Category Archives: foreign policy

The Editors Miss Again

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This time, the editors of The Wall Street Journal waxed excited over President Donald Trump’s (R) responses to the People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping’s export blocks controls on rare earths and related materials aimed at the United States.

First things first.

None of this [trade war] is good for the US and global economies.

The editors appear to be writing from a fantasy garret office. In what war do they imagine that one side suffers no harm at all? In the real world, wars damage all participants.

Then there’s this from the editors’ swampish imaginations.

Mr Trump started the fun by announcing on social media midday Friday that “some very strange things are happening in China!” He said Beijing has turned “very hostile” and is sending letters to the world announcing tighter controls on the export of “every element of production having to do with” rare-earth minerals.

There’s that fantastical editorial garret world again. This latest round was begun by the PRC’s Xi when he imposed those controls on rare-earths, processed rare earths, and any product from wherever exported that contains rare earth materials comprising 0.1% or more of the product’s value. Trump is merely responding to that attack rather than meekly lying down and forcing us to accept it.

But back up a bit, too, to a time of which the long-term memories of the editors seem broadly deficient. The PRC has been inflicting its trade war on us for years and years. It has been stealing our technologies through espionage and hacking.

It has been forcing technology transfers from private enterprises as a condition of their doing business in the PRC, a condition only slightly eased over the ensuing years.

It has been forcing private enterprises to accept as partners PRC-domiciled companies as a condition of those foreign enterprises doing business in the PRC, a condition only slightly eased over the ensuing years.

It has demanded PRC government-approved back doors into foreign companies’ operating software as a condition of those foreign enterprises doing business in the PRC, a condition only slightly eased over the ensuing years.

It has demanded PRC apparatchiks in foreign companies’ management teams operating PRC-domiciled arms, a requirement only slightly eased over the ensuing years.

The PRC has begun dumping its industrial output on the international market at below production cost pricing nominally to shore up the economic malaise of its own overproduction, but in truth to bankrupt other nations’ domestic industrial producers—including in the US—and so gain market share to the point of other nations’ dependency, especially ours, on PRC output.

Trade wars aren’t easy, as the editors noted in their headline. But trade wars are made the harder when folks who should know better don’t even understand the war actually progress.

Physical Fitness vs Technical Prowess

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That’s the dichotomy—the mutually exclusive brace of choices—that many claim our military faces, and too many folks who should know better think the choice should be made in favor of technical prowess. Here’s former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall:

Modern warfare, particularly against a peer competitor, will be much more about skillfully applying cutting-edge technology and managing complex weapon systems under stress than about physical strength. We need the nation’s best brains as much if not far more than we need people who can do push-ups.

It’s good that Kendall is former SecAF. The two are not at all mutually exclusive criteria; on the contrary, they’re strongly synergistic. Physical fitness helps keep the mind clear—or at least less cloudy—under any sort of stress, especially that of combat.

Then, as the barbarian invasion of Ukraine is demonstrating, physical fitness is every bit as important as tech prowess and the use of (rapidly) evolving tech weapons in a war that is both technological and grindingly physical.

Closer to home, our bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities would not have been achievable if the bomber, refueler, and escort pilots were not physically fit. Soft, out of shape personnel could not have stood the rigors of 30 hours straight in the air, or the sequence of tankers refueling the bombers and fighters, or the fighter escorts in the emotional and potentially high g-force escort environment.

Time to Expand

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Against the backdrop of Russian drones and fighter aircraft invading the skies over NATO nations—Poland, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, et al.—Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned NATO that he will respond if NATO allies deepen support for Ukraine.

Rather than meekly backing down as ex-President Joe Biden and the Biden-fronted NATO did at critical moments, it’s time now to explosively expand support for Ukraine, and supply them with the weapons, ammunition, and logistics support the UA needs at the pace the UA says it needs it, and to remove all fetters from weapons use, so the UA has the wherewithal to strike the barbarians wherever he gathers his own munitions, fuels and foodstuffs, soldiers, and to strike the barbarians’ oil and natural gas production facilities, oil refineries, pipeline nodes, and rail computer and rail line nodes so as to cut off the barbarians at the front from any resupply.

The barbarian invasion should have been beaten back 18 or more months ago, but for Western timidity in the face of Putin’s bluster. It’s far from too late, if NATO and the US will act.

But screw [NATO] courage to the sticking place,
And [Ukraine]’ll not fail.

Insufficient

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A deal for TikTok is in the offing, but it’s wholly insufficient in my not very humble opinion. The deal breaker for me:

Under the agreement, a new entity would be created to run TikTok in the US. A consortium of new investors including private-equity firm Silver Lake and Oracle would own roughly half. Existing investors such as trading firm Susquehanna International would hold about 30%. TikTok parent ByteDance‘s stake would dip below 20% to comply with a 2024 law requiring the company to do a deal or stop operating in the US.

ByteDance is domiciled in the People’s Republic of China, and so it is subject to the PRC’s national intelligence laws. One of those laws requires PRC companies to answer intelligence community requests for information about its doings in other nations and about the doings of enterprises and individuals in those other nations that do business with ByteDance and those associated with it, and to go get that information—commit espionage—if it doesn’t have it already.

ByteDance‘s under 20% participation in the new TikTok entity might coincide with the American law, but it still leaves the PRC company, and so the PRC government, with too broad a window into American private affairs. Any window, of any size, is too much.

Dealing with the PRC

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The People’s Republic of China has decided that the American company Nvidia has violated PRC anti-trust laws and is holding the company hostage in trade negotiations with the US.

China’s antitrust regulator said Monday that a preliminary investigation found Nvidia violated the country’s antimonopoly law in connection with an acquisition of an Israeli company that was completed in 2020. The regulator said the investigation was continuing, and it didn’t elaborate on the alleged violations or say whether it would punish Nvidia.

The PRC is centering its case on Nvidia’s commitment to not cut the PRC off from its chips as a condition of PRC approval of the acquisition. That might make a basis for a legitimate anti-trust beef; however:

Since 2022, the US. government has blocked Nvidia and other American chip vendors from selling many of their top-flight artificial-intelligence chips to China.

Here is the PRC threatening an American company for its compliance with American law.

There are now two strong reasons for American companies to walk away from the PRC and discontinue all business with PRC-domiciled companies or within the PRC under any guise. One is the overt interference with the domestic affairs of our nation. If the PRC doesn’t like our government’s block of Nvidia, et al., selling their best chips into the PRC, its beef is with our government, not with the American businesses it tries to take hostage in its “negotiations” with our government.

The other reason is the PRC’s presumption that it should have veto authority over whether an American company acquires, or otherwise takes a stake in, any non-PRC-domiciled company. If American companies stop doing business in/with the PRC, then the PRC has no approval/disapproval authority over acquisitions—it becomes irrelevant. And that’s as it should be with an enemy nation.