Category Archives: foreign policy

A Solution

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Last year, a People’s Republic of China-owned and -operated mine in Zambia had a catastrophic failure of a mine tailings wall, creating an environmental disaster for Zambian citizens.

[A] tailings dam owned by Sino-Metals collapsed and unleashed toxic sludge into the Kafue River, farmlands along the river valley are scorched, hundreds of people lack a source of clean drinking water and residents continue to live on land contaminated with heavy metals.

The Zambian government meekly aided the PRC and its mine operators in covering up this disaster, trying to hide it from the public. To hell with its own citizens who still are paying with their health and their lives for the failure, now of their own government in addition to that of the PRC and its mine operators.

According to a US House Select Committee on China,

The Zambian government, which owes $6.6 billion to the Chinese government and Chinese lenders, has held back from pressing Sino-Metals over the disaster, fearing retaliation from China….

Retaliation. Here’s an alternate solution: cancel the contract with Sino-Metals and all other PRC “investments” and “loans” in Zambia, declare the $6.6 billion debt reclassified as the PRC’s and Sino-Metals’ debt to Zambia for the cleanup, and dare the PRC to retaliate in any material way.

No actual dollars would flow from this, but two salutary things would result: Zambia would be freed from a debt it never should have taken on in the first place—PRC terms are notoriously usurious and are designed for to force default and confiscation of the collateral (here, the mine itself) put up for the loan. Zambia also would be out from under the PRC’s thumb and free(r) to trade its wealth of natural resources to more honorable nations under more equitable terms.

Don’t Forget the Plutonium

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President Donald Trump (R) wants to eliminate Iran’s ability to generate enough fissionable uranium to make nuclear bombs, and he’s correct to want to do so, and to do so. He’s also correct to demand Iran turn over all of its already generated U-235, the uranium isotope used in making those bombs, of whatever purity the isotope has already been spun down to. There can be no peace from terrorism-generating Iran until those goals have been achieved.

However.

John Bolton, in his Monday Wall Street Journal op-ed, reminded us all, and Trump in particular, that we can’t afford to leave behind Iran’s accumulating stockpile of plutonium. Pu-239 is the plutonium isotope used in making nuclear bombs that are even more powerful than U-235 centered bombs.

The terrorists in Iran’s government, and their nuclear scientists are well aware of that fact, and they’re well aware of this, too: Pu-239, aside from being produced in nuclear reactors explicitly designed for the purpose, also is produced, in smaller quantities, as a natural byproduct of U-235-fed nuclear reactors that are built solely for power generation.

Of particular importance here—but not sole importance—is Iran’s “peaceful” nuclear reactor in Bushehr.

It gets worse:

Once Bushehr launched, its accumulating spent fuel amounted to ever larger amounts of accessible plutonium. … Based on current Russian estimates of spent-fuel levels at Bushehr and International Atomic Energy Agency estimates about the reactor’s energy production, nuclear-proliferation expert Henry Sokolski estimates that Iran has enough plutonium to make more than 200 nuclear weapons.

The Bushehr reactor isn’t Iran’s only nuclear reactor; it’s just the one they’re using explicitly to produce Pu-239. It’s necessary to control, or destroy, all of Iran’s “peaceful” nuclear reactors.

“No New Negotiations”

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That’s the position of Iran President Masoud Pezeshkian, at least until the US lifts its blockade of Iran’s ports and of shipping going to and from Iran.

I’m down with that. The blockade has finally achieved something that years of sanctions have failed to obtain: a serious stranglehold on the money flowing into Iran, which it uses in its nuclear weapons development programs [sic] and to fund its terrorist satraps.

Even this serious grip, though, will take time to produce results, particularly among a collection of despots who believe that they have lost nothing since they have not lost their lives. The US should push the pace. Let the bomb deliveries resume and dismantle the despots’ war-making infrastructure. Destroy Iran’s ports, cut the pipelines to Kharg Island and to Bandar Abbas. Cut the pipelines running from Iran’s oil wells and running to and from Iran’s refineries. Resume the attacks against the now dispersed IRGC leadership. Hunt and destroy Iran’s stored inventory of missiles, drones, and launchers. Destroy Iran’s missile, drone, and launcher production facilities. Hunt and destroy Iran’s (IRGC’s) mosquito boat fleet which it currently uses to attack commercial shipping in the Arabian Gulf.

Keep this up until the despots come to the table with decision-makers and agree the US’ terms. President Donald Trump (R) has acknowledged that the Iran government, having taken casualties already, is fractured and in a power struggle, but this is irrelevant. With the increased pressure and casualties among those in charge or competing to be in charge, the surviving government men will figure out how to stop being fractured and take seriously their fate.

As President Donald Trump (R) said when he called off his envoys’ trip to Pakistan last week, the Iranian despots know how to call him and can do so when they’re ready to be serious. They also can be given safe passage to any meeting point while kinetic operations continue.

It’s Either a Blockade or It Isn’t

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The US has seized or escorted back to Iranian waters three (so far) Iranian cargo and tanker ships on the high seas after having announced a blockade of all Iran-related shipping, both inbound to Iran and outbound from Iran. Much is being made of those high seas interdictions.

What those making mountains out of these minor swells (yes, I mixed a metaphor. The mix is its own metaphor) choose to ignore is that it’s not a blockade if the first layer, here at the boundary between the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman, can be breached and then the shipping is immune to further interference.

If the nation’s assets can escape, the nation isn’t being blockaded. Any blockade worth its…salt…must include the ships being blockaded, wherever they’re found, not just the nation itself that’s being blockaded.

Broken Windows Enforcement?

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The Trump Doctrine in progress. That’s Matthew Continetti’s thesis in his Free Expression piece, The Trump Doctrine in Action. His subheadline summarizes:

Major military operations in Venezuela and Iran make America, and the world, safer.

This is the mechanism for that increased safety:

Mr Trump cares less about a regime’s structure and ideology—whether it’s authoritarian or democratic, Chavista or Islamist—than its conduct. He cycles between negotiations and war, between economic punishment and military force, until he elicits the desired behavior.

Maybe, though, Continetti’s understanding doesn’t go far enough. Maybe what President Trump (R) is doing is this. Instead of taking on our peer and near-peer enemies directly—they are, after all, the most serious and direct threats to our nation’s sovereignty and freedom–he’s going after their satraps and clients, which weakens those enemies and limits their long-term and larger scale activities.

Is this broken windows enforcement on a nation-level scale? Broken picture windows enforcement, maybe? Or maybe hogwash. We’ll have to see over time whether Russia and/or the People’s Republic of China change their behaviors with the success of one window enforcement—Venezuela—the so far apparent success of another—Iran—and whether the next—Cuba—is attempted and, if so, successful.