Tag Archives: foreign policy

That Was The Point

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The subheadline on a Sunday Wall Street Journal article says it all.

European voters have viewed the process so negatively that even EU-skeptic parties have mostly dropped talk of leaving the bloc or the euro

That was the entire motive for Brussels’ extended bad faith pseudo-negotiations with Great Britain after those uppity citizens voted to go out from the European Union. To be sure, Brit politicians, who insisted they Knew Better than their subordinate citizens, contributed to the mess with their own combination of arrogance and incompetent negotiating, but they just played into Brussels’ hands, they did not create the chaos.

Brussels, with its antics, has successfully cowed other nations that were restive and contemplating leaving into sitting down and shutting up.

That could change if the UK secures a trade deal with the EU that gives it greater national sovereignty without hurting its economy and Brexit comes to be seen as a success for Britain.

What the new government in the UK needs to internalize and then keep uppermost in its collective mind, though, is that the nation doesn’t need much of a trade deal with the EU, especially if that deal does not acknowledge the national sovereignty of a newly freed Great Britain.

Great Britain is in a position to cut a good trade deal with the US and to cut another one with the member nations of its global Commonwealth—either bilaterally or with the group as a whole.  The success of those deals could well revive sentiment of those currently cowed EU-skeptic nations.

“Peace” in Donbas

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Russia and Ukraine say they have agreed a ceasefire, to be effective by year’s end, in eastern Ukraine, currently occupied by Russia (along with Crimea) and Russia-instigated and -backed “rebels.”  It’s an unsatisfactory ceasefire.

There is no agreement on a timetable for free elections in the occupied eastern oblasts, even assuming the dubious need at all for elections there separate from the regular national elections. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy wants Russian troops out of those oblasts before the elections; Russia’s President Vladimir Putin insists merely that Ukraine should give those oblasts autonomy before the elections. Zelenskiy is right: elections have no possibility of being free with Russian troops occupying the region.  It’s an unsatisfactory ceasefire.

Zelenskiy had hoped for more from these…discussions…among Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany.

Many questions were tackled, and my counterparts have said it is a very good result for a first meeting. But I will be honest, it is very little; I wanted to resolve a larger number of problems[.]

Not only was Russian occupation of eastern Ukraine given short shrift, the subject of the Crimean Oblast didn’t even come up. I suspect that was one of the larger number of problems Zelenskiy wanted resolved. Unfortunately, Germany, though an actual signatory to the Budapest Memorandum, which guaranteed Ukrainian territorial integrity if it gave up its nuclear weapons after the dissolution of the USSR (which Ukraine did), long ago utterly betrayed Ukraine with its decision to walk away from that agreement. Merkel reinforced her government’s perfidy with her decision to ignore the fate of the Crimean Oblast in the just concluded talks.  Russia also is a signatory, but dishonesty and betrayal are the norm with that nation.  The Crimean Oblast will continue to be partitioned off and occupied by Russia.

It’s an unsatisfactory ceasefire.

Expanding Surveillance State

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Want a new phone in the People’s Republic of China? You have to give up an image of your face to the government.

The requirement, which came into effect Sunday, is aimed at minimizing telephone fraud and preventing the reselling and illegal transfer of mobile phone cards, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said in a notice in September.

Right. That’s believable.  Never mind that

…facial recognition becomes more and more prevalent in [the PRC], with authorities applying artificial intelligence to sift through reams of data collected in a bid to boost the economy and centralize oversight of the population.

These are the guys our Big Tech is so anxious to do business with—especially in facial recognition and artificial intelligence technology development.

A NATO Disconnect

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French President Emmanuel Macron extended his “NATO is braindead” criticism.

The French leader has been critical of the United States after it abruptly pulled troops out of northeastern Syria, allowing NATO member Turkey to launch an incursion against the Kurdish YPG militia fighting against the “Islamic State” group. The US and Turkey did not coordinate their moves with NATO members.

