Category Archives: foreign policy

Putin Wants an Arms Race

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Russia threatens arms race in space if commercial satellites do not stop assisting Ukraine in war, goes the subheadline.

And:

[Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Konstantin] Vorontsov argued that commercial satellites used to benefit Ukraine in the war violates The Outer Space Treaty and warned it could start a “full-fledged arms race in outer space.”

An arms race in space.

I say bring it. The Soviet Union couldn’t handle a Reagan arms race in space; the USSR couldn’t keep up with the technology developments, and its economy couldn’t keep up with anything—military or civilian.

The Russian economy is in worse shape. Let’s have that arms race. Russia will lose this one, and just as catastrophically, even if the nation doesn’t actually disintegrate the way the USSR did.

Here’s Another Thought

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Two in a week. Settle down.

NASDAQ is (rightfully) suspicious of small-cap companies domiciled in the People’s Republic of China listing their IPOs on NASDAQ’s exchange. The one-day spikes in share prices followed quickly by nearly total collapse of those share prices in so many of the IPOs is what’s drawn attention. For instance:

Shares of more than 20 recently listed companies have risen over 100% on their first day of trading. They include Hong Kong-based fintech company AMTD Digital Inc, which briefly jumped over 320-fold after its July listing, and Chinese garment maker Addentax Group Corp, which rose more than 130-fold on its market debut in August. The two stocks have since lost more than 98% of their value.

As a result, NASDAQ has stopped approving PRC small-caps for listing, for the time being. Which brings me to my thought.

Don’t list any companies domiciled in the PRC on any American exchange, and encourage the other nations in the OECD to do the same. After all, at least since the PRC’s 2017 National Intelligence Law, those PRC companies are too closely tied to the PRC’s intelligence community, and as such, they have no legitimate business raising money through any nation’s stock or bond exchanges other than their own.

Political Cowardice

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President Joe Biden (D) is desperate to avoid encountering Russian President Vladimir Putin during the upcoming G20 meeting.

The White House is bent on preventing President Biden from having a run-in with Russian President Vladimir Putin while the pair attend the G20 summit next month, according to a new report.
White House aides want to avoid even a hallway meeting between the two, or any other situation that might allow for them to be pictured together[.]

It’s true enough, if “reports” are accurate, that it’s those White House aides who are fronting this shameful avoidance, but those folks work for Biden, not the other way around, and as cowardly as Biden would be to run away from Putin, it’s just as cowardly to hide behind his aides on his retreat rather than speaking for himself on the matter.

After all, goes the pseudo-thought, the barbarian chieftain isn’t doing anything worthy of being publicly confronted over. Nothing going on in Ukraine. No barbarian hordes raping and pillaging. No Russian attacks on civilian housing, hospitals, schools, or water and electricity distribution networks. No Russian attacks threatening nuclear power plants.

No Russian cyber attacks made against our allies and friends—or against us.

Nothing to see here.

Instead of running away from Putin, Biden should seek him out and publicly confront him over his invasion of a sovereign nation and the barbaric behavior of his horde inside that nation. Biden should publicly confront him over his cyber attacks.

Still only Chit-Chat

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Now ex-President Barack Obama (D) thinks it was a mistake to essentially ignore the Green Revolution in Iran in 2009, the Iranian people’s uprising against the tyrannical Ayatollah regime.

That’s awfully … of him to say so, now, 13 years too late for it to matter for the Iranian people or for him to suffer any consequences, even as it comes amid the current protests by Iranian women against that same tyrannical Ayatollah regime.

Now he’s saying,

Every time we see a flash, a glimmer of hope, of people longing for freedom, I think we have to point it out.
We have to shine a spotlight on it. We have to express some solidarity about it[.]

Chit-chat. Obama, and his BFF President Joe Biden (D), still are interested in limiting themselves to yakking about the Iranian people’s efforts. Talk is cheap; what concrete action would today’s Obama or Biden be willing to take?

They’re not quite being silent.

Women’s Rights

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The Iranian women are campaigning, with great courage, for their freedom (proximately to dress as they wish, but it’s much broader than that) against the tyrannical, murderous, and terrorism-supporting regime reigning over Iran. Many Iranian men are campaigning with them, and together, they’re struggling for broad freedoms for everyone: the freedom for Iranian citizens of both sexes to make their own, individual, decisions regarding their any of their actions.

The Progressive-Democratic Biden administration is shamefully quiet on the matter, even as it continues to beg on bended knee—from the kiddie table, yet—to be allowed to rejoin the JCPOA, the Obama-era agreement to allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons after expiry of some restrictions.

This is how the Progressive-Democratic Party has chosen to interact with the terrorism-supporting regime, though. An earlier Iranian people’s attempt to fight for individual rights, joined by Iranian women that time (compared to the women’s campaign being joined by men this time), was just as shamefully ignored by an earlier Progressive-Democratic administration.

The last time the Iranian people risked their lives for freedom from the benighted theocracy that subjugates them—the 2009 protests against a stolen election—Washington chose shame. The White House turned its back on the protesters for a week until they gathered near the former US embassy building in Tehran chanting, “Obama, you’re either with them or with us.” This finally evoked a statement of support, but it was too little, too late.

Emphasis on too little. Obama’s words were—by design—empty; he followed up on those words with…nothing at all for the Iranian people, not a minim of actual, concrete support.

Joshua Muravchik is being generous in his op-ed at the first link, though, regarding Biden.

The Biden administration has been more forthcoming in its pronouncements during the current protests, but it can and should do more.

He appears to take Biden seriously in its being more forthcoming. Biden’s pronouncements are just empty words, and not even as articulately snowing as Obama’s prior chit-chat. The Biden administration can and should do more, but it won’t. It’s too desperate to get back into that nuclear weapons authorization agreement.

Those Iranian women—they’re on their own.

It’s not only the Progressive-Democratic Party administrations who are silent, though. Just as shamefully, what passes for the current American feminist movement is just as meekly quiet. And they don’t even have a sham realpolitik motive for it.