Tag Archives: foreign policy

Critical Supplies

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I’ve written earlier about the need to recreate a core ability to produce certain items critical to our national security entirely domestically, from dirt in the ground to final product.

The need isn’t only driven by our enemies having critical places in our supply chains.  Our friends and would-be friends have similarly critical places, and they act as enthusiastically for their own self interest as we do. And those self interests can conflict.

Take India and hydroxychloroquine. India has decided to ban the export of any of its production of the drug. Worldwide demand is expanding greatly in response to its apparent (though not yet clearly demonstrated) effectiveness in treating Wuhan Virus infections, while production capacity has not—cannot—expand as rapidly to meet that demand. India has a very large population with diseases for which on-label use is wholly warranted.  India’s ban is not borne of enmity toward us but of national need and so self interest.

We can retaliate against India and its ban, as President Donald Trump has threatened to do, but that sort of response doesn’t address the underlying problem (it should be noted that retaliations prove unnecessary; India has enacted an exception to its ban that allows export to us). We need to be able to produce our own hydroxychloroquine from scratch, entirely domestically. We still should get the drug, and intermediate production chemicals, from the most efficiently done sources, including internationally, but we absolutely need to have an ability to produce at least some entirely domestically. That would give us a core capability from which to expand, should a need arise, rather than leave us to do without or vulnerable to extortion, as our enemies will apply.

Propaganda and the Press

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At the Monday President Donald Trump-hosted daily press conference about the status of the Wuhan Virus situation in the US, a reporter representing Hong Kong Phoenix TV asked a question prefaced with a long tout of the People’s Republic of China shipping medical supplies to the US (coincidentally omitting to mention how defective PRC-originated medical supplies tend to be).

Trump called her on her affiliation; she mumbled about representing Hong Kong Phoenix TV, but weasel-worded her employer’s association with the PRC government.

However. According to an ex-Phoenix TV news director,

Phoenix TV’s content is subject to the dictates of the leadership of the Central Communist Propaganda Department, Central Communist Overseas Propaganda Office, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which often directly sent instructions to Phoenix Satellite TV.

As Senator Ted Cruz (R, TX) put it,

So to recap, the WH Correspondents Assoc gave a seat at the WH press briefing to an employee of the Chinese Communist govt, to ask globally televised Qs to POTUS, at the same time China is waging a propaganda campaign to hide their culpability & coverup of the Wuhan virus?!?

Meanwhile, this same White House Correspondence Association has barred the One America News Network from these briefings, necessitating Trump’s invitations to the news outlet in order for its reporters to gain entrance—standing at the back of the bus press room.

This is what we have, then: American journalists actively suppressing a right-leaning news outlet while equally actively promoting a propaganda arm of the PRC government.

Think about that.

Economic Extortion

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The Wuhan Virus, which originated from the city of that name, in the province of Hubei, in the heartland of the People’s Republic of China, may not have been released on the world deliberately, but the situation is certainly being taken advantage of by the PRC.

Congressman Mark Green (R, TN) has advised us all that French President Emmanuel Macron was talking to PRC President Xi Jinping and asked him for a billion masks.

Xi readily agreed—on condition that France implement its 5G wireless communications network with Huawei equipment.  No Huawei, no masks; French medical personnel, French patients can just die.

This comes against the backdrop our own health care companies having to recall surgical gowns made in the PRC because they might have been tainted—they were manufactured in facilities that hadn’t met standards for manufacture since 2018.  Netherlands has had to recall masks manufactured and delivered by the PRC because those masks were defective and provided none of the protections they were supposed to provide. Spain and Turkey also have had defective medical equipment foisted off on them by the PRC. Czech Republic is the recipient of PRC-made Wuhan Virus test kits with an 80% failure rate (Bing Translator is friendly enough).

Macron might want to pay more attention to what his neighbors in the EU are being cheated with, as well as who’s doing the cheating, along with studying the nature of extortion.

A New AUMF?

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Or, perhaps, an additional one. The editors at The Wall Street Journal have an idea.

The Administration could quietly push a narrow Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that gives Mr Trump power to strike Iran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq as needed.

That’s too narrow; any new AUMF should authorize the President to strike Iran-backed militias—not just Shiite ones, and not just in Iraq.

More than that, though, the Pentagon…drawing up plans to eliminate Kataib Hezbollah and such an AUMF are not mutually exclusive. Both should be done.

Neither is it necessary for this targeted AUMF to replace the AUMF in place; whether that’s a good or bad idea is a separate question.

The editors also pointed out the opprobrium likely to flow from administration critics as a result of going after this or that terrorist organization, those objections centering on the fear that we would only provoke terrorists.

Administration critics would object to the administration turning up heat on terrorists wherever they are, though. The only reason these should be taken seriously is the political power they wield in Congress. That’s something We the People need to correct in November.

What Are They Going to Do?

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Cut us off?

The chairman of Huawei Technologies Co warned the US to expect countermeasures from the Chinese government if it further restricts the technology giant’s access to suppliers….
Eric Xu, Huawei’s chairman, said he believes Beijing would respond with restrictions of its own on American companies operating in China if the US.

In addition to the draconian restrictions already inflicted on American companies—and other nations’ companies—operating in the People’s Republic of China. These restrictions include demands for government-controlled backdoors into companies’ operating software and transfer of companies’ technologies to domestic partner companies—which are required for most foreign companies in order to operate in the PRC.

With the PRC’s threat to cut us off from needed medicines, intermediate medical chemicals, and medical equipment, and the PRC’s recent attempt to restrict access to rare earth elements, it’s become clear that our manufacturers—and Europe’s, come to that—need to revamp their supply chains to vastly reduce their dependence on PRC intermediaries and suppliers, if not eliminate that dependency altogether.

Xu’s threat only emphasizes that need.