful purposes would be risible were it not such an obvious lie. Iran government officials, from Khamenei on down, routinely chant “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.” An erstwhile President of Iran, Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, said (quoted by MEMRI)

If one day, he [Rafsanjani] said, the world of Islam comes to possess the weapons currently in Israel’s possession [meaning nuclear weapons]—on that day this method of global arrogance would come to a dead end. This, he said, is because the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam.

That baldly stated threat has never been repudiated since, and it stands as firmly against any believability of Iranian guarantees made by that government’s incumbents or likely successors as does those incumbents’ performance under the prior accord.

A Start

Thomas Duesterberg, a Hudson Institute Senior Fellow, proposed five steps for our Federal government to take to address the People’s Republic of China’s economy and growing technological prowess. They form the foundation for a good start in countering that nation’s rise against us.

• tighten export controls on technology and expertise related to AI or national defense. …also coordinate export controls with allies on semiconductor production and equipment

This should be expanded to include sourcing the raw materials, intermediate processed components, and finished products of any type from sources outside the PRC.

• work with Congress to limit Chinese access to US financing, with stronger outward investment controls and limited access to listing on American stock exchanges

This should include enforcing existing requirements that any company, foreign or domestic, must meet to be listed on an American exchange. Chief among these are that those listed must subject themselves to stringent American accounting practices and audits. The current requirements vis-à-vis PRC-domiciled companies listed or seeking listing are under discussion with the PRC; however, there is nothing to discuss here: either those companies satisfy, or they must be delisted or cannot be listed in the first place.

• impose sanctions on Chinese banks. Washington has largely not pursued them, though reporting indicates Chinese banks have facilitated and financed illicit commerce such as technology transfer to Russia, drug trafficking, and money-laundering, as well as the purchase of sanctioned Iranian and Russian oil

• show Chinese tech companies reciprocity. China effectively bars most American firms from its markets by either forbidding them or making entry contingent on ridiculous requirements, such as revealing source code. Washington should bar firms tit-for-tat, especially in response to intellectual property transfers demands from China

Not tit-for-tat, as that would work in both directions: were the PRC to reduce or drop those restrictions, we would then need reciprocate. The mistakes here are two: one is that the PRC cannot be trusted to stop its parallel…sub rosa…thefts of our companies’ source code, intellectual property, technologies. The second mistake is that we should be doing no economic business with the PRC in the first place.

• enlist allies in the fight. The administration has competing foreign-policy priorities, but limiting China’s ability to compensate for losing the US market would measurably enhance success

President Donald Trump’s (R) protectionist tariffs against friends and allies and others work at cross purposes with his foreign policy tariffs against the PRC (and against Russia, Iran, and northern Korea, albeit for these three the moves primarily are sanctions). Leaving aside the broader counterproductive nature of protectionism, such tariffs are counterproductive by reducing or eliminating the targeted nations’ incentive to work with us against the PRC, even with the PRC’s inimical practical and operational moves toward those friends and allies, and others.

In fine, more is needed for Duesterberg’s proposals. The PRC is an avowed—by it—enemy nation, committed to overcoming us economically, militarily, and so politically. The sort of steps proposed by Duesterberg need to be broadened in reach to address the entirety of the PRC economy, which would directly limit that nation’s military growth and improvement as well as its technology growth and improvement, which would indirectly limit its military. That, in turn, would limit its ability to overcome us politically.

There is, though, only so much our government can do by itself. Our private enterprises, small, medium, large, and international, need also to recognize the enmity the PRC has toward us and to recognize how much their own interactions with the PRC and with PRC-domiciled companies facilitate the PRC’s effort to dominate us. They need to move apace in withdrawing from those interactions and find non-PRC related sources for their production, from ores to processed ores to components for assembly to finished products. They need also to stop aiding and abetting the PRC through helping it develop its own technology base.

Naïve

Holman Jenkins wrote this, regarding a peace deal for the barbarian’s invasion of Ukraine, in his Tuesday op-ed:

Even with Russian troops still on Ukrainian territory, NATO would be stronger, Russia would be thwarted, and the lesson would percolate globally.

Jenkins is naïve to the point of idiotic.

The only part of Jenkins’ remark that’s accurate is the first. NATO most assuredly would not be stronger in any material way, even with the accession of Finland and Sweden to the alliance. The European member nations have been so woefully and for so long neglecting their national defense establishments in parallel with their NATO solemn commitments that neither the alliance nor the member nations in their aggregate can mount a large enough force supplied for long enough to resist the continued Russian advance into the prior fallen Soviet empire that Russian President Vladimir Putin has promised he would be going after.

Fully a third of the member nations, now including Canada, continue overtly to refuse to honor their 2% of GDP financial and equipment commitments to NATO—an amount far short of the now-recognized need of 5% of GDP just to catch up. Germany, the economic powerhouse of the EU until very recently, does not even have enough soldiers on active duty to train replacements, much less expansion, and the nation does not have more than a regiment of combat ready armor.

Russia will not at all be thwarted. Putin wants to reconstitute the erstwhile Russian empire, and that includes recontrolling, if not outright reconquering, Ukraine, Poland, the Baltics, Moldova, and more. Even the heavily depleted Russian military can overmatch the NATO nations, especially with the ample and upgraded resupply from Iran, the People’s Republic of China, and northern Korea, along with soldier reinforcements from the latter two.

The lesson that will—and is already, to an extent—percolate globally is that the West, now including the US—does not have the stomach for fighting, if the sort of deal described by Jenkins goes through. That lesson puts eastern and central Europe at severe risk, and it puts the Republic of China at immediate risk, along with longer term risks to the Republic of Korea, Japan, Australia…and the US.

A Mistake

The Trump administration may be getting soft on Iran, at least relative to past positions by then- and now-President Donald Trump (R).

US special envoy Steve Witkoff said that the Trump administration is prepared to allow Iran to enrich uranium at a low level if it is subject to stringent verification, a significant shift from the White House’s initial demand that Tehran’s nuclear program be dismantled.

Witkoff said

They do not need to enrich past 3.67%. This is going to be much about verification on the enrichment program and then ultimately verification on weaponization.

This is the mistake. Iranian insistence on enriching past 3.67%–to 60% and above, with that 60% level just a kitten’s whisker way from bomb-grade purity—and its history of requiring weeks to months of advance notice on inspections, interfering with inspections, outright barring inspectors’ access, and its development and maintenance of secret sites outside the reach of inspectors demonstrate that the Iranian government cannot be trusted with uranium at any level.

The only appropriate level for Iran’s uranium enrichment program is 0.00%, with no notice inspections at any location the inspectors choose. Otherwise, the only legitimate solution is kinetic obstruction of Iran’s nuclear weapons—and its nuclear, generally—programs.