Category Archives: foreign policy

Timidity Is

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…as timidity does.  The Japan Times has it, too, as demonstrated in its editorial last Wednesday.  The editorial board is worried about Japan actually achieving an ability to defend proactively itself.  The board’s concern was triggered [sic] by a Liberal Democratic Party proposal that

Japan consider developing the ability to strike enemy missile bases.  …a response to North Korea’s repeated ballistic missile launches….

The board fretted that

an attempt by Japan to build up the capability to attack enemy bases could result in destabilizing the region’s security environment by giving an imagined enemy an excuse to carry out pre-emptive strikes on our country.

Never mind that the region’s security environment already is at risk from Japan’s current inability strike (back) at an “imagined” enemy who attacks (including a Japanese ally?  That’s the implication of the Times board’s term); Japan can only to receive such a strike, potentially without post hoc answer.

The editorialists did raise a legitimate Constitutional question on the matter:

In 1959, defense chief Shigejiro Ito stated that possessing offensive weapons on the grounds of potential danger of enemy attack as mentioned by Hatoyama runs counter to the Constitution.

However, Ito misunderstood the Japanese Constitution and the duty of any nation’s government.  No government may, legitimately, surrender its people, the government’s master, into slavery or destruction; government must mount the means to defend itself.  With today’s technologies, that of necessity includes the obligation (not merely the right) to act preemptively if the situation demands it.

Preemptive defensive actions thus still defensive actions, and so they are well within the bounds of Japan’s Constitutional limits on military activity.

The Times‘ board went on:

To equip the Self-Defense Forces with the ability to pound enemy bases would require advanced technologies and equipment…. Possessing these kinds of technologies and equipment could go beyond the principle of defense-only security that the nation has adopted under the postwar Constitution.

Aside from the board’s lack of understanding of the nature of self-defense and the government’s obligation to be able to act preemptively, there’s the question of the board’s limiting principle here.  Would, for instance, concluding a treaty with another nation that obligates that nation to defend (and so to conduct preemptive actions for the sake of) Japan be a close enough possession of such technologies to violate the Japanese Constitution?  Would concluding a treaty with another nation for that nation to use its technologies to advise Japan and guide Japanese systems to the enemy bases be a close enough possession of such technologies to violate the Constitution?  In both cases, after all, Japan would deliberately be making use of these apparently proscribed technologies, if only indirectly.

And:

Japan’s attempt to obtain capabilities to strike enemy bases could be reciprocated by potential enemies, including North Korea, potentially leading to an arms race between the two countries.

Stipulated.  Is that better or worse, though, than Japan leaving itself exposed to the enemy’s initiative and the enemy’s possibly nuclear initial attack?  Does the board think Japan could survive a nuclear attack, much less answer it successfully?

Does the board think northern Korea (for instance) can maintain such an arms race for a longer time than Japan before it must leave off?

The Times‘ position is just the potential hostage preemptively surrendering itself into hostage status.

And it’s shameful.

The False Premise of a Madboy

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Harry Kazianis, writing in The Week Monday, portrayed northern Korea’s weekend military parading not as sabre rattling but as a demonstration of the fruits of development driven by military necessity.

Kim Jong Un—the leader of a nation that has an economy smaller than Ethiopia—knows all too well he has no way to match the United States, South Korea, and Japan ship for ship, plane for plane in a symmetrical sense. The only way he can hope to deter his enemies is to build the ultimate game-changer: nuclear weapons paired with missiles that can strike all the way across the globe.

But Baby Kim, assuming Kazianis’ description is reasonably accurate, is operating from a false premise.  Northern Korea has no enemies (other than the enemies any street gang has, I mean).  Northern Korea has no enemies because northern Korea has absolutely nothing that any other nation wants: not resources, not technology, not an industrial base worth the candle, not tourist attractions, not pleasant climate for vacationing, not even a pile of cash.  Nothing.

The only thing Kim’s behavior is generating is increasing urgency and necessity to spend the bandwidth and resources necessary to bring him and his government down, since the only real purpose he can have in developing his nuclear weapon suite is to attack his neighbors with it, whether they’re near or far, and so he must be preempted.

Either that, or he’s truly a mad boy—which increases the urgency and necessity of bringing him and his government down before he can do his fever-inspired damage.

Kazianis’ own offered alternatives are…useless.

First, Washington must work with the international community—that means you, China, as well—to contain North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs as robustly as possible. Secondary sanctions would be applied to any nation, financial entity, company, or individual who dared help the regime build such weapons.

We’ve “worked with the international community”—the Six Party Talks, for instance—for nearly 25 years, including sanctions, and including the PRC in the Six.  The result of all of that is Baby Kim’s current status of having 20-40 nuclear warheads and nearing the ability to stick them onto missiles capable of reaching as far as the western US.

