Tag Archives: foreign policy

EU Bad Faith

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The European Union now says that any trade deal discussions with Great Britain must come after the terms of Great Britain’s going out from the EU have been agreed.  Fair enough; it’s tough to negotiate a trade deal before the nature of the relationship between the two has been identified.

But now there’s this, too.

…EU courts must continue to have a role in Britain after Britain’s exit from the bloc.

And

They [the EU leadership] emphasize the importance of ensuring no hard border is re-established between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and even touch on issues like the future legal status of Gibraltar….

Say, what?  The internal territories of a nation are the business of that nation, and no one else’s.  Gibraltar’s “future legal status” is the same as it has been; Great Britain’s going out has no more effect on the place than it does on Wales.  The borders of a nation are the business of that nation, and no one else’s.  Great Britain’s outward-facing border along Northern Ireland is the business of Great Britain; the EU has nothing to say about this domestic matter.  The courts of a nation are the business of that nation, and no one else’s.  British courts consist of the British court system.

One of the reasons the Brits decided to leave was to regain British sovereignty over their own nation.  Either the EU peerage inhabiting Brussels haven’t been listening, or they’re being entirely disingenuous in their affront over the Brits’ impertinence in rejecting these persons’ superior abilities to govern.

It’s a Start

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The Secretary of State wants to cut 2,300 jobs at State.  That might seem like a lot, until you recall that State has 13,000 Foreign Service employees, 11,000 Civil Service employees, and 45,000 Foreign Service local employees.  That’s 69,000 folks on the payroll (some estimates put the number higher, to 75,000); Tillerson wants to cut all of 3% of the employees.

Contra The Wall Street Journal‘s subheadline (The plan underscores the Trump administration’s preference for military spending over diplomacy), this is a good start on the true priority—downsizing the Federal government physically as well as fiscally.  Here’s hoping Secretary of State Rex Tillerson can follow through, and Congress and the other Cabinets and Agencies join the party.

It’ll be even better if the ones cut by Tillerson (et al., I hope) aren’t merely reallocated elsewhere on the government’s payroll but are instead returned to the private sector.

Naturally, politicians are all in a tizzy at the thought of actual downsizing—including an embarrassing number of politicians who caucus with the Republican Party.

…43 Republican and Democratic senators signed onto a letter to congressional appropriators arguing for “robust funding” for foreign aid and diplomacy.

“At a time when we face multiple national-security challenges around the world, deep cuts in this area would be short-sighted, counter-productive and even dangerous,” the letter said.

It is, though, entirely possible to do the same amount of work with fewer folks and less money—just using them both more efficiently.  In fact, it’s entirely possible to do more work with fewer folks—the lesser number won’t get in each other’s way so much.

Obama-Iran Axis

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It sort of makes any Trump-Russia connection look awfully tenuous.  Politico has a long report out on what actually transpired during Obama’s “negotiation” of the Iran nuclear weapons deal, particularly with regard to the seven folks in American detention whom Obama released to Iran as a deal sweetener.

A couple of highlights (read the whole thing; it’s important):

In reality, some of them were accused by Obama’s own Justice Department of posing threats to national security. Three allegedly were part of an illegal procurement network supplying Iran with US-made microelectronics with applications in surface-to-air and cruise missiles like the kind Tehran test-fired recently, prompting a still-escalating exchange of threats with the Trump administration. Another was serving an eight-year sentence for conspiring to supply Iran with satellite technology and hardware.

And

[I]n a series of unpublicized court filings, the Justice Department dropped charges and international arrest warrants against 14 other men, all of them fugitives.

And

Three of the fugitives allegedly sought to lease Boeing aircraft for an Iranian airline that authorities say had supported Hezbollah, the US-designated terrorist organization.

As a probably unrelated aside, recall that Boeing has just concluded a deal to sell 100 passenger aircraft to “an Iranian airline.”

And this:

The biggest fish, though, was Seyed Abolfazl Shahab Jamili, who had been charged with being part of a conspiracy that from 2005 to 2012 procured thousands of parts with nuclear applications for Iran via China.

Even regarding others we were on the verge of capturing or were tracking, Obama got in the way so he could have his deal.

…Justice and State Department officials denied or delayed requests from prosecutors and agents to lure some key Iranian fugitives to friendly countries so they could be arrested. Similarly, Justice and State, at times in consultation with the White House, slowed down efforts to extradite some suspects already in custody overseas, according to current and former officials and others involved in the counterproliferation effort.

And as far back as the fall of 2014, Obama administration officials began slow-walking some significant investigations and prosecutions of Iranian procurement networks operating in the US

This is the sort of thing then-President Barack Obama (D) was covering up in his rush to get a deal—any deal—with Iran concerning the Iranian nuclear weapons program.

And not a peep about this out of the current Democrats in Congress.

Again, RTWT.

Timidity Is

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…as timidity does.  The Japan Times has it, too, as demonstrated in its editorial last Wednesday.  The editorial board is worried about Japan actually achieving an ability to defend proactively itself.  The board’s concern was triggered [sic] by a Liberal Democratic Party proposal that

Japan consider developing the ability to strike enemy missile bases.  …a response to North Korea’s repeated ballistic missile launches….

