Category Archives: foreign policy

A Gesture

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Maybe an empty one, maybe a start in the right direction.  Germany has announced they’ll expel four (count ’em) Russian diplomats in response to Russia’s attempted murder of an ex-pat and his daughter.  Other EU members are expected to follow suit “soon.”

We, on the other hand, have chosen to expel a larger (in part because Russia has larger contingents here) and more targeted bunch, sending off 60 of Russia’s intelligence officers present here under the guise of diplomatic attaches.  We’ve also closed the Russian consulate in Seattle.

Better yet would be extending economic sanctions.  Stop support for Russia’s second natural gas pipeline running under the Baltic Sea.  Stop buying Russian oil and timber.  Deny Russia access to the European banking system as well as to ours—the nation’s access, not just that of some handy oligarchs.

Step up arms sales to Ukraine and Georgia.  Run a couple of major exercises in the immediate neighborhood of Kaliningrad and near the Polish and Baltic States’ borders with Russia.

Vladimir Putin doesn’t necessarily respect strength other than his own, but the bully fears it.

A Step in the Right Direction

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President Donald Trump and Congress have finalized an agreement with the Republic of China that allows unrestricted two-way travel for officials from the United States and Taiwan, thus restoring direct official US contacts with the RoC.

Now we need to take the next step: exchange embassies with the RoC.  In parallel with all of that, we need to resume patrols of the Taiwan Strait and help the RoC upgrade their military’s capability, both offensive and defensive—especially the former, since merely parrying blows does not hurt the attacker enough to force it to stop.

The PRC and Intellectual Property Theft

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In the absence of any serious legal protections against intellectual property theft in the People’s Republic of China, businesses operating there are engaging more and more in sweeping conference rooms there for bugs and equipping personnel with sanitary burner phones for use while in the PRC.

That’s a start for those willing to put their proprietary information at risk through a business venture inside the PRC or with a PRC-based business anywhere, but it’s inadequate by itself, as illustrated by this bit of naivete by the linked-to piece’s author:

Mr Trump wants China to unwind policies that require auto makers, cloud service providers and others to share technology with Chinese partners for the right to operate here. …for example, operate in 50-50 joint ventures with Chinese partners.
Those technology transfers, however, are distinct from the outright theft some companies say they face.

The distinction is little different from the distinction between extortion and robbery.  President Donald Trump needs to take concrete action to encourage the PRC to eliminate those policies.

Where national security information would be at risk, CFIUS needs to get more active.

Congress needs to take complementary action: perhaps barring companies from sharing their proprietary information, perhaps requiring companies wanting to do business with PRC-based companies or within the PRC to retain a controlling share of any partnership, perhaps other steps, also.

Probing the Attempted Murder of an Ex-Spy

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Recall that an ex-spy and his daughter were attacked in a British park with a view to killing at least the ex-spy.  The weapon used was a nerve gas that’s only made in Russia.  The investigation itself is pointing strongly at Moscow as the instigator of the murder attempt; although the investigation is not complete.  Now Russia is refusing to cooperate in the investigation unless certain conditions are met.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Moscow would only cooperate with the UK’s investigation into the nerve-agent poisoning of a former spy if London supplied the substance in question and opened up the probe to Russian officials.

Supplying a sample of the nerve agent—which use just incidentally also poisoned roughly 20 other folks associated with the discovery of the two victims, their transport to a hospital, and their treatment, thereby illustrating the indiscriminate nature of the attack—would be entirely reasonable.

That last, though, opening the investigation to the Russians should be unacceptable to the Brits for a couple of reasons.  One is that the Russians are unlikely to cooperate with, much less support, the investigation in any serious way regardless of any sharing by British investigators.

The larger reason, though, is that the opening would only provide Putin with another avenue for spying on Great Britain.

Better than Nothing

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…and good for the region, although not as good as it could have been with US involvement.

Japan, Canada, Mexico and eight other Pacific nations [Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam] are set to sign a new version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, on Thursday.

This is a missed opportunity for the United States and a foreign policy mistake by President Donald Trump.

The goal of the pact is to open borders to more trade in the rapidly growing Asia-Pacific region and to set international standards, which many see as crucial to managing the encroaching dominance of China….

That last illustrates why international trade, in all its forms, is more about foreign policy than it is economics.  The particular, foreign policy, failure has also weakened our ability to influence the People’s Republic of China, on trade, on the South and East China Seas, on northern Korea.