Category Archives: foreign policy

Feckless

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I was going to title this post “Feckless Foreign Policy,” but I hesitate to call this administration’s…something…”policy;” although, it certainly is foreign to good sense.

Our CNO, Admiral Jonathan Greenert, answered a question back in February from a Philippine journalist (it’s only just coming to light in the US—so much for a pivot in the general direction of Asia) concerning a hypothetical, an event in which the People’s Republic of China seized Philippine territory in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.

Of course we would help you. … I don’t know what that help would be specifically. I mean, we have an obligation because we have a treaty. But I don’t know in what capacity that help is.

I don’t know what’s more worrisome—that our CNO would have this tenuous a grasp, or that he was speaking his Commander-in-Chief’s words.

But What Are You Actually Going To Do, Mr Obama?

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President Barack Obama sent his most important sheriff, Vice President Joe Biden, to Ukraine Tuesday to offer American support to its new government. Biden had some fine words:

The opportunity to generate a united Ukraine and getting it right is within your grasp. And we want to be your partner and friend in the project. We’re ready to assist.

And

You face some very daunting problems and some might say humiliating threats are taking place[.]

Well, NSS. What are you going to do about that?

And

I want you to know I do not underestimate the incredible pressure you all are under. I do not underestimate the challenges you all face. And I do not underestimate the frustration you all must feel when someone like me comes along to say what a great opportunity this is for you all.

Awfully astute of you, old boy.

Again, I ask: what are you actually going to do, Messrs Obama and Biden? Besides spout pretty words, I mean, or make laughable moves against empty bank accounts.

A Thought on Foreign Policy

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President Barack Obama gave a moment of his time for a word about Russia in a recent CBS News interview.

We don’t need a war.  What we do need is that countries like Ukraine can have relationships with their neighbors.  [And not have those neighbors]…violate their sovereignty.

Carol E Lee and Colleen McCain Nelson wrote in The Wall Street Journal wrote shortly after that interview,

A protracted US standoff with Russia, which senior US officials said they now anticipate, would raise questions about Moscow’s cooperation on the unrest in Syria and curbing Iran’s nuclear program.
…
In Asia, US relations with China would become vital to offsetting declining ties with Russia…

And

US officials said they now plan for Mr Obama to spend much more time on Europe than he had intended….

I have some thoughts about Obama’s…musings.

We’ll have a war, whether we need it or not, if we don’t stop acquiescing to Russia, which is all that our barely noticeable “economic” “sanctions” amount to.  Russia’s next move is to run over Moldavia, and then on to the Baltics, then Poland.  Those last four are NATO members whom we’re treaty- and honor-bound to defend (just as we are Ukraine—that Belgrade Memorandum thing.  We’re doing well on that one, aren’t we?).  Or we abjectly surrender Europe to a resurgent Russia.  This is the same situation that faced France and Great Britain as NAZI Germany successively overran its neighbors.

Regarding “unrest” in Syria (?? Jeffrey Dahmer was just having the occasional snack?) and Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons, we’ve never had cooperation from Russia.  Indeed, the Russians actively are arming and replenishing al Assad’s forces, and they’re selling Iran nuclear reactors when they’re not helping the Iranians build their own.  We don’t have any cooperation from Russia vis-à-vis northern Korea’s nuclear weapons program or their attempts to sell their weapons and nuclear technology to others, either, a matter those senior officials of Obama’s carefully omitted to mention.  What is there to lose, then, from a protracted standoff with Russia in this arena?

On playing off the People’s Republic of China against Russia: how, exactly, does such a playing off become vital, and what is there to offset?  It would be nice to play one against the other, certainly, but it’s not necessary, and (eliding the enmity between the two) given PRC aggressive acquisitiveness, encouraging its military adventurism anywhere is not optimal.

Nor is there anything to play off economically.  Russia has nothing we need or want in trade goods, and while the PRC could be an effective trading partner, they won’t be until they stop being intellectual property thieves, and stop trying to use economics for extortion, as they attempted to do with rare earth shipments (sort of like Russia already has pulled, repeatedly, with its oil and gas).

The assumption that we can’t deal with both, separately and as they, are is a false premise.

Finally, there’s this:

US officials said they now plan for Mr Obama to spend much more time on Europe than he had intended….  …  That, in turn, complicates Mr Obama’s promised focus on Asia….

Again, why?  Is this another example of Obama’s arrogance–he thinks he’s better at foreign relations than his foreign relations experts in State?  Never mind that State has the manpower to walk and chew gum simultaneously, even to deal with Russia and the PRC simultaneously?

If Obama doesn’t think his extended “staff” throughout the Executive Branch, particularly in State and Defense, are up the task, why are we spending taxpayer money on their salaries?

Russia Reneges on Ukraine

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And, no, I’m not talking about the Belgrade Memorandum, in which Russia, among others, agreed to guarantee Ukraine’s territorial integrity in return for Ukraine turning over its then-third largest in the world nuclear weapons arsenal to Russia.

I’m talking about the just signed—by Russia, Ukraine, the EU, and the US—agreement pretending to “neutraliz[e] a crisis that has brought Ukraine to the brink of civil war.”  Among other things, that agreement called for “dissidents” to depart from the Ukraine government buildings that they had seized in eastern Ukraine.