Nor were either required to, regardless of what anyone thinks of the moves themselves or the rudeness of the lack of advisement.  Syria has nothing to do with NATO, for all that it’s on the rear porch of Europe’s nations.  Coordination with NATO was, and is, not required.

And

Macron said that Turkey cannot expect solidarity from NATO allies while also launching an offensive in Syria as a “fait accompli.”

Nor should it, since NATO solidarity is an “attack on one is…” and not “an attack by one means all must attack” alliance.  Turkey is out of line to hold up a NATO realignment of forces into the Baltics and Poland until NATO also openly supports Turkey’s independently done invasion.

As an aside on that last, there’s nothing keeping the member nations from deploying national forces consistent with what the alliance would realign were Turkey not in the way.

Still, Macron is not far wrong in his overall assessment.  Most of the European NATO nations don’t take their collective security seriously, insisting on freeloading off the US instead, even as President Donald Trump pushes the nations to increase their support of the alliance (which is theirs, too), at least to the point of honoring their own financial commitments to reach a spending level of 2% of national GDPs on NATO equipage and manpower by 2024.

Even as German Chancellor makes her cynical, disingenuous “promise” to reach 2% by sometime in the 2030s.  If the then-German government still feels like it.

Even as Western Europe member nations whine about the US’ redeployment of several American units out of Germany and into Eastern Europe member nations, nations that do take their security seriously.

Further still, though, Macron is badly mistaken to want talks with Russia aimed at

a new pact limiting mid-range nuclear missiles held by the US and Russia, after the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty collapsed in August.

On what planet does Macron reside that he thinks Russia would honor a new treaty after it spent so many years violating the original?  An accord [with Russia] that would replace the INF would be the height of naivety and complacency.

In contrast with NATO’s disinclination to support Turkey in Syria, Macron wants NATO to support French forces in the Sahel.  Again, though, there’s this business about NATO being an “attack on one is…” alliance, and even though France entered the Sahel for legitimate reasons, France was not attacked there or from there.  The terrorist attacks on France were, for the most part, by Daesh operating out of the Middle East—where France generally declines to operate (even though it has a longer and more legitimate history there than Russia)—or whose terrorists were only passing through northern Africa en route to their targets in France (and Belgium).  On top of that, Africa is outside NATO’s area of operation and would require a (unanimously done) change to the NATO charter to include it.  NATO’s involvement in Afghanistan can at least be justified (however tenuously at this late date) by the United States having been attacked from there and/or by entities now operating from there.

Nuclear Disarmament

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Pope Francis wants it—completely, totally, for any purpose, even deterrence (assuming, for now, that this can be done verifiably and verifiably maintained).  The Pope thinks an arms race involving nuclear weapons adds to the danger of their existence, never minding the race, at least on the US’ part, is for self-defense and the defense of our friends and allies—the very purpose of NATO stationing nuclear weapons in Europe, for instance.

The Pope, though, avoided addressing how a non-nuclear nation with a small conventional military establishment would defend itself against an aggressively acquisitive non-nuclear nation with a large military establishment.  Like, say, the Soviet Union against the nations of Europe, individually or collectively. Or like, perhaps, the People’s Republic of China against the Republic of Korea or Japan—or us.

He appears unconcerned that this might lead to a conventional arms race and conventional military building-up race, a race whose deterrence exists only in the ability to conduct a follow-on mobilization race to the frontier—sort of like what turned out to be the first steps of European wars in the latter half of the 19th century and of two global wars in the first half of the 20th.

Of course, in the case of the PRC, the Pope already has abjectly surrendered control of the Catholic Church and of Catholicism—the Universal Church and universal religion—to the PRC government inside the PRC.

Maybe he expects the rest of us to meekly surrender politically, like he has done religiously.

No, I’m not going to turn the other cheek to conquerors and slavers. Not even St Augustine suggested that, for all that he decried preemption.