Category Archives: foreign policy

Security Holes

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Recall the hoo-raw over Apple’s refusal to help the FBI hack an iPhone used by the San Bernardino terrorists, the FBI’s claim that they couldn’t get into the iPhone without Apple’s help, and then the FBI’s successful penetration of the iPhone from hiring a third party to do hack it.  Recall further the FBI’s subsequent refusal to tell Apple about the security hole in Apple’s iPhone software (supposedly limited to the generation of cell phone used by the terrorists) that was exploited by the hack and the FBI’s associated refusal to tell Apple how the hack itself worked.

The FBI has been in court defending those refusals.

…the Justice Department argued that the information it withheld, if released, could be seized upon by “hostile entities” who could develop their own “countermeasures”….

This is curious logic, indeed.  The FBI is leaving the security hole in place on the assumption, apparently, that hackers can’t already identify the hole and exploit it—as that third party did so promptly after being hired by the FBI.  So, leave the hole unplugged; a countermeasure would just be found by hackers.

Never mind that any hack—all of them to date, against any software in any milieu, as well as any future hack—is a countermeasure against the software being penetrated.  There’s nothing static about any of this; software security and hacks are in a dynamic arms race.  It’s foolish to leave existing holes in place in the expectation that the arms race will stop.

The New York Times Misunderstands

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Again.  This time the paper is hyperventilating over the coming end of the world order as we know it because the UK and the US are reaffirming our special relationship through the mechanism, as the NYT‘s headline has it, of British Alignment With Trump….

Great Britain’s relationship with the US spells doom because, as seen through the lens of the NYT‘s TDS, Great Britain’s dependency on Europe will be upset, and the European Union is key to world stability.  For instance:

Mr Trump offered to reward Britain’s exit from the European Union with a speedy trade deal. But this risks encouraging more exits from the bloc and possibly its disintegration. The resulting turmoil on the Continent, which includes several top British trading partners, could risk harming Britain’s economy far more than an American trade deal would help.

There are two major (not sole) reasons the Brits chose to go out from the EU.  One is the ability to cut its own trade deals without the bureaucrats of the EU ruling body looking over their shoulder and telling them no, they can’t do that.  The other is the ability to control their own borders and deciding for themselves who should be allowed to come in without the bureaucrats of the EU ruling body….

The paper’s plaint also operates from the false premise that the EU should remain together unchanged.  The nations of the EU are too disparate in social, political, economic philosophies; it’s an inherently unstable arrangement.  Too, those several top British trading partners, which are not limited to France and Germany, will benefit from being able to cut their own trade deals, should they decide to go out from the EU, too.

Beyond that, British security will be greater for the closer alignment with us that’s becoming possible than it is and would be with an EU as timid toward Russia as it is and wants to be.

The US Embassy to Israel

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The fear that moving the US embassy to Jerusalem will have unforeseen consequences—or even foreseen: Palestinian terrorist violent opprobrium—is entirely justified. What isn’t justifiable is using this as an excuse to not make the move. The embassy should be moved, with due planning for protections against and responses to violence attempted against the newly located embassy and Jerusalem at large.

Any idea that the embassy move should be done only after a peace agreement has been made with the Palestinians and their acceptance of a part of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital also is ludicrous. Neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority will agree to such a thing.  Hamas does not and will not even agree to Israel’s right to exist, and the PA hasn’t sufficient control over its population—even did it agree with Israel’s right to exist—to make any agreements regarding Israel’s capital.

Move the embassy.

 

h/t Mosaic Magazine

A Bit of a Shameful Legacy Undone

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President Trump has returned a bust of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to the Oval Office, which had been removed by his predecessor in 2009.

Quietly and without fanfare, too.  Just a right thing, correcting a shameful insult, done rightly.

Just to saucer and blow any question of continued possession by the White House of the British-owned bust,

A spokesperson for British Prime Minister Theresa May confirmed last week that Trump had personally asked if England would loan the bust of Churchill to the US once he took office.

“The Prime Minister is happy to loan the Churchill bust to the White House and will be delighted to view it on display when she visits this Spring,” the spokesperson said.

A Naïve Solution

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Michael O’Hanlon, writing for the Brookings Institution several days ago, offered an idea for smoothing relations between the US and Russia.

It is time that Western nations conceptualize, and seek to negotiate, a new security architecture for those countries in central Europe that are not now part of NATO that would guarantee their safety without bringing them into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

So far, so good.  NATO, whether obsolete or updated and upgraded to lose that obsolescence, doesn’t need to expand further.  In no particular order:

He based his idea on a misunderstanding of the Russian position after the end of the Cold War.

Many Russians [including Vladimir Putin, of “historic tragedy of USSR breakup” sentiment] feel that NATO did not win the Cold War. Rather, a new generation of leaders of their own country had the wisdom to end it. They were then rewarded for their good sense, not only by a reaffirmation of the organization that had been their nation’s adversary, but by a major expansion of that very alliance.

What O’Hanlon missed is that the reason Russia didn’t, and doesn’t, think NATO won the Cold War is because that contest didn’t end with the breakup of the USSR.  The interregnum—which is all that resulted—was simply a period during which Russia has refit, recovered, and resumed its expansionist drive, first to recover the Russian empire that was the Soviet Union, and then to continue that empire’s expansion.

O’Hanlon did assert, correctly, the legal and moral right of each nation to its own sovereignty, and that

This is as true for Ukraine and Georgia, and other countries of Central Europe, as for America’s traditional core allies or any other nation. This principle is inherent to the UN Charter. It is also central in the 1975 Helsinki Final Act….

O’Hanlon, though, omitted the Budapest Memorandum, of which Russia is a signatory, that guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial integrity and its sovereignty.  Yet here Russia is, having partitioned Ukraine and occupied Crimea and eastern Ukraine.  There is, too, Georgia, which Russia also has partitioned and occupied.  So much for the value of Russian commitments to Charters, Final Acts, and Memoranda.

Then his naiveté exposed the danger of his naiveté:

It is important to make a proposal for a new security architecture with the willingness and ability to walk away, should Moscow begin to engage in negotiations and then escalate its demands—perhaps proposing that some new NATO members be removed from the alliance, or that the alliance itself be somehow recast or neutered.

Offer someone we want for an ally an arrangement and then walk away from it when Russia acts up—because these nations are mere pawns in a discussion with Russia.  Yeah, that’ll show our reliability.  Besides, we tried that.  We offered missile defense systems for stationing in Poland and Czech Republic, and then walked away from those after some proposals from Russia.  Worked really well.

And this danger from his naiveté:

The new security architecture would demand that Russia commit to help uphold and guarantee the security of Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and other states in the region. They would also be promised their complete freedom to associate economically and diplomatically with whomever they chose. They would also be allowed to participate in multilateral security operations on a scale comparable to what has been the case in the past.

We’ve seen the value of Russian commitments to Charters, Final Acts, and Memoranda.  Add to Ukraine and Georgia Russia’s unwanted “presence” in Moldova.  There is no basis for believing Russia would honor this new set of commitments.  Doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results is symptomatic of what, again?

No, what’s needed to face an historically and still aggressive and expansionist Russia is a new mutual defense treaty alliance, a separate alliance from NATO, in that central Europe, one which includes such of those nations on the Russian border that wish to participate in order to maximize their ability to protect their sovereignty from Russian aggression.