Tag Archives: foreign policy

Bring It

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With President Donald Trump’s formal notice to Russia that the US will pull out of the Treaty on Intermediate-range Nuclear Force, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened an arms race.

Our American partners apparently believe that the situation has changed to such an extent that the US should have such weapons.
What answer will they have from our side? It’s simple: we’ll do it too.

In addition to that,

The head of the Russian armed forces warned that if the deal collapses, the targets of subsequent military exchanges would be US missile sites hosted by allies within striking distance of Russia rather than American soil.

Well, of course they will.  That’s what they’ve been threatening for some time with their deployment of tactical nuclear missiles in Kaliningrad, their redeployment of their tactical nuclear forces toward their western border—and their development and testing of the treaty-prohibited IRBMs.

If Putin wants an arms race, let him bring it. The last one these guys had with us didn’t end well for them, and Russia’s economy is in worse shape than was the Soviet Union’s.

Brussels Interferes Again

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Now the European Court of Justice has decided to weigh in on Brexit.

The European Court of Justice’s opinion, which requires confirmation in a final court ruling, says the U.K. can unilaterally stop the process of leaving the EU, something that Brussels and the U.K. government had sought to oppose. A final ruling is expected within the next few weeks.

This is yet another cynical effort by Brussels to interfere in the domestic affairs of a sovereign nation, this time compounded by Brussels’ insistence on punishing the Brits for their impertinence.

Were this a serious, honest move, they would have issued this opinion two years ago, at the outset of the sham negotiations.

Macron and Nationalism

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French President Emmanuel Macron decries nationalism when he’s taking his swipes at President Donald Trump.  But he’s only showing his nationalistic, cynical hypocrisy when he does that.

As The Wall Street Journal has noticed,

[T]he French are nationalist to the core. Ask the European parliamentarians and their staffers who must make the expensive, time-consuming, carbon-emitting trip from Brussels to Strasbourg once a month to maintain the absurd fiction that French Strasbourg is the home of the European Parliament. Ask any European negotiator who has tried to prune back the Common Agricultural Policy, a giant boondoggle under which France is the largest recipient of funds. Ask any Italian diplomat about French policies in Libya. Ask any American negotiator about France’s approach to trade.

And this from Germany’s Finance Minister and Vice-Chancellor, Olaf Scholz on 28 November.

Here is my proposal: In the medium term, France’s seat on the Security Council could be converted into a seat for the EU. In return, France would then have the right to appoint the EU ambassador to the United Nations in perpetuity.

It really doesn’t get much more anti-nationalist than that, right?  Give up the nationalist seat in favor of a continental seat?

Macron and his anti-nationalist government demurred, the very next day.

When defending our national positions, we take all European positions into consideration. We actively participate, together with Germany and all other member states, in the coordination of the EU’s position.

Of course, you do.  So long, as it suits our national positions.

No, insists anti-nationalist Macron.  We’ll keep our French seat, thank you.

What’s So Hard?

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Great Britain is agonizing over how to deal with the People’s Republic of China’s Huawei Technologies Co and the latter’s desire to supply the nation’s 5G mobile network.  On the matter of Huawei’s having supplied the predecessor 4G network, Great Britain thinks it had arrived at “an understanding” with Huawei concerning the latter’s behavior vis-à-vis the installed 4G—which, astonishingly, allowed Huawei to monitor “aspects” of 4G tech.  Britain’s MI6 head, Alex Younger, seems to be the chief agonizer.

5G will by and large be based on Chinese technology, chiefly with Huawei. We need to decide whether we are comfortable with the ownership of these platforms in the case where our allies take quite a definite position…This is not straightforward[.]

Why must Huawei be the supplier of Britain’s 5G network?

And: Huawei is an arm of the People’s Republic of China government—how is this not a straightforward decision?  Why is it so hard to decide whether the nation wants to let the PRC government spy on every aspect of the British government, its defense, its economy, its citizens?

Another Free Trade Deal

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As Ashley Tellis, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, pointed out, a free trade deal with “Taiwan” would be a Good Thing.  Indeed, that would be a good start, but it really would be better to sign a free trade deal with the Republic of China rather than with an island.

He also pointed out that such a trade deal would go a long way toward easing, if not stopping, the People’s Republic of China’s effort to diplomatically isolate the RoC.

Accordingly, a free-trade agreement would demonstrate American solidarity with Taiwan is just a bit ironic given the thrust of Tellis’ piece.