Tag Archives: foreign policy

Another Betrayal

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Recall Russia’s latest provocation (which amounts to an act of war), consisting of ships of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet ramming a Ukrainian tugboat and firing on and seizing the Ukrainian three-ship flotilla of which that tug was a part along with the “detention” of the crews of the three ships.

Germany—Chancellor Angela Merkel—has magnanimously offered to mediate the matter.

The German chancellor phoned [Russian President] Vladimir Putin on Monday evening to emphasize the “necessity for de-escalation and dialog,” government spokesman Steffen Seibert said in a statement. For his part, the Russian president condemned Ukraine’s “provocative behavior” and said he hoped Berlin could “influence” Ukraine into refraining from such actions in the future.
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The tentative solution hashed out by Merkel and Putin, Seibert reported, was “an analysis of the incident with the participation of Russian and Ukrainian border-security experts.”

The “provocative behavior” was the flotilla’s sailing past Ukraine’s Russian-partitioned and -occupied Crimea oblast on its way from Odesa to Mariupol—or its intent to do so at the time it was attacked and captured.  Russia claims that the flotilla violated Russian territorial waters during the sailing and that the “provocation” was compounded by the presence of Ukrainian intelligence officers aboard the flotilla.

Merkel has meekly cynically accepted that premise, even though she knows it to be false.  It isn’t possible for Ukrainian shipping—military or civilian—to violate Ukraine’s territorial waters.  The only Russian waters in the Black Sea are well east of the Kerch Strait, roughly between Anapa and Sochi; that would be a ludicrous route for this flotilla to have taken.

This amounts to another German betrayal of Ukraine, following as it does Germany’s walk-away from the Budapest Memorandum (which Germany, a non-nuclear nation, avoided signing in the first place), wherein Russia (among others) guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial integrity and national independence if it gave up its nuclear arsenal (which it did), in favor of the Minsk II “accord,” wherein France and Germany (remember this EU axis?) urged Russia and Ukraine to play nice, accepting the fact of Russian occupation, along with pro-Russia rebels, of two of Ukraine’s eastern oblasts and that Russian seizure of Crimea.

Some friend.

Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko has got to be having second thoughts about the benefits of joining the European Union or NATO.  He plainly can’t count on either later with the EU axis (and key NATO members) selling his country out now.  Ukraine would be better off in free-trade zone consisting of eastern European nations, the UK, and the US, and membership in a similarly constituted mutual defense arrangement.  It’s never too late to negotiate such arrangements.

Foreign Aid to Whom?

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The United Nations’ Central Emergency Response Fund has, with Venezuelan President Nicolas Madura’s permission (recipient nations’ permissions are required for CERF funds release), sent $9.2 million in emergency humanitarian aid to…someone…in Venezuela.  The money is intended to mitigate Venezuela’s medicine and food shortage crisis which stems from the Venezuelan government’s failure to perform.

In addition, the UN’s International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) is expanding its aid for Venezuela.  UNICEF already has delivered…to someone…nearly 130 tons of medicine, health, and nutrition supplies for 350,000 women and children just since August.

The UN has not said to whom it sent these goodies, only for whom they’re intended.

Russia and Ukraine

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Over the weekend, Russia has decided to block Ukraine’s access to the Sea of Azov from the Black Sea; it’s placed a cargo ship under the Kerch Strait Bridge, which Russia completed earlier this year to give it direct land access from Russia to Russian-occupied Crimea, and Russia has military helicopters orbiting above the bridge.  The Kerch Strait is a bit under 2,000 feet wide where the bridge sits.

This followed the Russian Black Sea Navy’s aggression against a Ukrainian flotilla of no military significance—a Ukrainian Navy tugboat and two Ukrainian Navy artillery ships—that was transferring from Odessa on the Ukrainian Black Sea coast to Mariupol on the Ukrainian Sea of Azov coast. The Russian ships deliberately rammed the Ukrainian tugboat, damaging the latter’s hull and engines, and then the Russians seized the three Ukrainian ships.

The question arises concerning why Russian President Vladimir Putin has chosen this naked escalation.  A number of possible answers arise, also.

