Tag Archives: foreign policy

Idiocy

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Or outright dishonesty.

Ukraine is asking the US for long-range, armed drones to give the Ukrainian forces improved chances against the barbarian invader.

President Joe Biden (D) and his administration won’t send them.

More than two months ago, Ukrainian officials requested four MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones, US officials said. The Biden administration was reluctant to approve the request, the officials said, citing a number of concerns, ranging from the potential loss of advanced technology from the battlefield to the need to train Ukrainians to operate the drones.

The need to train Ukrainians? They’d be trained up by now if the request had been honored those two months ago.

The American technology would be given over to the barbarian via battlefield losses? The enemy always gets its adversary’s technology from battlefield losses. The only way to prevent that is to not go onto the battlefield at all. And then surrender the technology, anyway, when the adversary is peacefully conquered due to its decision not to fight.

…highly-sensitive technology could wind up in Russian hands if Ukrainian forces are overwhelmed.

This is a cynical, if not deliberately dishonest, sham rationale, creating, as it does, the vicious circle: the Ukrainians might lose a battle and give up the tech, so we won’t supply the tech, thereby vastly increasing the likelihood that the Ukrainians not only lose a battle, but lose the entire war.

All because the Biden administration is so…risk averse…that they refuse the risks involved in actively helping a sovereign nation, and a potential ally if not friend, defeat a barbarian’s invasion and drive the barbarian back out.

It’s disgusting, and Ukraine might not survive until January 2025, and even if it does, vastly more Ukrainian women and children will be butchered between now and then, all for the convenience of Biden’s risk aversion.

Damping the Benefits of Globalization

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In one of the few sensible pushes members of the Biden administration is making, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, in her meetings in Seoul, Republic of Korea, pushed for the US and our friends and allies to shift away from dependency on the People’s Republic of China for supplies and instead to friend-shore the supply chain: get the supply components and raw materials either domestically or through trade with friends and allies.

Friend-shoring is about deepening relationships and diversifying our supply chains with a greater number of trusted trading partners. The purpose is to lower risks for our economy and theirs[.]

There are, of course, criticizers of such a change in emphasis.

…some economists have cautioned that such a shift could damp the benefits of globalization and lead to higher prices.

But this is to misunderstand, or to ignore, the real risks to globalization: dependency on our enemies for Critical Items in our supply chain. The PRC, for instance, already has attempted to corner the market on rare earths, and it already has attempted to use that monopoly to coerce Japan by embargoing rare earth sales and shipments to them. Russia is already restricting supplies of natural gas to Europe.

Walking away from the PRC, and Russia, and our other enemies on supply chain matters may or may not lead to higher prices; most likely, higher prices will be limited to the period of transition away from our enemies.

The higher cost, though, from continuing dependency on enemy nations is to our national security and to the uncertainty premium resulting from those enemies engaging in restricting or outright embargoing critical supply items in order to coerce.

Where in the World is Joe Biden?

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Again?

Ukraine’s First Lady, Olena Zelenska is in DC this week. On her itinerary was last Monday’s meeting with SecState Antony Blinken; Tuesday’s (scheduled as I write this Tuesday morning) meeting with the US’ First Lady, Jill Biden; and an address to Congress today.

Absent from her itinerary is a meeting with the man who occasionally sits in the Oval Office, Joe Biden (D).

Biden refuses to go to Kyiv to meet with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy or any other of Ukraine’s government officials, and now that Ukraine has come to DC, he still won’t meet Ukrainian government officials, not even unofficial officials like First Lady Zelenska? All he’s done is give her a photo op on the White House South Lawn as though he was a monarch granting a boon.

What is it that Biden is so desperate to avoid?

Now It’s Mandatory

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) is planning to visit the Republic of China next month. Zhao Lijian, Deputy Director of the People’s Republic of China’s Foreign Ministry Information Department, speaking for the PRC’s Foreign Minister demurred.

It [the visit] will have a severe negative impact on the political foundation of China-US relations, and send a gravely wrong signal to “Taiwan independence” separatist forces. China firmly opposes such a visit.

That pretty well settles the matter. Now it’s critical that Pelosi not only travel to the Republic of China, she also must meet with RoC President Tsai Ing-wen, Premier Su Tseng-chang, and the President of the Legislative Yuan, Yu Shyi-kun.

Maybe meet with National Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng, too, although matters of national defense are outside Pelosi’s portfolio.

Where in the World….

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…is Joe Biden?

Adding to the long list of European heads of state that have visited Ukraine and met face-to-face with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv and to the long list of American Congressmen who have done the same, Senators Lindsey Graham (R, SC) and Richard Blumenthal (D, CT) have met with Zelenskyy in Kyiv, just last Thursday.

Which raises anew the questions: where in the world is President Joe Biden (D)? Of what is he so terrified that he won’t go to Ukraine and meet with Zelenskyy face-to-face?

It’s not that Biden is unable to hack the trip itself; he’s been to Brussels in the last few months, after all.