Category Archives: foreign policy

Duplicity and Mistaken Imperative

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There was a ceasefire agreed between Iran and the US and Israel in the recent US-Israeli conflict against Iran aimed at preventing the latter from acquiring nuclear weapons. Then, amid skirmishing during this ceasefire, which remains in official effect, Iran showed its duplicity by welching on the terms of the ceasefire by insisting, de novo, that Israel’s conflict with Iran’s terrorist satrap Hezbollah, operating in Lebanon, was actually a part of that ceasefire agreement.

That conflict is a separate matter between Israel and Hezbollah, and never has been a part of the ceasefire. Iran’s insistence that it is is Iran’s confession that Hezbollah is an instrument of Iran’s terrorist government, and that lately insistence is a demonstration (as if another one is needed) of the Iran government’s duplicity and intrinsic untrustworthiness.

President Donald Trump (R) has long made clear his abhorrence of war, with its broad destruction and civilian casualty rate. The conflicts Trump has fought despite that abhorrence are emblematic of that, with their brevity, sharpness, and precision, which have vastly limited civilian casualties, including during the current conflict with Iran. In this latter case, sharpness and precision have limited destruction to Iran’s nuclear weapons development-associated facilities and military facilities and personnel. Civilian damage, damage to civilian infrastructure has been remarkably constrained.

Therein lies Trump’s mistaken imperative. In his desire to bring a diplomatic end to the conflict with Iran, he is overemphasizing his abhorrence for death and destruction by acceding to Iran’s insistence that Israel’s separate conflict with Hezbollah be included in any ceasefire agreement: Israel must end its conflict with Hezbollah. Trump pushed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into agreeing that separate ceasefire.

This is a broad mistake, and it will lead only to a prolongation of both conflicts with concomitant increased death and destruction. The better answer would have been (and still could be) to require Iran and Hezbollah work a separate peace with Israel and to resume full out attacks on Iran, this time with a view to destroying its ability to fight at all, with the conflict continuing in full force until Iran’s government men and women agree to forswear in a provable way its ambition to acquire nuclear weapons and to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, including an official statement acknowledging that the Strait is international waters and that Iran has no ambition to control it.

Tradeoffs

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We, as a nation, have three questions that we must answer in order to proceed optimally into the future, according to Matthew Slaughter, of Dartmouth‘s Tuck School of Business, and David Wessel, of Brookings‘ Hutchins Center on Fiscal & Monetary Policy. They’re largely correct, but they miss one Critical Item without which our path into a prosperous and growing future would be severely constrained, if not blocked altogether.

In their question regarding “walls or bridges,” the two argue against walls—tariffs—and for trade globalization as the path to prosperity via competition and its heavily encouraged innovation rates that such free trade creates.

[R]esearch has long shown that globally engaged companies tend to create the good jobs at good wages for which so many Americans are yearning. In 2023, the US parent companies of US-based multinational companies paid their 29.9 million workers in America an average total compensation of $97,078—about 20% above the average in the rest of the private sector.

They didn’t address, though, the downside of their largely unfettered free trade regime. That downside was amply illustrated by the recent Wuhan Virus situation, during which our dependence on the People’s Republic of China’s medicines—and not just for Virus medical supplies, but also for over the counter pain killers and anti-inflammatories, even a variety of flu medicines—was exposed, along with the world’s dependence on the PRC even for simple things like face masks.

The downside was graphically demonstrated much more recently by the PRC’s control over rare earths, from ore through processed rare earths to finished products, and its use of that control to throttle their export and thereby threaten our economy and that of Japan’s.

The Critical Item is this tradeoff. Carry out free trade globalization; it is valuable, but do it within this framework. There are a few items that are critical to our national security and to our economy (there is a lot of overlap between them): those rare earths, the raw materials for medicines. For these, we need to have our own supply paths, wholly contained within our borders, that stretch from dirt in the ground through final product deliverable to the domestic end user. These nationally-contained supply lines need not be the only sources for these materials; it’d be sufficient for them to be in place, actively used, and able to be rapidly expanded during periods when overseas sources become constrained.