Second, we can’t just use sanctions to limit Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile systems—we need to go further. The Trump administration must use cyber weapons, just as the Obama administration did in the case of Iran’s nuclear program, to slow the speed at which these programs can grow.

Certainly a useful thing to do, but just as the Iranian case has demonstrated, cyber weapons (ours or someone else’s) didn’t stop Iran—and as Kazianis implies, they won’t stop northern Korea.

Finally, and most importantly, we are well past the point where it is makes sense to open talks with North Korea—as repulsive as that sounds.

Not repulsive, just stupid.  We’ve talked to the northern Koreans for years, both via those Six Party Talks and directly.  The talks have been a waste of breath, and doing so again would simply be a demonstration of our own insanity: repeating past behaviors and expecting different results this time.

No, sterner measures than idle chit-chat, petty economic sanctions (against an economy smaller than Ethiopia, yet), and idle chit-chat are going to be needed.

Update: corrected an importing error.

Deal Outcomes

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In a Sunday op-ed, The Wall Street Journal opined about whether President Donald Trump had reached an actual deal with People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping concerning putting an end to northern Korea’s nuclear weapons program and associated threats, or whether an agreement reached during the recent meeting between the two was merely a cosmetic exchange of niceties.

The editors closed their piece with this remark:

Mr Trump needs to make clear what he will do if China won’t make a Korean deal.

Of course he does. However, he doesn’t need to do so by telling the Precious Press in advance, nor does he need to do so by engaging the PRC with Obama-esque chit-chat and finger-wagging.  He needs to do so with concrete action, carried out in immediate response to the misbehaviors.

Threat or Warning?

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The People’s Republic of China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, has…said:

The United States and South Korea and North Korea are engaging in tit for tat, with swords drawn and bows bent, and there have been storm clouds gathering.

If they let war break out on the peninsula, they must shoulder that historical culpability and pay the corresponding price for this[.]

Pay the corresponding price: is the PRC warning northern Korea and us, or is it threatening us in favor of its client—losing face as the PRC will do in the event of an attack by its client and the response that must come?

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson would be well advised to insist on a public clarification of Wang’s statement by PRC President Xi Jinping.  Especially since the only entity that will “let war break out” will be the PRC, letting slip its client dogs of war.

A Misunderstanding

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…between the roles of State and Defense and how those roles should be carried out.  The misunderstanding is illustrated in (though it’s not the primary subject of) a Friday Wall Street Journal piece by Dion Nissenbaum and Maria Abi-Habib.

President Donald Trump is (very properly) backing away from a Lyndon Johnson- or Barack Obama-esque micromanagement of what the military is permitted to do, including target selection, timing of engagement, and weapons permitted to be used on those targets.  Instead, he’s encouraging DoD to have its commanders on-scene to exercise more initiative, with less mother-may-I delay waiting for permission from the White House (and notice that use of the chain of command from the top down, too).   From that, as illustrated by General John Nicholson’s decision to drop a MOAB on his own initiative on a Daesh network of tunnels and caves in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border, we’re seeing a more aggressive military with more timely activities.

This has led to the misunderstanding.

The firmer military stance has fueled growing concerns among State Department officials working on Middle East policy that the Trump administration is giving short shrift to the diplomatic tools the Obama administration favored. Removing the carrot from the traditional carrot-and-stick approach, some State Department officials warn, could hamper the pursuit of long-term strategies needed to prevent volatile conflicts from reigniting once the shooting stops.

No, he’s not.  What’s being given short shrift is diplomatic dithering.  There’s not just a new sheriff in town, there’s a new pace in town, too: State Department officials working on Middle East policy—along with the rest of State below Secretary Rex Tillerson’s immediate staff—need to push their own pace, too.  A faster diplomatic pace isn’t just a matter of keeping up with the military; State still should lead, for the most part, and the military still should follow State’s lead, for the most part.  There is, though, no need for the slow pace they’ve been accepting.  Our diplomats need to push the pace—they always have needed to do so, even if they’ve not—and put the onus on other nations to respond, to keep up.  Especially regarding our enemies and those nations that support our enemies or host nodes of terrorist network entities like the Daesh or al Qaeda.

Nor has any carrot been removed from the traditional, yet useful, carrot-and-stick technique of pushing, prodding, cajoling, pressuring.  The carrots have merely been pushed farther forward in time: no more slowness.

Contra those State officials, all that has changed are two items: on-scene commanders are being restored to their jobs and initiative (which is not a matter about which State need concern itself), and the pace of development is being accelerated.  The speed of diplomacy should no longer be a good approximation of glacial.