However.

Denis Pushilin, the leader of the uprising that calls itself the People’s Republic of Donetsk, said at a news conference in the southeast city’s seized administration building that the activists won’t exit until the new leaders in Kiev leave the government he says they have been occupying….

“After that, we’ll also agree to do it,” Mr. Pushilin said.  Instead, he said he and other activists in the building are continuing to prepare for a referendum on the southeast Ukraine region’s future that he says they intend to hold by May 11.

That referendum for which Vladimir Putin’s representative in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk is pushing so hard is another of Putin’s demands: he’s threatened to deepen his invasion of Ukraine and occupy eastern and southern Ukraine, as he’s already done the Ukrainian oblast of Crimea, if those other oblasts aren’t allowed to be separate “autonomous” regions.  That threat is made manifest by his having amassed some 50,000 Russian soldiers, armor, artillery, and combat aircraft just a few short miles from the eastern Ukrainian border with Russia.  That threat is made manifest by his having infiltrated special operations forces into eastern and southern Ukraine to drive and to support these building occupations—the same tactic he used to seize Crimea.

And now his representative is refusing to honor the “agreement” his employer has signed.

Only an idiot or a naïf could sit in the White House or in Brussels and think Putin would keep his signed word.

What To Do About Ukraine

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KT McFarland has some thoughts.  After taking notice of President Barack Obama’s foolishness in worrying that supporting the victim of Russian invasion in any material way might antagonize the victim’s attacker, she suggests [emphasis hers]

First, if the Ukrainian people want to fight for their freedom, we should help them.  …with intelligence, communications, and logistics.
If it comes to a civil war, the fighting will be short and bloody, and Russia will win.

Second, we should shore up our NATO allies.  We should reverse course and build the missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Finally, the US should take aim at Russia’s economy.  Russia does not have a modern economy, it’s a petro-power.  The only thing it sells that the world wants to buy is oil and natural gas.

To which I add, since I’m as unwilling as the Ukrainians to surrender their Crimea Oblast to the Russians, the following.

Arm the Ukrainian army: anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons are easily transported, and these should be rushed in—by military convoy and by military cargo aircraft.  Russia still will win a short, sharp fight, as McFarland suggests, but they should pay a hard price in soldiers and military equipment, not only in rubles.  And if the supplies are sufficient to drag out the fight, well….

Send a squadron of the US Navy into the Black Sea.  Directly challenge the Russians in occupied Crimea—but make the Russians fire first, or not at all.  Make clear to the Russians that they need to consider challenging the US as well as Ukraine.

Third, in addition to reviving the missile shield, forward deploy—in Poland and the Czech Republic, certainly, but also in the Baltics.  And run some of those forces, along with a naval flotilla, up to the Polish and Lithuanian borders and Baltic Sea boundary surrounding Russia’s Kaliningrad Oblast.

Add some serious economic sanctions.

Drill, baby, drill.  And frack, baby, frack.  And sell the output to Europe and Ukraine.  This will immediately drop the price of oil and gas on the world market, severely reducing the major source of Russian income, making it difficult for Russia to maintain its armies in the field—and to continue developing, in contravention of existing arms control agreement, its medium range nuclear missiles.

We also need to deny Russia’s access to the US’ banking system, which is a major part of the international banking system, and pressure Europe to deny Russia access to the European banking system, which is most of the rest of the international banking system.  Without access to credit, dollars, or petrodollars/rubles, the Russian economy—which Senator John McCain (R, AZ) has accurately called a gas station masquerading as an economy—will be severely constrained, if it doesn’t collapse altogether.

Other than the prompt price drop, drilling/fracking won’t have an immediate effect on the Russian economy as a whole until the oil and gas actually start arriving in Europe and Ukraine, and freezing Russia out of the international banking system won’t produce an immediate effect until the Russians run out of dollar reserves.  But we need to keep both pressures on, not just until Russia pulls back from eastern and southern Ukraine, but also until Russia withdraws from Crimea.  And agrees to cancel its lease on the naval base in Sevastopol.  Russia has demonstrated these last several months that it can’t be trusted with military bases on other nations’ territory.

Finally, we have an agreement with Ukraine—as do Great Britain and Russia (which has already welched on that agreement) under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum—to guarantee Ukraine’s territorial integrity if they give up what was at the time the third largest nuclear weapon inventory in the world.  They did their part; we need to do ours.  Alone, if needs be.

Whatever we decide to do, though, we can’t wait on the EU or the rest of NATO.  They’re even more timid (if you can believe it) than Obama when it comes to Russia (or to the PRC, or Iran, or Syria, or northern Korea, or… but let’s stick with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for now).

We need to move; Ukraine is out of time.  The window for idle chit-chat has closed.  Unless we’re going abjectly to surrender.

Update: According to General Wesley Clark (USA, Ret) and Phillip Karber, this administration even has refused Ukraine’s request for requests for such passive defensive equipment as body armor, night-vision goggles, and communications equipment. Such things are…provocative.

Appalling timidity from the Obama administration.