Tag Archives: foreign policy

The Syria Strike

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One point regarding President Donald Trump’s missile strike against Syria’s Shayrat airbase, from which the barbarian chieftain Bashar al-Assad launched his gas attacks against his own citizenry—including children and babies—is often missed, but Richard Fernandez did not.

[T]he Navy’s missiles very carefully avoided the tanks of sarin gas to avoid collateral damage. This could only be possible if the US knew the location of all the poison the previous administration had already destroyed.

While a single incident doesn’t create a trend (as a stat professor I once had put it, “If your hypothesis calls for a linear trend, collect two data points”), the absence of an administration willing to do more against barbarism than tut-tutting and finger-shaking seems to be getting filled in.

But wait—there’s more.  The Navy very carefully avoided targeting the air base barracks housing Russian soldiers, also.  Which means this administration also knew another thing that the prior administration must have known as well: there were Russian soldiers present on that base that housed the chemical weapons and which facilities armed and launched the aircraft that used those chemical weapons against those children and babies.

The Russians knew of and were complicit in the continued presence of Syria’s chemical weapons and al-Assad’s use of them.  As our UN Ambassador Nikki Haley mentioned.

Japanese Active Defense

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With the growing threat to the Japanese homeland represented by northern Korea’s nuclear weapons development, Japan is considering another major change to its defense posture: acquisition of a “counter-attack” capability to allow Japan to more actively respond to an attack by northern Korea.

There are a couple of misconceptions, though, in the government’s considerations or in The Diplomat‘s presentation of those considerations.

As long as Japan acquires the capabilities recommended by the study group with close consultation with the United States, so that whatever the new capability Japan acquires will benefit overall deterrence of the US-Japan alliance, it will ultimately work to counter urgent security challenges presented by North Korea.

Japan’s acquisition of counter-attack capabilities may well benefit from consultation with us.  However, Japan’s acquisition need not be limited by, or to, such consultations; Japanese acquisitions done on their own recognizance also will work to counter urgent security challenges presented by northern Korea.

The larger misconceptions, though, are these:

On the one hand, Japan has to accelerate its investment in the capabilities to counter the North Korean threat, which is a conventional military threat. On the other hand, Japan will also have to continue the investment it began to develop capabilities to counter China’s assertive actions in the East China Sea.

The northern Korean threat is only minimally a conventional one.  While northern Korea can lob a number of conventionally armed ballistic missiles at Japan, the serious threat, the one that can severely damage the Japanese homeland and butcher millions of Japanese, the serious threat posed by northern Korea is its growing nuclear weapons capability, especially coupled with Baby Kim’s constant threats to use those weapons when he’s achieved the ability to lob them at anyone.

Furthermore, I’m not convinced the two problems presented by northern Korea and the People’s Republic of China’s aggressions in the East China Sea are unrelated.  Nor am I convinced the two problems’ causes are unrelated.

Japan would do well to acquire an active defense capability, one capable of responding more completely than merely parrying an attack (which parrying can only be imperfect, and with nuclear weapons any leakage can have devastating consequences), but in addition to the parry being capable of serious counterstrokes.  Especially since such capabilities would do well against both problems.

Northern Korea and the People’s Republic of China

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On the day before the PRC’s President, Xi Jinping, is to meet with President Donald Trump, northern Korea fired another ballistic missile (this one apparently another test of its solid-fueled model).  Of course, the careful timing of Baby Kim’s missile launch has been denied by the PRC’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying.  There is no “direct relation” between the missile launch and the Trump-Xi meeting, she insisted.

The more telling description of events and event relations, though, was provided by Shi Yinhong, Director of the Center on American Studies at Renmin University in Beijing:

China has nearly exhausted its leverage with North Korea.

Whether that’s true or the PRC is simply continuing to wash its hands of its responsibility for its client state, Shi’s remark makes one thing increasingly clear: we must take more direct action vis-à-vis northern Korea, and that action must come without PRC involvement; they’ll just be left behind.

Trade Barriers

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Since the meeting between PRC President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump is a matter of concern these days, and the trade negotiations that are part of that meeting also are a matter of concern, herewith a concern of my own.

Maybe this is the right time for the two leaders to cut a deal to slash Chinese trade barriers.

The three biggest PRC trade barriers are these:

  • the PRC’s demand for government backdoors into American foundational software used by companies wanting to do business in the PRC
  • the PRC’s demand that American companies “partner” with PRC companies as a condition of doing business in the PRC
  • the PRC’s parallel demand that American companies transfer American technology to those “partners”

Absent removal of these barriers, no other barrier removal matters.  Absent removal of these barriers, no deal with the PRC should be concluded.

NATO and Mutual Defense Alliances

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Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was in Europe at the end of the week, and among other things, he pushed for NATO member states to honor their decades-old commitment to spend 2% of their GDP on defense.

Germany, among other members, insisted that honoring their commitment was “unrealistic.”

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said demands for 2% of GDP spending were “totally unrealistic.” He said that to meet the US target, Germany would have to increase spending by some €35 billion ($37 billion).

After all, Gabriel has argued,

…a strong defense isn’t enough to ensure security.

That’s a cynically offered straw man, though; no one is arguing that a strong defense is sufficient, only that it’s necessary.  Gabriel will have to play with his dolly without me.

There are others who agree that the nations need to boost their own spending—Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, for instance, and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.  But it isn’t sufficient.

We need to be developing a mutual defense alliance that includes eastern European nations, anyway.  Maybe the result of that development should be a separate alliance, not an expansion of NATO.  Perhaps even the result should replace NATO, or at least our role in the new alliance should replace our role in NATO, since so many of the nations of NATO have so little interest in their own treaty responsibilities.