Category Archives: foreign policy

Stop Wasting Time Talking

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This is about more than just dealing with Iran, although that’s the proximate subject.

The Pentagon has told a second aircraft carrier strike group to prepare to deploy to the Middle East as the US military readies for a potential attack on Iran, according to three US officials.
President Trump said Tuesday that he was weighing sending a second carrier to the Middle East to prepare for military action if negotiations with Iran failed. The order to deploy could be issued in a matter of hours, one of the officials said.

And

Trump said in a social-media post following the meeting that he preferred to make a deal with Iran.

That last could certainly lead to more harmonious outcomes than dealing sanction or kinetic outcomes, but the there is a more optimal way for achieving that harmony.

That better way is for President Donald Trump (R)—all Presidents in all dealings with enemy nations—to set a hard, nearby deadline for reaching agreement, upon which if no agreement is reached, kinetic options and/or hard sanctions would begin and on a large scale. Two things are important at this point, though: the deadline must be set to a timeframe that’s achievable and not used merely as an ultimatum, and if the deadline is reached with no agreement, the sanctions/kinetics must never be pinpricks but must immediately be large enough to force the outcome originally sought.

“Talks are making substantial progress” can certainly be an accurate claim, but they must never be an excuse to delay or to reset farther out in time the hard deadline for agreement.

The first time or two this is tested by an enemy nation should end in sanctions and kinetics, but after that, with the empirical evidence, other talks with other nations are much more likely to proceed apace and with no stalling by the other side, as is Iran’s diplomatic doctrine, which that nation is operating within today.

Trouble in Balochistan

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Balochistan is a resource-rich province of Pakistan with a handy coastline on the Arabian Sea and an extensive border with Iran. The People’s Republic of China is busily developing the province’s wealth of minerals and then importing the output. The PRC also is developing both a seaport and an airport in the province to support both those imports and to facilitate its Belt and Road and Maritime Silk Road ventures. There also has been an “uptick” in terrorist violence in the province.

Pakistan alleges that the uptick in violence in Balochistan is due to backing from its rival and neighbor, India; that nation denies involvement.

It’s certainly possible that India would reach all the way across Pakistan to interfere in Balochistan, though that seems unlikely. There are other possibilities, however. One is that the terrorism is tacitly supported, if not covertly instigated, by the People’s Republic of China as it seeks to reduce competition for those resources. That would be especially effective in reducing or eliminating American competition, since American business managers are famous for their timidity in the face of uproars.

Another possibility is that Iran is behind the terrorism as the mullahs look to incubate and develop another client terrorist entity in the aftermath of the decimation of its Hamas and Hezbollah clients.

Sending a Message, Or…?

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House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford (R, AR) is worried about a proliferation of People’s Republic of China hidden biolabs throughout the US. One of his points of concern regarded the apparent occasionally sloppy setup and operation of the labs.

“Why would you have some illicit labs set up in an Airbnb, except for, maybe, you’re trying to create some sort of, you know, patient zero scenario, that you might infect someone, that you might create another COVID-like scenario.”
Crawford said the alleged handling of dangerous pathogens appeared careless at best, and possibly deliberate. “Why would you do it in such a slipshod way, if it wasn’t almost deliberately to try to maybe attract attention? Are they trying to send a message to us?”

Sending us a message about how easy it is for the PRC to reach out and infectiously touch us is certainly one possibility.

Another possibility, though, is that these are the biolabs we were supposed to find and to be distracted from noticing the other, more serious biolabs with the more serious and disruptive, if not lethal, pathogens.

Maybe Europe Isn’t So Much our Friend

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Begin with so many of NATO’s European members welching on their financial and equipage commitments to NATO. This represents less a matter of their word being worthless, important as that is, but represents far more an utter betrayal of their fellow members. It’s these shirkers’ insistent reliance on their fellow members for protection even as they refuse to be capable of contributing to their fellows’ protection. That betrayal includes us. Europe’s nations might not be able to contribute much to our defense, but as many insist (for the most part correctly), allies are important to our national security.

But Europe’s essential lack of friendliness extends, now, to naked attempts to censor Americans’ speech within our own nation and anywhere else in the non-UK world. Europe intends to (try to) dictate to us what we are permitted to say.

The European Commission’s coercion of Big Tech to globally censor disfavored narratives goes much further than previously thought, according to a House Judiciary Committee interim staff report released Tuesday that tees up Wednesday’s hearing featuring an Irish comedian who was arrested in London for criticizing gender ideology while visiting the US.

And this, from a 2023 handbook by the EC-created EU Internet Forum:

tech companies were expected to moderate content from “populist rhetoric” and “anti-elite” sentiment to “political satire” and “meme subculture.”

Globally, too—which means within the US as the arrest of the Irish comedian demonstrates—not just inside Europe.

And this, giving concreteness to Europe’s enmity toward American businesses and their leadership teams and to us American citizens in general:

Paris police…raid[ed] X‘s local office Tuesday and summoning owner Elon Musk and former CEO Linda Yaccarino for “voluntary interviews” April 20.
The EC fined X €120 million, or 6% of its global revenue, in the first such DSA action in December, “in obvious retaliation for its protection of free speech around the globe,” the committee said Tuesday.

It’s possible to argue that President Donald Trump’s (R) tariffs are the wrong tool with which to deal with Europe, but it’s increasingly clear that he’s not wrong about the need. My suggestion to Musk and Yaccarino: don’t go to France for the interviews; conduct them, instead, via video over the Internet. There’s little reason to expect that these two, were they to go to France for the interviews, would be freely and easily able to leave after the interviews.

Jumping the Gun

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The headline is…optimistic.

China Loses a Foothold in Panama

The headline heads off an op-ed centered on the Panamanian Supreme Court ruling that the contracts giving management of, and so control over, the Panama Canal ports to CK Hutchison’s Panama Ports Co unconstitutional, and so illegitimate.

That’s a good, solid step in the right direction, but follow through is required.

CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd, which owns Panama Ports Co, which in turn is the owner of the port concessions at either end of the Panama Canal, has not withdrawn its subsidiary, nor has it withdrawn itself. Both are People’s Republic of China companies, and so both are obligated to the PRC government and to that government’s intelligence community.

The PRC does still control the canal, and it will until CK Hutchison and Panama Ports are both gone.