Category Archives: foreign policy

US Missile Defense

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The New York Times reported a few days ago that Russia appears to have violated a 1987 treaty banning the test, production, even possession, of medium-range missiles by testing a new ground-launched cruise-missile.

It seems that Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance Rose Gottemoeller advised NATO of the tests and that the Russian testing program actually began flight tests in 2008 (keep that timing in mind), but for all that, the Obama administration has declined to protest officially or to take meaningful action in response to this threat to the security of our allies and so to our own security.

We shouldn’t be surprised at this latest demonstration of Obama’s timidity on the world stage.  This is the same President who surrendered to the Russians on the question of placing a missile defense capacity in Poland and the Czech Republic—a defense system designed specifically to intercept short- and medium-range missiles and wholly incapable of handling ICBMs.  With the Russian medium-range missile flight testing having begun just a few months earlier, their vociferous objections to a missile defense system capable of defending, oh, say, Europe becomes much more understandable.

This is also the same president that has gutted DoD’s missile defense system R&D and deployment anywhere.

Now this.  What did Obama really expect, though?  He’s neither stupid, ignorant, nor naïve.

Stop the Nonsense

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…and leave.  This government cannot be trusted (and, no, this time I’m not talking about the Obama administration).

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has demanded that the United States must cease military operations and airstrikes, as well as resume peace talks with the Taliban, before he signs a security deal to keep some US troops in Afghanistan beyond this year.

Never mind that this is another move on Karzai’s part to renege on an agreement to which he agreed last fall and which the Loya Jirga insisted he sign promptly.

Never mind that the Taliban are terrorists who harbored al Qaeda and who have not at all changed their terrorist ways.

Never mind that our only purpose for having a military presence in Afghanistan under the Bush Doctrine (mission creep since notwithstanding) is to burn the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Enough.  It’s time to have done with Hamid Karzai and his government.  Return only as needed under the Bush Doctrine, and with no mission creep.

China and “Partnership”

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Sun Guoxiang, Ambassador and New York Consul General for the People’s Republic of China had some remarks about Chinese-American partnership.  I have some thoughts on those remarks.

Over the past three decades, both countries have learned that it is always better to engage in dialogue rather than confrontation, cooperation rather than containment, and deal with each other as partners rather than rivals.

When will the PRC actually act in accordance with this…learning?  Today, the PRC is confronting Japan, Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia with land and sea grabs in the South and East China Seas, despite having no legitimate claims, cynically manufacturing, instead, “claims” on the basis of ancient maps that showed that Chinese sailors had sailed there sometime.  On that premise, should Portugal assert its claim to suzerainty over the Philippines on the basis of Magellan’s having sailed there some time ago?  Of course not; it’s a facially specious claim.

Further, the PRC actively is confounding our efforts to prevent a terrorist state from getting nuclear weapons and confounding our efforts to get northern Korea’s nuclear weapons program under control and stood down.  The only purpose in this is to demonstrate the PRC’s ability to face us, with the added fillip that when Iran obtains nuclear weapons, those weapons will be turned against our allies and against us—extending the PRC’s military reach without the military expenditures.

This is not partnership.  The PRC is doing this to confront nearby nations and to provoke us.  And to seize the territory and the resources within those Seas.  And to arm the most aggressive and dangerous of our enemies.

[A]t the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China Central Committee, comprehensive economic and social reforms were presented that will boost China’s economic development and provide even more opportunities for China-U.S. cooperation.

These “reforms” still demand PRC companies to be majority parties in joint ventures with foreign companies, retain PRC government…influence…in foreign business ventures, lack intellectual property protections while demanding technology transfers.  And the “reforms” do nothing to stem the Chinese tide of technology and intellectual property theft, and they do nothing to halt the economic cyberwar the PRC is waging against our allies and against us.

Partnership, indeed.

Does Nobody in this Administration Care?

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In the days running up to the 9/11/2012 terrorist attack on our Benghazi consulate, we now know the following:

  • no attack aircraft were placed on high alert on Sept 11
  • the closest F-16 fighter planes to any of the trouble spots in North Africa were unarmed and in Aviano, Italy
  • the closest air refuellers were positioned 10 hours away in Great Britain
  • no AC-130 gunships were within a 10-hour flight to Libya
  • the commander’s in-extremis force, which included a unit of 23 special operators who are used at the commander’s discretion, were training in Croatia that day. They did not make it to a staging base in Sigonella, Italy, for another 19 hours after the attack began

Northern Africa had been an active trouble area with civil wars in progress or just dying down for the prior couple of years.  The US had—and has—facilities, assets, personnel, friends, allies, and potential allies in the area for far longer than that.  Yet we chose to take no heads-up action in preparation for a major anti-US anniversary regarding an area of the world likely to…celebrate…that anniversary?  The in-extremis force’s posture could be laid off to bad luck; such units need to train intensively, and they need to do it in realistic arenas.  Maybe their training could have been rescheduled around such an anniversary, though.  Regardless, there is no excuse for the rest of the non-preparation.

Even more troubling, however, are these:

  • Neither [AFRICOM Joint Special Operations Task Force for the Trans Sahara region Commander, Col George] Bristol, nor his chief military officer on the ground in Tripoli that night, LtCol Sean Gibson, was ever interviewed by the State Department’s Accountability Review Board (ARB)
  • DoD did not conduct its own internal after-action review separate from the ARB

Why not?  Isn’t anyone in this administration the least bit interested in finding out, and understanding, what happened and how to anticipate future such occurrences?

Or is it that they won’t ask the questions because they don’t want to hear, or are afraid of, the answers?

Obama’s Global Policy

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There has been much discussion concerning the motivation behind President Barack Obama’s major foreign policy initiatives; Power Line has offered a useful summary and links (which should be followed).  PL then offered its own view from that summary:

In my view, the deeper source of Obama’s strong tilt towards Iran is the same as the one that caused his “reset” with Russia, his early cozying up to Assad, and his support for Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.  That source is an attraction to anti-American strongmen, a familiar phenomenon among American leftists for the better part of a century.

Given the outcomes of Obama’s initiatives (and of his other moves, particularly vis-à-vis Israel), that’s certainly a plausible view, and I don’t entirely disagree with it.

However, I also don’t think that’s all there is to it, and I don’t think that’s even a major part of Obama’s motivation.  I think his motivation is (nearly) entirely domestic.

He spent most of his first administration ramming through Obamacare and Dodd-Frank, and he has been pushing for his version of immigration reform and his version of various welfare programs, and he’s had to fight with the minority party every step of the way.

I think he knew that would be the case from the jump—as far back as his community organizing days and his time in the Illinois Senate.  I think he just wanted to reach accords—any accords—with our major adversaries and outright enemies so he could back burner external affairs and focus on his domestic agenda.

Recall that his first foreign policy initiative was bringing about America’s surrender to the Russians concerning our now functionally scrapped ability to defend ourselves against missile attack—Iran’s or Russia’s.  Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Iran, terrorist organizations, the EU, etc, etc, etc were, and are, just additional distractions from his domestic imperatives, and that’s why his external policies have been so poorly thought out and hastily executed.  This also explains his choice of State Department Secretaries—shallow thinkers who won’t distract him too much with external initiative wants or needs.

He’s given those and his Secretaries all of the attention that distractions get.