Category Archives: foreign policy

Responding to PRC Hackery

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The British government, as I write Tuesday morning, is set to publicly accuse the Chinese state of hacking Britain’s electoral register.

What’s at least as important, though, is this bit:

What to do in response is a conundrum, especially for smaller Western democracies such as the UK that are trying to balance courting investment from China while calling out its alleged abuses.

That’s a problem that’s straightforwardly enough solved: stop accepting investment from the PRC. Stop doing any business with the PRC or any of the enterprises domiciled in the PRC or any non-domestically domiciled enterprises that are affiliates of PRC domiciled enterprises. All that’s needed—and it is a hard task—is the political will to make the necessary moves.

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A Time for Choosing

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Europe’s nations—particularly those not directly bordering on Russia—are finally figuring out that Russia is as much a threat to them as it is to Ukraine.

…the cost of building robust defenses able to withstand a potential US pullback is so great that it threatens Europe’s post-Cold War social model.

And

Achieving the military spending that some politicians and experts say is needed would force European members of NATO to start reversing big post-Cold War increases in social spending.
“You have to rearrange the social contract,” said Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, who has warned that Russia will eventually attack NATO countries if it isn’t defeated in Ukraine.

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Cyberattack Culpability

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The Federal government is warning States regarding a series of cyber attacks against water distribution networks that have been carried out, and that the primary attackers are the People’s Republic of China and Iran. EPA Administrator Michael Regan and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan wrote a letter to all of our State Governors, in which they wrote in part,

Threat actors affiliated with the Iranian Government Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have carried out malicious cyberattacks against United States critical infrastructure entities, including drinking water systems.

And

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A Thought on Mexico

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In the ongoing internal-to-the-US debate over whether Texas can take steps to protect itself from the flood of illegal aliens—SB4—in the absence of the Federal government’s overt action to not protect any of the States, Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said, through his Foreign Minister’s spokesman, that

[Mexico] “won’t accept, under any circumstances,” deportations by Texas.
Mexico “categorically rejects any measure that allows state or local authorities to carry out immigration control tasks, detain and return nationals or foreigners to Mexican territory[.]”

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A Clear Demonstration

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Michigan’s Progressive-Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed, in the name of the State of Michigan, a deal with Gotion Inc, a subsidiary of Gotion High Tech Co Ltd which is headquartered in the People’s Republic of China. Gotion Hi Tech is not only subject to PRC national security law that requires domestic companies to provide information the intelligence community “requests” in whatever nation that information might reside, it has open and direct ties to the Chinese Communist Party. From that, Gotion Inc, the party to that Whitmer deal, has those same ties and PRC-legal obligations.

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This is Why

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None of the Gaza Strip is secure until all of it is secure. Israel’s IDF had to go back into Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and re-clear it, months after it had done so the first time early in its response to Hamas’ war of extermination that it had begun against Israel.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said that

senior Hamas militants had re-entered the hospital and were using it to direct attacks against Israel.

Even this time, the IDF was at pains to warn the civilians present that an operation was imminent and they should leave, and they were at equal pains to protect the patients and their doctors who could not leave.

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Biden isn’t the Only One

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On the matter of the Republic of China’s ability to defeat a People’s Republic of China invasion, Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden isn’t the only US President who’s been terrified of offending the PRC too badly. The RoC has long sought to buy offensive, and long-range weapons from the US, even concluding some deals that a variety of US administrations have failed to deliver on. Instead, in the main,

[f]or more than a decade, US officials have encouraged Taiwan to invest in small, relatively cheap weapons such as shoulder-fired missiles, drones, and sea mines. The goal would be to bring a Chinese amphibious invasion force to a halt at close range with thousands of small strikes.
Such asymmetrical warfare is a favorite tactic of guerrillas and weaker nations facing big rivals.

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Trump Wasn’t the First

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Since NATO’s creation, the European nations have, in the main, been shirking their obligations to the alliance and with that betraying their fellow alliance members. Then-President Jack Kennedy (D) was among the first American government officials to grow tired of that shirking and to object to it out loud.

John F Kennedy in 1963 told his National Security Council that “we cannot continue to pay for the military protection of Europe while the NATO states are not paying their fair share.”

Then it was then-Deputy Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci in 1981 in front of the Munich Security Conference:

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US Is Even More Vulnerable

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The mostly unfettered inflow of “refugees” from—pick a source, but mostly the Middle East—into Europe is beginning to awaken Europe’s western and central nations to the terrorist risk they face from that flow (eastern Europe’s nations have long been well aware). That relatively uninhibited flow, with its sample that have been caught, should be clanging alarm bells for us, too.

Authorities in Europe say they have foiled several terror plots, some involving suspects posing as refugees, raising alarm about a growing array of threats from extremists.

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Biden Doesn’t Want Israel to Win

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Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden is busily telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to go into Rafah to finish the task of destroying Hamas.

It is a red line, but I am never going to leave Israel. The defense of Israel is still critical. So there is no red line I am going to cut off all weapons, so they don’t have the Iron Dome to protect them. But there’s red lines that if he crosses….
[As paraphrased by The Wall Street Journal] He added that a complete cutoff of weapons shipments wasn’t an option.

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