Tag Archives: foreign policy

A Bad Deal

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And all for the sake of a personal legacy, apparently.

Republic of Korea President Moon Jae-in has cut an Olympic-sized deal with northern Korea concerning the latter’s participation in next month’s Winter Olympics.  According to the deal,

South Korean athletes and performers [will go] north of the demilitarized zone for training at a North Korean ski resort and a cultural event at a scenic mountain resort.

Further,

[T]he two Koreas will walk into the opening ceremony of next month’s Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, under one flag—the unification flag that depicts all of Korea. The two countries’ women’s ice hockey teams will unite to form a joint Korean squad.

It’ll be interesting to see how many ROK athletes and performers will be willing to go north and the quality of those who do.  It’ll also be interesting to see what the single flag looks like; here’s what the “reunification” flag looked like at the 2006 Winter Olympics:

It’ll be even more interesting to see how many of the RoK women’s hockey team actually show up.  There’s considerable disgruntlement among the team, Olympic athletes generally, and athletic sphere leadership over Moon’s agreement here, both over the agreement and over the RoK players who will be cut or denied ice time to make room for the north’s players.

And: the agreement seems not to have been done with athletes’ input or even warning that it was coming.  Moon certainly is setting his legacy.

Nuclear Weapons Proliferation

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President Donald Trump has moved to fix or withdraw from ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) Executive Agreement with Iran, cosigned by the leaders of a number of European nations, covering Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Folks can argue that this step has taken too long (and the terms of Obama’s EA have not been fixed, yet, nor have we canceled it; the deadline for that is next May), and I’m among the impatient.  However, the delay isn’t all bad (so far), since discussions of the Agreement, both public and behind the scenes (I assume), over the course of this delay have made the problems with it plainly evident, and the other parties to the deal no longer have excuses—they’ve have plenty of time to make their positions plain.

And the European parties are doing so.

European leaders have pushed back against major revisions. That, they fear, could give Tehran an excuse to walk away from the deal entirely, accelerating Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon.

This is naïve.  Accelerated or only moderately accelerated, Iran will get nuclear weapons in the current circumstance.  That would be the true disaster, since Iran has sworn to destroy Israel, and Iran will happily sell (or give) nuclear weapons to its client terrorist network entities for the latter’s use in Europe, the US, and elsewhere around the world.

Northern Korea and Talks

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Jonathan Cheng had a piece in the Wall Street Journal that talked about differences in policy held by RoK President Moon Jae-in and US President Donald Trump, especially concerning northern Korea.  He seemed surprised that friends or allies could disagree with each other rather than one simply being a satrap of the other.

Withal, though, I want to comment on one remark he had at the end of his piece.

[Moon suggested that] the end goal of international pressure and sanctions is to “find a way for North Korea to live together in peace with the international community”—a comment that appears at odds with the US goal of denuclearization.

Cheng is wrong; there is no contradiction. If northern Korea truly is interested in “living together in peace and harmony with the international community,” it has no need of nuclear weapons. No one is interested in attacking northern Korea, except in self defense, perhaps preemptively.

Northern Korea doesn’t have very much that anyone else wants, and what it does have is more easily and more cheaply obtainable through free trade than through conquest. Baby Kim knows this.

Leadership

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Maybe German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel is figuring a couple of things out.  Here are a couple of his remarks in an interview with Spiegel Online:

In the past, we could rely on the French, the British and, especially, the Americans, to assert our interests in the world. We have always criticized the US for being the global police, and it was often appropriate to do so. But we are now seeing what happens when the US pulls back. There is no such thing as a vacuum in international politics. If the US leaves the room, other powers immediately walk in. In Syria, it’s Russia and Iran. In trade policy, it’s China. These examples show that, ultimately, we are no longer achieving…the dissemination of our European values nor the advancement of our interests.

And

[Should Europe be feared?] No, not feared. On the contrary. Countries that work with us should feel safer than they would if they worked with non-democratic regimes. Why isn’t Europe building infrastructure in Africa instead of leaving it to the Chinese? Why haven’t we succeeded in promoting the economic development of our neighbors in the Balkans, instead conceding these countries to growing Russian influence? In an uncomfortable world, we Europeans can no longer sit back and wait for the USA.

Maybe the US being the world’s policeman wasn’t—isn’t—such a bad thing, after all.  For all that, maybe Europe—if it can reach actual and durable consensus—and in particular Germany, stepping up more and taking on more of their own global security responsibilities isn’t such a bad thing, either.

Time to Visit

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Li Kexin, Minister, Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the United States of America, says

The day that a US Navy vessel arrives in Kaohsiung is the day that our People’s Liberation Army unifies Taiwan with military force[.]

Kaohsiung is a major seaport on the southwest coast of the Republic of China.  Since the PRC now is threatening to invade and conquer a sovereign nation that is an ally and friend of ours, it has become imperative that we do a number of things, including:

  • send a USN combatant ship and a hospital ship to Kaohsiung for a friendly visit
  • resume patrols in the Taiwan Strait between the PRC and the RoC
  • upgrade the RoC’s Air Force with newer fighter and ground attack aircraft, and greater numbers of them
  • sell to the RoC, and train their personnel in the use of, missile defense systems, including Patriot and THAAD
  • broker deals between the RoC and Israel for the RoC’s acquisition of Iron Dome and Arrow rocket and missile defense systems (the latter to complement Patriot)
  • increase our sea and air patrols of PRC-seized islands in the South China Sea, sailing as close as the waters will safely allow, and making low-level flights over the islands
  • increase, in coordination with Japan, our sea and air patrols of East China Sea islands harassed by the PRC’s navy and air forces
  • patrol the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea with missile defense capable naval shipping

This also is an attempt by the PRC to distract from its decision to not enforce in any serious manner the sanctions against northern Korea and its decision to not persuade its new BFF, Russia, to seriously enforce those sanctions.  We need to make appropriate responses against those PRC and Russian entities, both business and government, that are disregarding the sanctions’ requirements.

The PRC has been asking after our cauldrons since early in the Obama administration; it’s long past time to respond to the PRC’s Warring Nations mentality.  For our allies’ and friends’ safety, not only the RoC’s, and for our own safety.