That tradeoff will be expensive, but that cost is simply—and necessarily—a cost of maintaining our national security, our ability to defend ourselves, whether militarily or economically. The cost of being unable to will be far greater, and not only fiscally.

Sitzkrieg

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As President Donald Trump (R) seeks a deal with the terrorists reigning over Iran, two primary problems continue: the need to foreclose altogether the terrorists’ ability to acquire, even to do research and production of preliminary materials for, nuclear weapons, and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz without constraint—viz., tolls,  “protection” fees, etc, any semblance of Iranian control over this international water—and those terrorists’ insistence that Iran should be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons and should have control of the Strait.

In pursuit of that deal, Trump and Iran’s thugs agreed and have largely maintained a ceasefire for these last five weeks, to allow space for negotiations to proceed. During this time, all the terrorists have done is repeat their demands in varying terms: they will continue their drive to acquire nuclear weapons and they will continue to control the Strait and charge their tolls and protection vig. Oh, and they will have all sanctions lifted and frozen accounts unfrozen.

Those reigning over Iran are continuing to demonstrate their bad faith and their decision to not negotiate in any serious manner. The terrorists are, in Trump’s own phrase, just tapping us along.

It’s time to put an end to this sitzkrieg. It’s time to begin reducing to rubble the terrorists’ ability to move oil and natural gas from their wells to their refineries and ports by breaking the pipelines at the wells, destroying those refineries, and closing those ports while destroying the pipelines, roads, and railroads entering them. It’s time to eliminate the factories that produce war materiel and civilian/military dual use materiel and to destroy those factories’ input sources and routes. The terrorists’ missile and drone stockpiles, launching facilities, and production ability must be eliminated. The terrorists’ mosquito fleet of small boats must be sunk, and the naval and naval-usable ports must be destroyed. The assault must continue apace and without letup until the terrorists are physically incapable of continuing or have agreed terms.

If the terrorists decide to engage in serious negotiations, they must send decision-makers, not intermediaries, to the table. Safe passage can be granted to these persons while the attacks on the terrorists’ war-making and shipping-threatening capabilities continue apace.

Removing American Troops from Germany

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President Donald Trump (R) has said that he’s going to withdraw 5,000 American soldiers from Germany and that he’s contemplating withdrawing many more. Those many more include, potentially, troops stationed in Spain and Italy. Progressive-Democrats and too many Republicans are upset over the move, but they’re both premature and too narrow in their focus.

The withdrawal itself is no big deal from a US security perspective. What matters is where Trump puts the troops he’s going to withdraw. It would be a net gain in security for us and for (eastern) Europe were those troops taken out of Germany (and Spain and Italy) redeployed into Poland and the Baltic States. Other useful redeployment locaitons would include Slovakia, Hungary, or (back into) Romania, even Moldova.

On the other hand, pulling them back to the US would be a serious mistake.

The Rogue United Nations

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors opened their Friday editorial with this:

[Y]ou can always count on the United Nations to rehabilitate a rogue. So it did on Monday by granting the Islamic Republic [of Iran] a leadership role at a conference on nuclear nonproliferation.
You can’t make this up, and with the UN you never need to.

 The leadership role?

The global body chose Iran as one of the 34 vice presidents to review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

I’ll elide the idiocy of a committee so large and so bloated with feel-good title inflation as to have 34(!) vice presidents.

The larger matter is this. While the editors are correct to characterize Iran as a rogue nation, they’ve missed the beam in their own eye: the UN is, itself, a rogue entity, no longer serving to work toward/preserve peace and comity among nations as it was—however naively—created to do. Instead, it routinely gives high level voice to the very kind of political entities it was intended to corral.

In the end, the only reason to continue the expense of providing facilities in New York City for the UN’s headquarters is the wisdom of the old adage of keeping one’s enemies closer.