Tag Archives: foreign policy

“Call Russia’s Bluff”

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Zalmay Khalilzad has a rather fanciful op-ed in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal. Russian President Vladimir Putin is claiming to want a diplomatic solution to his invasion of Ukraine, a claim he’s making with the voice of his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the latter’s tour of Africa. Khalilzad suggested that Putin’s “bluff” should be answered with a number of steps.

First…. One step that may force Moscow to recalculate is for senior US officials to clearly convey that Russian escalation will be met by an accompanying escalation of American support for Ukraine.

Yeah, that really deterred Putin from invading Ukraine in the first place. Neither should we meet escalation with “accompanying escalation.” That just continues surrendering the initiative to the barbarian. We need to escalate faster than the barbarian can respond; we need to be well inside the barbarian’s recognition and decision loops, not the other way around.

Second, improve the chances that Ukraine’s planned offensive operations succeed by ensuring that their plans are realistic and thoroughly evaluating their assets.

Because we Know Better what the folks actually engaged need. That’s why we’re sending them deliberately stunted HIMARS, for instance—we Know Better—instead of sending them fully capable systems, in the numbers they need, and promptly so.

Third, make a better case for other countries to support Ukraine.

Certainly, but we shouldn’t wait to act while we beg for consensus, and shouldn’t act as though we’re unable to act on our own initiative. In the case of Europe, especially, Germany is a lost cause; we should simply write them off and move on. If that means NATO qua NATO doesn’t act, oh well. The member nations don’t need NATO’s permission to act on their own initiatives.

Khalilzad should know better.

A Need Satisfied

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That’s one outcome of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D, CA) visit to the Republic of China, which included meetings with, among others, RoC President Tsai Ing-wen. As The Wall Street Journal put it,

The visit by Mrs Pelosi angered China and cast a pall over US-China relations.

That’s a net good. We need a pall over our relations with the enemy state. We need to take further action against the state that commits genocide, seizes other nations’ territory (however much control over that territory might be disputed among those other nations), and threatens to “incorporate” the RoC into the body of the People’s Republic of China.

We need to go further and stop doing economic business with the PRC, and we need to act more aggressively about pulling our supply chain—including raw materials—out of the PRC.

There’s this, too:

Beijing is also concerned that its decades-old consensus with the US about Taiwan is breaking down amid growing tensions between the two powers.

It needs to break down, completely, and be consigned to history’s trash can, where it belongs. We never should have betrayed the Republic of China like we did all those years ago, and it’s not too late to correct that. It is, though, expensive to correct after all this time, and it’ll only get more expensive the more we delay.

It’s too bad that the Biden administration is too timid to do any of that beyond lip service, and it won’t even do lip service to correcting the betrayal. And neither did Pelosi.

That’s to the Good

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) may be planning to visit the Republic of China next month. Some folks are worried about that.

A Taiwan trip by Mrs Pelosi (D, CA) would likely set back any nascent rapprochement and set off a new bout of tensions, US officials and international affairs specialists said.

I’m having trouble seeing the downside of not continuing a “rapprochement” with an enemy nation whose avowed goal is to supplant and control us.

And

The visit, they said, would confirm Chinese suspicions that the US is deepening support for Taiwan, allowing its democratic government to resist Beijing’s claims to the island….

As well we should be doing, on both counts.

Further making Pelosi’s putative trip imperative is the People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping’s threats of dire consequences, including military, if she actually travels. Any withdrawal of the trip now could only be taken as American abject surrender in the face of threats.

There’s this, too:

For Beijing, a trip by a politician as senior as Mrs Pelosi is seen as part of a perilous backtracking by the US on commitments limiting its relations with Taiwan.

We never should have betrayed the RoC all those decades ago in the first place. After all this time, it’ll be deucedly expensive and risky to correct that mistake, but it’s never too late to do so. All that just makes it imperative to get started; the expense and risk only grow over time.

Who Checks the Checkers?

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Senator Rob Portman (R, OH), in his capacity as Ranking Member of the Senate’s Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, released a report detailing a decade-long effort by the People’s Republic of China to infiltrate the Federal Reserve system. The report concluded, in part, that

the Fed failed to mount an adequate response. The report’s findings show “a sustained effort by China, over more than a decade, to gain influence over the Federal Reserve and a failure by the Federal Reserve to combat this threat effectively.”

Of course, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell demurred from that report.

“Because we understand that some actors aim to exploit any vulnerabilities, our processes, controls, and technology are robust and updated regularly. We respectfully reject any suggestions to the contrary,” he wrote in a letter to Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, the committee’s top Republican.
Mr Powell detailed the central bank’s information security and background screening protocols, including reviews of foreign travel and personal contacts for staff who have access to restricted information. “We take seriously any violations of these robust information security policies[.]”

Of course. However, any procedure, no matter how robust or frequently updated, is only as good as the people executing the procedure. I have to ask: who does that vetting for the Fed? Who follows up on those travel reviews and contacts? What’s the Fed’s IG role in these procedures? How closely is the DoJ’s FBI involved?

That last, given the FBI’s demonstrated bias and too-often outright dishonesty, is especially important.

Our Secure Southern Border

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Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas insists that our southern border is secure. President Joe Biden (D) echoes him with his own silence on Mayorkas’ claim. Here’s some of what Texas’ police and National Guard are intercepting at that border under Governor Greg Abbott’s (R) Operation Lone Star, which has the Texas National Guard also working the border, according to Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt Marc Couch:

  • more than 225,000 migrant apprehensions
  • more than 13,000 criminal arrests,
  • more than 3,500 weapons seized
  • 289 million deadly fentanyl doses

That’s since Operation Lone Star began. Just since last October, there also have been 500,000+ known “gotaways,” illegal aliens who were spotted crossing our border illegally but who evaded capture.

This is what Biden and his DHS Secretary, neither of whom are willing actually to visit our southern border, are letting through with their version of “secure.” Since that’s what they’re calling it, I have to conclude they’re deliberately letting this sewage in.

Imagine the intercepts and the increased safety of our nation if the Federal government were really interested in security.