Category Archives: foreign policy

Reluctance

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Ahead of the G-7 meeting, one aspect of which is shaping up to be sideline meetings among the Seven and a number of Arab nations who were invited to discuss Syria, the question of additional sanctions against Syria (and Russia) has come up.  However,

Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano said that G-7 foreign ministers haven’t agreed to fresh sanctions on Syria following a suspected chemical attack.

The group reached “no consensus on new sanctions to attain the goal we are aiming for[.]”

Indeed, in the realization of the event,

Germany and Italy vetoed the idea of targeting Russian and Syrian military leaders until an investigation has been carried out into who was to blame for last week’s nerve gas attack in Idlib province.

Any excuse for avoiding action will do, apparently.

The actual rationale for such hesitation, though, is unclear to me.  In the first place, investigations of various sorts have occurred, and there is no “suspected” to the chemical attack; it plainly occurred.  Turkish autopsies have confirmed the attack.  It’s also the case that the Syrian government (read: President Bashar al-Assad) is responsible for ordering the attack: not even his master and benefactor Vladimir Putin could have ordered the attack without al-Assad’s permission.  It’s also clear that the Syrian air force executed the attack: no one else in the nation has the capability to deliver the attack other than Russia and the United States, and Russia has much too much to lose were it to have done so and got caught at it.

It may be that sanctions won’t achieve the goals we are aiming for, but it is crystalline that nothing productive will be achieved without sanctions being applied.  The European dithering will have counter-productive results, though.

The Syria Strike

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One point regarding President Donald Trump’s missile strike against Syria’s Shayrat airbase, from which the barbarian chieftain Bashar al-Assad launched his gas attacks against his own citizenry—including children and babies—is often missed, but Richard Fernandez did not.

[T]he Navy’s missiles very carefully avoided the tanks of sarin gas to avoid collateral damage. This could only be possible if the US knew the location of all the poison the previous administration had already destroyed.

While a single incident doesn’t create a trend (as a stat professor I once had put it, “If your hypothesis calls for a linear trend, collect two data points”), the absence of an administration willing to do more against barbarism than tut-tutting and finger-shaking seems to be getting filled in.

But wait—there’s more.  The Navy very carefully avoided targeting the air base barracks housing Russian soldiers, also.  Which means this administration also knew another thing that the prior administration must have known as well: there were Russian soldiers present on that base that housed the chemical weapons and which facilities armed and launched the aircraft that used those chemical weapons against those children and babies.

The Russians knew of and were complicit in the continued presence of Syria’s chemical weapons and al-Assad’s use of them.  As our UN Ambassador Nikki Haley mentioned.

Chuck Schumer Agrees

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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) has expressed his agreement with and appreciation of the missile strikes against the Syrian air base from which Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad launched his barbaric gas attack against innocent men, women, children, and babies—his own citizens—strikes which were ordered by President Donald Trump.

Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do.  I salute the professionalism and skill of our Armed Forces who took action today.

Unfortunately, this is just political posturing by the Progressive-Democrat as he tries to recover from the effects of his distortions and obstructionism of all things Trump, which recently culminated in his cynical crocodile tears over the loss of the filibuster against Supreme Court Justices.

Japanese Active Defense

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With the growing threat to the Japanese homeland represented by northern Korea’s nuclear weapons development, Japan is considering another major change to its defense posture: acquisition of a “counter-attack” capability to allow Japan to more actively respond to an attack by northern Korea.

There are a couple of misconceptions, though, in the government’s considerations or in The Diplomat‘s presentation of those considerations.

As long as Japan acquires the capabilities recommended by the study group with close consultation with the United States, so that whatever the new capability Japan acquires will benefit overall deterrence of the US-Japan alliance, it will ultimately work to counter urgent security challenges presented by North Korea.

Japan’s acquisition of counter-attack capabilities may well benefit from consultation with us.  However, Japan’s acquisition need not be limited by, or to, such consultations; Japanese acquisitions done on their own recognizance also will work to counter urgent security challenges presented by northern Korea.

The larger misconceptions, though, are these:

On the one hand, Japan has to accelerate its investment in the capabilities to counter the North Korean threat, which is a conventional military threat. On the other hand, Japan will also have to continue the investment it began to develop capabilities to counter China’s assertive actions in the East China Sea.

The northern Korean threat is only minimally a conventional one.  While northern Korea can lob a number of conventionally armed ballistic missiles at Japan, the serious threat, the one that can severely damage the Japanese homeland and butcher millions of Japanese, the serious threat posed by northern Korea is its growing nuclear weapons capability, especially coupled with Baby Kim’s constant threats to use those weapons when he’s achieved the ability to lob them at anyone.

Furthermore, I’m not convinced the two problems presented by northern Korea and the People’s Republic of China’s aggressions in the East China Sea are unrelated.  Nor am I convinced the two problems’ causes are unrelated.

Japan would do well to acquire an active defense capability, one capable of responding more completely than merely parrying an attack (which parrying can only be imperfect, and with nuclear weapons any leakage can have devastating consequences), but in addition to the parry being capable of serious counterstrokes.  Especially since such capabilities would do well against both problems.

Northern Korea and the People’s Republic of China

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On the day before the PRC’s President, Xi Jinping, is to meet with President Donald Trump, northern Korea fired another ballistic missile (this one apparently another test of its solid-fueled model).  Of course, the careful timing of Baby Kim’s missile launch has been denied by the PRC’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying.  There is no “direct relation” between the missile launch and the Trump-Xi meeting, she insisted.

The more telling description of events and event relations, though, was provided by Shi Yinhong, Director of the Center on American Studies at Renmin University in Beijing:

China has nearly exhausted its leverage with North Korea.

Whether that’s true or the PRC is simply continuing to wash its hands of its responsibility for its client state, Shi’s remark makes one thing increasingly clear: we must take more direct action vis-à-vis northern Korea, and that action must come without PRC involvement; they’ll just be left behind.