Tag Archives: foreign policy

Iran’s Nuclear Weapons

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With the pseudo-negotiations with Iran over its nuclear weapons program going the way they are, President Joe Biden, of the Biden-Harris Presidency, is rapidly coming to the first of two moments of truth.

The first is whether Biden-Harris will fold in the talks—he is, after all, consigned by the Ayatollah to the kiddie table where he’s to be seen and not heard by the adults in the room—and give Khamenei everything he wants just so Biden-Harris can come home claiming a deal, however disastrous.

That, though, is a moment of lesser truth. The greater truth moment will come after. As Dubowitz and Kroenig put it in their op-ed at the link,

A nuclear-armed Iran would cause further proliferation as regional powers like Saudi Arabia build their own bombs.

But that’s a lesser truth, also, for all that it’s a greater one than the first. Dubowitz and Kroenig also have this:

It might take a year or two to fashion a functioning nuclear warhead that is deliverable on a missile, but once the clerical regime has enough weapons-grade material, the game is over.

The nuclear warhead doesn’t have to be delivered via missile, though. There are a variety of ways to…truck…such device into Israel.

In the event, too, Iran is likely to wait until it has four or five nuclear warheads, since that is what it will take—and all it will take—to destroy Israel as a polity and as a people. And Iran will strike the moment that fourth or fifth weapon becomes operational.

Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former President of Iran and then-Chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council, on World Al-Qods Day in 2001, as cited by the Middle East Media Research Institute:

If one day, he [Rafsanjani] said, the world of Islam comes to possess the weapons currently in Israel’s possession [meaning nuclear weapons]—on that day this method of global arrogance would come to a dead end. This, he said, is because the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam.

And here is the greatest moment of truth for Biden-Harris. Will he, can he, make

the fateful choice between allowing the clerical regime to become a nuclear-weapons power and using military force to stop it.

Will he make the military strike that Dubowitz and Kroenig suggest will be necessary to prevent Iran’s getting nuclear weapons?

Sadly, Biden-Harris doesn’t have it in him to make the strike. The most we can hope for, and it’s a very thin reed given his and his Progressive-Democratic Party’s open hostility toward Israel, is that Biden-Harris will stay out of the way and let Israel and Saudi Arabia (the latter very sub rosa) conduct the strike.

Brinkmanship

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ME Sarotte thinks Putin has bought into the concept of a 30-year-old betrayal of a commitment by a past US President to a past Russian President to not expand NATO east to include nations that used to be under Soviet domination. Sarotte says that’s the basis for Putin’s current brinkmanship; he’s merely trying to redress that betrayal, as NATO has, indeed, accepted erstwhile Soviet-dominated (even occupied) nations into NATO.

I think it’s hard to take seriously Sarotte’s view. More likely, it seems to me, is that Putin merely is putting that out as a public rationale. The most likely case for his seeming brinkmanship is that Putin doesn’t see his behavior as brinkmanship at all. On the contrary, he’s convinced—rightly or wrongly—that Biden-Harris will fold in the moment of truth.

Widening Gyre of Hostages

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In response to Lithuania’s effrontery in contradicting the People’s Republic of China by letting the Republic of China open a “representative office” in the capital city of Vilnius, the PRC not only is banning import into the PRC of Lithuanian products, it’s banning import of all products that contain Lithuanian components. As The Wall Street Journal dryly put it,

The effects are rippling across Europe.

And already Germany is intimating its desire for surrender, which should come as no surprise from a nation already openly obsequious before Russia:

The German-Baltic Chamber of Commerce has warned Vilnius that German subsidiaries are at risk.

The widening gyre may well spread across the pond.

In the US, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which would bar goods made with forced labor in Xinjiang region from entering America, passed the House last month. If it becomes law, US companies should brace themselves.

It’s an open question whether the Progressive-Democrat running the Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY), and the President, Biden-Harris, will permit the bill to become law, or whether one of the other will join Germany as hostage and bar the law.

Elisabeth Braw concluded this in her op-ed at the link:

China’s punishment of Lithuania is a wake-up call for companies and countries alike.

Indeed.

It’s time for Europe and the US to stop doing business with the PRC altogether.

