Category Archives: foreign policy

Naïve

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A bunch of non-defense and non-foreign policy folks—and so experts on both—don’t think we should be moving to defend ourselves against our enemies.  Such actions might…provoke…them.

Dozens of scientists, health care professionals and academics have written a letter to the UN calling for an international ban of autonomous killer robots, saying recent advances in artificial intelligence “have brought us to the brink of a new arms race in lethal autonomous weapons.”

These tools might also fall into the hands of terrorists and despots.

Such a withdrawal or failure to engage in the first place, though, would amount to unilateral disarmament in the face of our enemies: an agreement—done at the UN or done between nations—cannot be expected to be honored by those who wish us ill.  It’s necessary only to see the years-long Russian violation of the intermediate-range nuclear missile treaty in Europe and its partition and occupation of parts of Georgia and Ukraine.  It’s necessary only to see the People’s Republic of China’s seizure of the South China Sea and the islands therein—the territory of other nations around the Sea, albeit disputed among those nations—and the militarization of those occupied islands.

It’s necessary only to see the continued nuclear weapons arming of northern Korea, despite past agreements to stop.  It’s necessary only to see the continued drive toward nuclear weapons development in Iran, despite past agreements not to.

Our enemies will—and are—racing to development “killer robots” regardless of any piously agreed treaties to not.  Many of these enemies—Iran, for instance, and northern Korea—would be happy to sell the weapons to terrorists and despots to facilitate their ability to do us harm.

We should be leading in this development and deployment not hiding from it.  That’s the only way to maximize our ability to control their use: from understanding how to counter them to minimizing through deterrence the likelihood of our enemies using them or selling them on.  That’s the only way to maximize our ability to defend ourselves.

Aside from all of that, an arms race is itself a useful tool in facing down our adversaries.  It’s necessary only to recall the space-based missile defense race, the economic toll that took on the Soviet Union, and the outcome of that price exaction.

At best, these folks are naïve.

The Nature of an Enemy

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This is the nature of the People’s Republic of China which the Left—our own and Europe’s in particular—pooh-pooh as not actually utterly antithetical to our values, our liberties, even our independence from PRC domination.

After locking up as many as a million people in camps in Xinjiang, Chinese authorities are destroying Uighur neighborhoods and purging the region’s culture. They say they’re fighting terrorism. Their aim: to engineer a society loyal to Beijing.

The rationalization for this purge comes from Shohrat Zakir, Chairman of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and the Communist Party of China’s Deputy Party Committee Secretary for Xinjiang:

Ethnic unity is the lifeline of all ethnic groups in China and the foundation of economic progress in Xinjiang[.]

And that unity must be a Sinicized unity. This is the lesson the men of the People’s Republic of China government think they’ve learned from the Jinjiang and Mongol conquering of China.

That Sinicization requirement is illustrated by this:

“We can’t have a culture anymore,” said a Uighur resident of Urumqi who works at a state-owned resources company. He said he stopped visiting his local mosque after officials came to his house to confiscate his Quran. “No one goes any more. It’s too dangerous,” he said.

Anything other is evil and must be stamped out.

It’s a long article, but RTWT.

Defying Trump?

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That’s what the headline would have it.

The German government is poised to renege on its pledge to raise military spending, the latest gesture of defiance by Chancellor Angela Merkel toward President Donald Trump.

And

Under the new budget plan, unveiled by the finance ministry Monday, [Germany’s] spending would rise to 1.37% of GDP next year, but then decrease again to 1.33% in 2019, 1.29% in 2022 and 1.25% in 2023.

However.

Germany won’t be defying Trump. It’ll be betraying NATO and its fellow members.  Especially those eastern European members that front on Russia and behind which Germany ducks.

Wages of Bigotry?

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It seems that some Americans are waking up to the institutional bigotry of the Progressive-Democratic Party, an awakening triggered by the blatant disregard for Party antisemitism that House Progressive-Democrats proudly displayed in their refusal last month to censure Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D, MN) over her anti-Semitic statements.  In that instance, Party chose, instead, to pass a heavily diluted resolution “disapproving” of bigotry in “all its forms,” but refusing to name the names of bigots in its own house.  Some Americans with Jewish heritage and religion are speaking up with dismay.

Mark Schwartz (D) Deputy Mayor of Teaneck, NJ:

We felt we had a home there [in the Party].  And now we feel like we have to check our passports.

Jordan Manor, a “gay Jewish Israeli-American” of Manhattan:

 The party I thought cared about me seems to disregard me when it comes to my Jewish identity.

Mark Dunec, Livingston, NJ, consultant and 2014 Progressive-Democratic candidate for Congress:

I’m physically afraid for myself and for my family.  I see my own party contributing to the rise of anti-Semitism in the United States.

A teacher in Queens has rejected Omar’s—and by extension, Pelosi’s—defense that Omar just didn’t know any better.

The fake defense she doesn’t know what she’s saying? I don’t believe it.  This is a grown woman and a member of Congress. Trying to excuse this as naivete is inexcusable.

It isn’t just anger, either; many are acting.  The Queens teacher has quit Party and now is registered as an Independent.  Allison Gangi of Manhattan, too:

The watered-down resolution triggered my decision to walk away from the Democratic Party.

That Teaneck Deputy Mayor?

Our only question now is, do we start voting Republican, or do we become Republicans?

And others, like this one, see the danger explicitly:

I’m homeless. I don’t think I can vote for Trump, even though he’s great for Israel.  But as a Jew, I can’t see a way to support the Democratic Party. It’s supporting your own destruction.

A No-Deal Brexit

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The Wall Street Journal opined earlier this week that, in the words of the piece’s subheadline,

A no-deal crash out of the EU may be the best outcome now.

The rest of the thing was a string of rationalizations of why this is true, but the heart of the matter is that subhead.

In fact, though, a no-deal departure always has been the best outcome.

A priori because that’s what the Brits voted for in their referendum—they wanted their sovereignty and control of their own borders back. Full stop.

In retrospect because Brussels has acted in bad faith, solely to punish the Brits for their effrontery, ever since. EU leadership, lately in the person of Donald Tusk, has acted in echo of Jacques Chirac’s slam on eastern European nations:

It is not really responsible behavior. It is not well brought-up behavior. They missed a good opportunity to keep quiet.

There’s no reason at all for the Brits to talk further with the EU regarding the terms of Great Britain’s departure for freedom.

Update: Yesterday, the British Parliament voted against a no-deal Brexit and in favor of going to Brussels and beg for more time to negotiate. What happened to the courage that led Great Britain to build a globe-spanning empire?

Fortunately, Parliament’s move is non-binding. We’ll see whether Prime Minister Theresa May has the courage required to stay with the scheduled date for British departure, currently 29 March.