Category Archives: foreign policy

Couple Thoughts re Ramaswamy’s Thoughts

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Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has some ideas about what to do were he to be elected President. I have some ideas about those ideas.

Let’s have a reasonable path to peace. Make a permanent commitment that NATO will not admit Ukraine to NATO, but in return, require Russia to exit its military partnership with China. Now that weakens China. Now, Xi Jinping is gonna have to think twice before going after Taiwan.

This is breathtakingly naïve. On what basis does Ramaswamy think Putin would honor any agreement? Russia already has welched on the Budapest Memoranda, Minsk I, and Minsk II, and he faked his 2014 “referendum” that he used to rationalize his occupation of Crimea. That’s just Russia’s recent history with Ukraine. Then there’s Putin’s avowed goal of reconstituting the Russia’s Soviet (Union) empire. Ramaswamy’s plan for this “peace” of his also includes an in-place cessation of the fighting—forcing Ukraine to surrender the 20%, or so, of its territory that Putin currently occupies to him, which only rewards Putin for his invasion.

Then there’s the bit about Russia leaving its alliance with the People’s Republic of China, which he alleges would weaken the PRC. What makes Ramaswamy think that alliance itself doesn’t weaken the PRC? Russia desperately needs money and weapons/ammunition. Iran and northern Korea can’t supply any of that in sufficient numbers; only the PRC can—at the expense of its own finances and military equipage. Beyond that, the PRC already is spending treasure propping up the Russian economy and war effort.

Finally, there’s the fact that Russia winning in Ukraine—getting to keep those 20%—would only embolden Xi, not give him pause.

…doubling down on his promise to shrink the federal bureaucracy by 70%….

This actually is a worthy goal. However. There are some 2 million civilians employed by the Federal government. Assume, arguendo, he’s capable of getting rid of those 70%. What’s his timeline for terminating 1.4 million civilians? He never says. What will be the impact (viz., unemployment insurance, food stamps) of dumping 1.4 million out-of-work workers onto the private economy? He never says anything about that, either. How will he handle the nation’s economic dislocation resulting from dumping 1.4 million more out-of-work workers onto the private economy? He never says anything about that, either.

Another Nation-State Kidnaps

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The lede says it.

A senior executive at US risk advisory firm Kroll has been barred from leaving mainland China for the past two months, heightening concerns about the risks foreign companies face when doing business in the country.

Then this:

Michael Chan, a Hong Kong-based managing director at the company who specializes in corporate restructuring, traveled to the mainland in July and subsequently informed his employer that he cannot leave….

However, this:

Neither Chan nor Kroll is the target of the investigation….

They’re not targets, but Chan can’t leave, anyway. That’s kidnapping. That he’s free to move about the cabin country in no way means he’s not a prisoner. He’s just locked up in a gilded cage. And like most cages, his contact with the outside world is a tenuous, sometime thing, given the PRC’s communications fire wall.

In the end, the optimal way to mitigate these kidnappings by the PRC is for American businesses to stop doing business inside the PRC, especially given the Biden administration’s reserve price for getting our citizens back. It’s come to this, quite aside from the national security question of our businesses being economically and resource dependent on an enemy nation.

ByteDance and TikTok

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Recall that TikTok, a social medium heavily favored by our children, is wholly owned by ByteDance. Recall further, that ByteDance is domiciled inside the Peoples Republic of China. Finally, recall that the PRC’s 2017 national security law requires every PRC-domiciled company to collect and deliver to that nation’s intelligence community any information that community requests. A bonus memory: TikTok’s executive team has been at pains to insist that, in the United States, they operate independently of all of that.

Against that backdrop, there’s this:

Since the start of the year, a string of high-level executives have transferred from ByteDance to TikTok, taking on some of the top jobs in the popular video-sharing app’s moneymaking operations. Some moved to the US from ByteDance’s Beijing headquarters.

That’s not independence. Nor does it matter what top jobs, in particular, ByteDance’s transferred executives assume in TikTok. They work for ByteDance, which operates at the behest of the PRC government. Their presence at the top of TikTok only tightens that control.