One is to serve as a military demonstration of force for Ukraine’s benefit, executed to enforce Russia’s illegal “elections” in its eastern occupied Ukraine.

Another is to distract from his doings in the north: his meddling in Baltic State elections, his cyber aggressions against them, his movement of tactical nuclear weapons closer to his borders with them.

Another is to distract from renewed troubles with his second natural gas pipeline, currently under construction, that would connect Russia with Germany under the Baltic Sea.

Another is for the aggression against Ukraine to serve as a demonstration for the attention of Germany regarding that pipeline and for the attention of Moldova as the latter works to tighten its ties with NATO Europe and to resist Russia’s attempt at Ukraine-style occupation.

Another is as a domestic distraction.  Russia also is currently is deeply into a demographic crisis.   Nearly 30% of the Russian population is 55 years old or older, and that per centage is growing.  Russia’s current fertility rate—births per woman—is 1.61 against a necessary 2.01 rate just to maintain a given population level.  Russia’s current birth rate of 10.7 births/1,000 population compares badly with its current death rate of 13.4 deaths/1,000 population.  With an in-migration rate of 1.7 migrant(s)/1,000 population, that still leaves Russians dying faster than they’re being born and gaining immigrants combined.  Consistent with that, Russia’s population is shrinking—by 0.11% this year.

Russia’s per capita GDP has fallen by 3% since its nearby peak in 2013: Russians are individually poorer than they were, even with a slight increase in the current year, even as Putin spends Russian treasure on all of his foreign adventures.  Note that this shrinkage in individual prosperity is mitigated by that shrinking population—were it growing, instead, the increasing poverty would be much worse.

Or some combination of all of those distractions.

Note, though, that as of Monday, Russia seems to have lifted its Sea of Azov blockade, but it continues to hold the Ukrainian ships and crews.

Asylum

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Folks from the “caravan” have begun arriving in the Mexican border town of Tijuana preparatory to their effort to enter the US and ask for asylum.

These folks, claiming to flee government persecution and/or criminal assaults (which isn’t an asylum criterion, anyway), in their home countries, succeeded in escaping those things when they succeeded in entering Mexico—especially with Mexico having offered them asylum (and job opportunities) after that entry.

Now they need to say what they fear about their Mexican hosts that drives their need to flee Mexico and get asylum in the US. Since they haven’t experienced any of that in Mexico, and they have rejected Mexican asylum from their home countries, they should be denied entry into the US and those that do make it in need to be denied asylum here—their requests can only be shams.

No Nation is an Island

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That’s the concern of The Wall Street Journal in one of its Thursday editorials.

President Trump’s biggest achievement has been the revival of faster US economic growth, but past performance is no guarantee of future results. The White House should be worried about growing economic strains in the rest of the world, and policy makers need to prepare. The US is not an island.

The WSJ went on to note that the Germany economy shrank 0.2% in the last quarter, the Japanese economy shrank by 0.3% in the same quarter, and the PRC’s economy “only” grew by 6.5% year-on-year in the same quarter.  The WSJ particularly worried about the German auto industry.

However.

It’s true enough that the US is not an economic island, but there are many, and serious, factors that are beyond our control and that the WSJ chose to be silent about.

Take Germany, for instance. Its labor laws are almost as draconian as the French and, together with German regulations, leave that economy much less nimble in changing conditions than it needs to be.  And even though the German auto industry wants a zero-tariff trading regime, at least with its products, the German government has shown its disinterest with its lack of action at the EU level.

The Japanese economy also is heavily regulated and inflexible, for all that it’s not a centrally planned one.  There’s no economic flexibility there.

That’s especially true with the especially heavily regulated and overtly, deliberately centrally planned economy of the PRC.

Our other trading partners? The EU as a whole has rejected any concept of a tariff-free environment with the US, it routinely attacks our companies’ competitive success across Europe, it constantly seeks to raise taxes on our companies rather than lowering their own to competitive levels, and on and on.

There’s only so much we can do with trading partners whose government denizens are more interested in their personal political and fiscal powers than they are in the welfare of their citizens.