The transition will be deucedly expensive, but Europe and the US will be orders of magnitude better off not being as dependent on the PRC as the PRC’s actions are demonstrating us both to be.

That cost, and the reduction in our economic and political freedom of action, which the PRC will continue to inflict will only get far worse, the longer we delay in carrying out that transition.

In the meantime, it would do us and Lithuania, and all other nations wishing to reduce their dependency on the PRC, a world of good for us to increase our trade with Lithuania.

More Threats

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Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, ahead of the upcoming Geneva “talks” regarding Russia and Ukraine, has instructed President Joe Biden (D) that he, Biden, must answer for the Russian’s demands vis-à-vis Ukraine and Europe, and do so promptly.

We need to figure out quite rapidly whether there is a basis to work on some of those issues. Our military will be there, and then we will see whether there is any basis to continue on a diplomatic track.

And

I cannot exclude negative effects on some arms-control arrangements we maintain with the US, and a big question would be put on the advisability to continue the strategic security dialogue[.]

And, paraphrased by The Wall Street Journal,

Mr Ryabkov said that if diplomatic efforts fail, the Russian president would look into options prepared by his military experts.

The WSJ headlined its article Russia’s Demands on Ukraine Must Be Addressed Urgently, Russian Official Says.

In one respect, Ryabkov is right. It’s growing ever more urgent that the US, and NATO, answer the Russian’s demands. It’s absolutely imperative that the US, and NATO, send defensive and offensive weapons to Ukraine and train those soldiers to use them. It’s growing ever more urgent that the US, and NATO, begin air defense and ground force joint exercises in Ukraine. It’s growing ever more urgent that the US redeploy its forces not involved in joint training, particularly those currently in Germany, into southeastern and northwestern Poland and to move naval forces into the Baltic Sea to within striking range of Kaliningrad.

It’s critical to apply, now, economic sanctions against Russian officials, from Vladimir Putin, through his cronies in the Kremlin, down through his cronies in the Duma, and economic sanctions against the state of Russia.

Waiting until Russia invades will be too late.

Ultimatums

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has them, so far centered on his buildup opposite Russia’s border with Ukraine.

“Further movement of NATO eastward is unacceptable,” Mr Putin told a press conference on Thursday.

This is the Kaiser presuming to order Poincaré/Viviani and Asquith not to respond to his buildup opposite the French border.

And this:

Mr Putin warned that Russia’s actions would depend not only “on the course of the negotiations, but on the unconditional provision of Russia’s security, today and in the future,” he said.

Like he’s honoring Ukraine’s security, as he’s already committed to do via his agreements under the Budapest Memoranda? He’s in no position to complain, at least in no moral position.

The Russian Anschluss:

[Putin insists] the future of the breakaway eastern region, called the Donbas, should be determined by residents there and he described the Kremlin’s role as being “mediators in creating the best conditions for determining the future of the people who live there.”
More than a million residents of the Donbas region have Russian passports, according to senior Russian officials.

The question is whether Biden-Harris, Macron, Johnson, and Scholz will have the moral and political courage that even those two sets of feckless predecessors had. In making their decisions to run and hide or to stop Putin and force him back out of Ukraine (and Georgia), these worthies need to consider that the farther Putin expands his borders, the farther he’ll demand the West retreat, for the unconditional provision of Russia’s security, today and in the future.

Update: Putin is withdrawing some 10,000 soldiers of the 175,000 that he’s mobilized on the Russian border with Ukraine. There are some reasons for this. One is that he’s making a show of this to cover the fact that he’s simply rotating troops in and out of the field to keep them fresh.

Another is that he’s giving up something small in the expectation of–and added pressure to–get something major for his going first with this “concession.”

Another is that Biden-Harris already has surrendered something, and he’s making a token gesture preparatory to forcing a major surrender regarding Ukraine, having thus built  momentum in Biden-Harris toward yielding and gotten him deeper into that mindset.

Updated Update: Other Russian troop movements include these:

Satellite photos revealed that Russia this month has moved infantry vehicles, tanks, artillery, and more into Crimea, according to reports. Additionally, a military unit has arrived near a Russian town that is situated nine miles from the border with Ukraine.