Bottom line: it doesn’t matter how much gussying up ByteDance or TikTok executives do in their attempts to deny Peoples Republic of China control of TikTok; the PRC’s intelligence community can command TikTok to obtain and deliver any information regarding TikTok’s users that the intel community wants.

It’s past time the Federal government bans TikTok from any and all operations inside the US. Standing in the way of that are too many Congressmen and Senators, of both parties, who have taken “donations” from folks like Jeff Yass, who through his Susquehanna International Group owns a big stake in ByteDance, [and he] has also worked to fend off a US ban through organizations like Club for Growth. Among those…donees…are

  • Senator Rand Paul (R, KY), who received through a Paul-supporting PAC, $3 million
  • Congressman Thomas Massie (R, KY), who has received $32,200 directly from Yass, his wife, and via a Massie-supporting PAC
  • Other [carefully unnamed] Republicans in Congress, including at least five others besides Paul and Massie, who received financial support from Club for Growth and have objected to legislation targeting TikTok.

Yass has rationalized his antipathy to banning TikTok with this:

TikTok is about free speech and innovation, the epitome of libertarian and free market ideals. The idea of banning TikTok is an anathema to everything I believe.

Aside from moving to protect his investment in the PRC-controlled ByteDance, it appears that part of everything I believe includes the right of the Peoples Republic of China to spy on our children. Banning TikTok has nothing to do with interfering with free speech (or innovation, come to that). Banning TikTok would ban a tool used by the PRC against our children and our national security, to the extent it’s used by government officials at any level of our hierarchy or by business executives anywhere. Content, speech, all of that, could and would continue apace, completely unhindered, on any of the plethora of other social medium platforms.

Ban TikTok. No further delays.

Wrong Emphasis

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The lede says it all.

The Biden administration and its European allies are laying plans for long-term military assistance to Ukraine to ensure Russia won’t be able to win on the battlefield and persuade the Kremlin that Western support for Kyiv won’t waver.

There’s no interest in the Biden administration or those European allies that are safely removed from the Russian border, insulated as they are (they think) by the eastern European nations who directly face the barbarian threat, to provide the prompt and extensive aid that Ukraine needs actually to win on the battlefield.

Biden’s, et al., decision merely to seek to prevent barbarian victory is crass, cynical, and just as barbaric as the Russian invasion, since all the decision does is prolong fighting and the resulting damage to Ukraine and increase the killings and maimings of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians—especially despicably, the killings and maimings and rapes of Ukrainian women and children.

The goal is to make sure Ukraine will be strong enough in the future to deter Russia from attacking it again. More immediately, Ukraine’s Western allies hope to discourage the Kremlin from thinking it can wait out the Biden administration….

This would be risible were it not so disgusting. Ukraine must first win before there can be any concern for deter[ing] Russia from attacking it again.

More immediately, there’d be no need to wait out the Biden administration were Biden to stop slow-walking and outright blocking delivery to Ukraine the weapons, ammunition, and supplies it needs to win outright.

“Let Ukraine Direct Its Own Counteroffensive”

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US Army General Jack Keane (ret), once Army Vice Chief of Staff and current Institute for the Study of War Chairman, thinks US military personnel criticizing the way Ukraine is conducting its offensive should (my paraphrase) sit down and shut up.

Keane’s characterization of those sideline inhabitants’ behavior, chirping from the sidelines, is being generous. Whatever their own combat experience, if any, it has no relevance to the realized combat environment the Ukrainians are facing with the Russian up-armored barbarians.

No one in the American military today has designed large-scale mechanized operations against a serious and capable enemy that is employing a comprehensive defense. The last time was the Metz campaign in France in 1944, led by General George S Patton.

But in all their woke awesomeness, the Pentagon’s armchair junior high quarterbacks Know So Much Better. If these wonders truly want to help Ukraine, they’ll push President Joe Biden (D) to stop slow-walking and outright denying the weapons Ukraine needs to effectively and efficiently prosecute its offensive, and they’ll get their own bureaucrats out of the way of actual delivery.