Tag Archives: foreign policy

Time to Strike

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The Iranian government is threatening US Middle East bases, shipping lanes in the Arabian Gulf, and Israel if the US strikes Iran in support of the Iranian people, who are in the streets first protesting inflation and now openly calling for the downfall of the mullahs’ regime.

Iran will attack American military bases in the Middle East if the US hits first, the country’s parliamentary speaker said Sunday after US officials said the Trump administration was looking at preliminary options for striking Iranian military sites.
Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf [third in power behind Khamenei and Iran’s President] also threatened that Iran would hit Middle Eastern shipping lanes and Israel.

And

Ghalibaf also raised the possibility of a pre-emptive attack, following other senior officials who have mentioned this in recent days.

It’s time for the US to strike in support of the Iranian people. Iran’s ability to strike back was demonstrated during its strikes against Israel and its counters against Israel and the US during the recently concluded 12-day kerfuffle: virtually non-existent, with very few of its missiles getting through defenses, and most of those missing their targets.

My target list would center on Iran’s remaining air defense facilities, missile launch facilities, naval bases and naval ships afloat, then move on to central Basij facilities, and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps bases. Then the mullahs’ hideaways. They’re last, to give them time to leave the city and the potential for collateral damage, and then to be fixed in place for serious targeting. A couple of days work, maybe longer, depending on the size of the US forces in place and the operational pace they’re put through.

It’s time to be done with the thugs, from the mullahs on down. There will be neither People Power revolution nor any Color Revolution success; those affairs worked, and relatively bloodlessly so, because the governments being tossed had some minimal concern for the lives of their people, or they lacked the overwhelming force available to suppress the protests, or they had places outside their nations to which to flee. The mullahs care only about their own lives and power, the IRGC and the Basij will unhesitatingly provide the necessary force, and the mullahs have no place to which to run or hide.

Without our help, the present struggles in Iran will get very bloody, and the protesting may well end suppressed, if only because so many of the protestors will be killed—in the thousands—by these thugs. That’s already started:

A crackdown on nationwide protests in Iran has killed at least 538 people and even more are feared dead, activists said Sunday….
About 10,600 people have been detained over the two weeks of protests, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency….

Maybe this will Prod

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Maybe it’ll prod us both. The People’s Republic of China has cut off export of rare earths and the magnets made from them to Japan over Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s recent commentary about Japan’s strengthening resolve to assist the Republic of China in the event of a PRC invasion.

China has begun choking off exports of rare earths and rare-earth magnets to Japan, a potential blow to Japanese companies that use them to produce components for global chip makers, car companies and defense firms.

It really is getting time, and urgently so, for Japan to pull all of its supply chains out of the PRC. Doing so would eliminate nearly all of the PRC’s economic leverage over Japan short of going to war over the sea lines of communication on which Japan depends.

The PRC’s move also should be a serious prod for us to get off the dime and move all of our supply chains out of the PRC. It’s time we proofed ourselves against PRC economic pressure, along with Japan. Nearly half of our economy’s imports flow through portions of those same SLOCs to our west coast.

Violations of International Law

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors rightly ask the question.

Has international law become a tyrant’s best friend? Democrats and foreign leaders are claiming that President Trump’s arrest of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro is illegal—at least as international law is interpreted by the reigning complex of professors, NGOs, and multilateral bureaucrats.

Never mind that none of these nay-sayers—not a single one—are willing to cite the “international law” that the US violated in the arrest of Maduro and his wife. The closest they come is the single UN law, which as no applicability to the current situation, as the editors explain in words so plain that even Leftists should be able to understand them.

I expect such cynicism and dishonest out of our enemies and our fair weather friends and acquaintances. But to get this drivel from American politicians—in the main, Progressive-Democratic Party politicians—is decidedly shameful. This sub rosa hatred of America by those who claim to be our own should be remembered at the ballot box this fall.

A Quick Thought on Tariffs

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The lede sets the table for my thought, even while mixing similes or metaphors or somethings.

The highest tariffs in almost a century haven’t caused the massive surge in inflation many economists feared. But that shouldn’t have come as a surprise, according to two new studies.

Begin with the understanding that today’s economy, both domestic and as we interact and intertwine with other nations’ economies, is far more complex than it was during the 19th and early 20th century heydays of tariffs.

Within that understanding, we don’t know the lags, if any, between tariff implementation and domestic price increases. That’s true whether the tariffs are implemented in specific economic areas or across the domestic board. Nor do we understand the mechanisms by which tariffs on foreign goods and services have their effect on domestic goods and services or on our economy in general. Nor do we understand the pathways by which those mechanisms might work their effects.

Each of these must be determined empirically, and that takes time. Presently, we’re in a nation-wide experiment that will provide the data that will let us understand each of these unknowns.

For how long must this experiment run before we can say reasonably definitively that tariffs are not having more than a minor effect on prices? That’s also unknown, but I suspect an outer bound on that is a couple of years.

Disruptive in the near term the Trump tariffs—or at least his rhetoric about them—might seem to be, it’s much to soon to assess their disruptiveness or lack in the intermediate and longer terms.

Time to Respond…

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…more forcefully and farther than what the People’s Republic of China has done.

China said it banned the export to Japan of goods with potential military uses, intensifying Beijing’s retaliation against Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi over remarks she made about Taiwan.
The export ban takes effect immediately, China’s Ministry of Commerce said Tuesday.

It’s time for Japan, and the US in support of Japan, to answer the PRC’s escalation with a much sharper escalation of their, and our, own.

Japan—Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and the Diet—must state unequivocally that it will support the Republic of China in the event of a PRC invasion attempt. Japan also must make concrete moves toward developing its own nuclear weapons. The nation, given its geographic location, doesn’t need anything more esoteric than intermediate range missiles along with a small constellation of surveillance satellites. Japan also must begin taking overt defensive measures regarding its islands in the East China Sea.

Economically, Japan must begin serious and rapid disengagement of its business activities with and within the PRC.

The US must announce that we will support the RoC in the event of a PRC invasion attempt, and we must step up arms deliveries to both the RoC and to Japan. We need also to be much more forceful in defending the international waters and sea lanes of commerce in the South China Sea as well as moving to restrict the PLAN’s and PLAAF’s movements in that region.

The US must also get serious about severing our economic ties with the PRC.

There must be no petty tit-for-tat responses, and there must be no non-response. The question is whether Japan’s government men and women, and ours, have the stomach for facing down the men and women of the PRC government.

Cutting off doing business with and within the PRC will be expensive and disruptive, but it won’t be nearly as much so as acceding to PRC demands—which will only increase were Japan or us to back down repeatedly and further.