The board fretted that

an attempt by Japan to build up the capability to attack enemy bases could result in destabilizing the region’s security environment by giving an imagined enemy an excuse to carry out pre-emptive strikes on our country.

Never mind that the region’s security environment already is at risk from Japan’s current inability strike (back) at an “imagined” enemy who attacks (including a Japanese ally?  That’s the implication of the Times board’s term); Japan can only to receive such a strike, potentially without post hoc answer.

The editorialists did raise a legitimate Constitutional question on the matter:

In 1959, defense chief Shigejiro Ito stated that possessing offensive weapons on the grounds of potential danger of enemy attack as mentioned by Hatoyama runs counter to the Constitution.

However, Ito misunderstood the Japanese Constitution and the duty of any nation’s government.  No government may, legitimately, surrender its people, the government’s master, into slavery or destruction; government must mount the means to defend itself.  With today’s technologies, that of necessity includes the obligation (not merely the right) to act preemptively if the situation demands it.

Preemptive defensive actions thus still defensive actions, and so they are well within the bounds of Japan’s Constitutional limits on military activity.

The Times‘ board went on:

To equip the Self-Defense Forces with the ability to pound enemy bases would require advanced technologies and equipment…. Possessing these kinds of technologies and equipment could go beyond the principle of defense-only security that the nation has adopted under the postwar Constitution.

Aside from the board’s lack of understanding of the nature of self-defense and the government’s obligation to be able to act preemptively, there’s the question of the board’s limiting principle here.  Would, for instance, concluding a treaty with another nation that obligates that nation to defend (and so to conduct preemptive actions for the sake of) Japan be a close enough possession of such technologies to violate the Japanese Constitution?  Would concluding a treaty with another nation for that nation to use its technologies to advise Japan and guide Japanese systems to the enemy bases be a close enough possession of such technologies to violate the Constitution?  In both cases, after all, Japan would deliberately be making use of these apparently proscribed technologies, if only indirectly.

And:

Japan’s attempt to obtain capabilities to strike enemy bases could be reciprocated by potential enemies, including North Korea, potentially leading to an arms race between the two countries.

Stipulated.  Is that better or worse, though, than Japan leaving itself exposed to the enemy’s initiative and the enemy’s possibly nuclear initial attack?  Does the board think Japan could survive a nuclear attack, much less answer it successfully?

Does the board think northern Korea (for instance) can maintain such an arms race for a longer time than Japan before it must leave off?

The Times‘ position is just the potential hostage preemptively surrendering itself into hostage status.

And it’s shameful.

The False Premise of a Madboy

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Harry Kazianis, writing in The Week Monday, portrayed northern Korea’s weekend military parading not as sabre rattling but as a demonstration of the fruits of development driven by military necessity.

Kim Jong Un—the leader of a nation that has an economy smaller than Ethiopia—knows all too well he has no way to match the United States, South Korea, and Japan ship for ship, plane for plane in a symmetrical sense. The only way he can hope to deter his enemies is to build the ultimate game-changer: nuclear weapons paired with missiles that can strike all the way across the globe.

But Baby Kim, assuming Kazianis’ description is reasonably accurate, is operating from a false premise.  Northern Korea has no enemies (other than the enemies any street gang has, I mean).  Northern Korea has no enemies because northern Korea has absolutely nothing that any other nation wants: not resources, not technology, not an industrial base worth the candle, not tourist attractions, not pleasant climate for vacationing, not even a pile of cash.  Nothing.

The only thing Kim’s behavior is generating is increasing urgency and necessity to spend the bandwidth and resources necessary to bring him and his government down, since the only real purpose he can have in developing his nuclear weapon suite is to attack his neighbors with it, whether they’re near or far, and so he must be preempted.

Either that, or he’s truly a mad boy—which increases the urgency and necessity of bringing him and his government down before he can do his fever-inspired damage.

Kazianis’ own offered alternatives are…useless.

First, Washington must work with the international community—that means you, China, as well—to contain North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs as robustly as possible. Secondary sanctions would be applied to any nation, financial entity, company, or individual who dared help the regime build such weapons.

We’ve “worked with the international community”—the Six Party Talks, for instance—for nearly 25 years, including sanctions, and including the PRC in the Six.  The result of all of that is Baby Kim’s current status of having 20-40 nuclear warheads and nearing the ability to stick them onto missiles capable of reaching as far as the western US.

Second, we can’t just use sanctions to limit Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile systems—we need to go further. The Trump administration must use cyber weapons, just as the Obama administration did in the case of Iran’s nuclear program, to slow the speed at which these programs can grow.

Certainly a useful thing to do, but just as the Iranian case has demonstrated, cyber weapons (ours or someone else’s) didn’t stop Iran—and as Kazianis implies, they won’t stop northern Korea.

Finally, and most importantly, we are well past the point where it is makes sense to open talks with North Korea—as repulsive as that sounds.

Not repulsive, just stupid.  We’ve talked to the northern Koreans for years, both via those Six Party Talks and directly.  The talks have been a waste of breath, and doing so again would simply be a demonstration of our own insanity: repeating past behaviors and expecting different results this time.

No, sterner measures than idle chit-chat, petty economic sanctions (against an economy smaller than Ethiopia, yet), and idle chit-chat are going to be needed.

Update: corrected an importing error.