Category Archives: defense policy

Some Thoughts on Europe’s Defense

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French President Emmanuel Macron has one and so does German Chancellor Angela Merkel (through her Defense Minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer). And so do I.

Macron strongly favors a Europe that is strategically autonomous in its defense. After all, he notes (OANN‘s paraphrasing),

the United States would only respect a Europe that was more self-reliant in defence.

AKK, on the other hand, says that (again, OANN‘s paraphrasing)

Europe [will] remain dependent on Washington for its defence for a long time to come.

They’re both right, although Merkel/AKK is a bit pessimistic. It will take some time for the member nations of the European Union and for the EU as a whole to make the necessary adjustments for a Macron-esque defense autonomy, but it shouldn’t take as long as Merkel envisions. That simply requires more commitment to Europe’s own responsibilities than currently exists.

The US can, and should, do everything we can to support European defense (and that includes a newly freed from the EU Great Britain), but we should not—we cannot—take on Europe’s responsibility in their stead; they must act on their own responsibility. All we can do is stand with them.

Another Reason

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…why neither the People’s Republic of China nor the World Health Organization can be trusted.

Opposition from the Chinese government is preventing participants in a World Health Organization meeting on the Covid-19 pandemic from learning directly about one of the world’s biggest coronavirus success stories.
Taiwan hasn’t recorded a locally transmitted coronavirus infection in about seven months but has been blocked from participating in a virtual gathering this week [last week as this is posted] of the WHO’s 194-member World Health Assembly because of objections from Beijing, which considers the self-ruled island part of its territory.

WHO was carefully silent on the shunning, mindful of its master’s requirements.

Never mind that the Republic of China just might have some ideas on how to control the Wuhan Virus.

This is the WHO that Joe Biden wants us to cozy up to.

This is the PRC that Joe Biden wants us to trust so.

Foreign Takeovers of Domestic Companies

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Great Britain is concerned with

strik[ing] a middle ground between welcoming foreign investment and protecting strategic industries from takeover, particularly amid concerns around acquisitions by Chinese state-backed companies.

Thus,

Under…proposed rules, investors would have to notify the government about transactions involving 17 sectors including nuclear, artificial intelligence, transport, energy, and defense.

That would seem to make a foreign investment law unnecessarily byzantine, and require revisiting at some aperiodic intervals.  After all, what’s not strategic today might turn out strategic tomorrow. This is illustrated by the timing of this proposal.

The rules update a takeover regime dating back 20 years that the government says is no longer adequate.

Well, NSS.

I have a better idea (also because I don’t lack for hubris). Don’t worry about strategic sectors. Bar all foreign takeover transactions unless and until they’re approved by a CFIUS-like facility. It would work for us, too.

Turkey’s Erdoğan

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In Turkey, this Cover Page of the Charlie Hebdo publication would be a crime because Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is afraid of ridicule (the headline caption translates as “In private, he’s very funny”). In France and much of the West, it’s a matter of free speech and free press. Here, too.

The joke is on Erdoğan. Or he is the joke. You pick ’em.

Some Biden-Related Concerns

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…as outlined in Just the News.

There are at least three instances where there is now public evidence that Joe Biden met with foreigners his son was courting for business.
The first occurred in 2011 when Obama White House entry logs show several Chinese businessmen involved with Hunter Biden checked in to meet the vice president.
The second occurred in 2013, when Hunter Biden rode aboard Air Force II with his father and then introduced the vice president in Beijing to a Chinese businessman that was helping him start an investment fund.
The third, alleged in an email purportedly recovered from Hunter Biden’s old laptop, indicates Hunter Biden arranged for an official from Burisma to meet his father in April 2015. …the Biden campaign now acknowledges the encounter may have happened though insists it was fleeting.

These predate the People’s Republic of China National Intelligence Law, enacted in June 2017, that requires all PRC companies to answer PRC intelligence community requests for information. Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden still has not repudiated, or even terminated, these ties. That they may appear to have died on the vine on their own, may be just that: appearance.

Biden needs to positively repudiate these connections.

And this:

At least two pieces of evidence have emerged in the last two weeks that suggest Hunter Biden believed his father was getting a cut of his business. The first, which remains uncorroborated by Just the News, is an email found on the purported Hunter Biden laptop in which the vice president’s son suggests he shared half of his income with his father.
The second piece of evidence, now authenticated by Just the News, is a proposal in May 2017 for a joint venture between a Chinese energy firm and a Hunter Biden-tied company called Sinohawk Holdings that stated that 10% of the venture’s equity was being reserved for the “big guy.” Sinohawk’s CEO Tony Bobulinski has confirmed the reference to the “big guy” is Joe Biden, and that the then-former vice president was supposed to be a silent investor in the venture.

The “purported Hunter Biden laptop” itself has been confirmed to be his; although its provenance once it left the repair shop’s hands remains unclear. The joint venture proposal was made just before the PRC’s intelligence law was enacted. It seems unlikely that the Bidens would not have known the law was imminent, but it seems likely the PRC’s energy firm—CEFC—would have known, especially given the connections between Ye Jianming, CEFC’s Chairman and controlling shareholder (through his Shanghai Energy Fund Investment Ltd company) and the Communist Party of China.

Biden has yet to positively repudiate any of this, also.

There’s more at the link.