Tag Archives: foreign policy

Being Aced Out?

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Vietnam has shown interest in opening Cam Ranh Bay to our Navy’s use, and that interest has grown as the People’s Republic of China has increased its aggressiveness in occupying the South China Sea and interfering with other nations’ activities in their waters in the Sea—in particular here Vietnam’s use of its Paracel Islands, in which the PRC is building air bases for the PLA Air Force.

The Obama administration has been less interested in taking advantage of the opening while it has been responding timidly to the PRC’s occupation.

Now this.

Three Chinese navy ships will make their first port call this weekend at the Vietnam’s strategic Cam Ranh Bay, coming as the countries are locked in a territorial dispute in the South China Sea.

Just to emphasize the matter, the PLA Navy’s visit comes on the heels of a visit to the port by two USN ships, and it comes while Vietnam and the PRC continue to dispute ownership of the Paracels.

As Predicted

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…by a number of folks, including politicians.

Senior Iranian officials, including the country’s president, have been floating the possibility of further payments from the United States for months. Since the White House agreed to pay Tehran $1.7 billion in cash earlier this year as part of a deal bound up in the release of American hostages, Iran has captured several more US citizens.

Here’s Senator Mark Kirk (R, IL) again:

After airlifting $1.7 billion in cash ransom payments to Iran, even the US State Department ‎now warns of increased dangers that the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism will continue to illegally seize Americans and Westerners who travel or do business with Iran. Companies, banks, and American citizens would be wise to stay away from Iran[.]

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp, Iran’s primary military force, and the Praetorian Guard supporting Iran’s Supreme Leader Sayyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei says

“We should wait and see, the US will offer … many billions of dollars to release” American businessman Siamak Namazi and his father Baquer….

Yep.  Saeed Ghasseminejad, Associate Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies:

Paying $1.7 billion to Iran to release the US prisoners has encouraged Iran to arrest more Americans.  Iran senses weakness in the US leadership as it constantly tests the administration through a chain of provocative actions.

We shouldn’t have to look forward to more of this after early November.

Cowed by the PRC?

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Canberra confirmed last week that the Australian Navy won’t conduct freedom-of-navigation patrols in the international waters of the South China Sea, giving China’s bid to dominate the strategic area a boost.

And

An international tribunal ruled in July that China’s bid to claim most of the sea violates international law. But the verdict will be rendered moot unless law-abiding states are willing to push back. That would give Beijing effective control over the 60% of Australian trade that transits the sea.

However, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop appear to have gotten their marching orders from PRC President Xi Jinping and Wang Yi.  Embarrassingly (did Turnbull have the grace for embarrassment), Turnbull has decried opposition to this acquiescence as “highly political,” and a measure of “immaturity and unreadiness to take responsibility for these issues.”  Bishop is terrified that enforcing freedom of navigation imperatives—even international law—would “escalate tensions.”

You bet the matter is highly political, Turnbull.  Enforcing international law—or surrendering the rights involved to the biggest bully—is purely political.  In what venue would you place it otherwise?  Your inability to understand that, or your timidity in acting on an accurate understanding, marks your own political immaturity and unreadiness.

Escalating tensions?  The PRC is already doing that with its seizure and occupation of the South China Sea, and it’s actively pressing its advantage gained from your backing away from tension.

You guys used to be made of sterner stuff.  What happened to the Australian government that faced down a rampant Japan on your doorstep just 75 years ago?

Or are you thinking you have no support from the US, which already is in retreat before the PRC?  That, at least, would have a ring of shameful truth to it.

Obama’s Foreign Policy Failure

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Here’s an illustrative example.

While the press was focused on the Hillary-Trump debate, Iranian-backed rebels fired two missiles at the USS Mason off Yemen.

That’s how much respect President Barack Obama’s (D) foreign policy has earned us.

[As cited by Richard Fernandez at the above link] “Sending the warships to the area is a message that the primary goal of the Navy is to ensure that shipping continues unimpeded in the strait and the vicinity,” said a US defense official.

Message received.  And contemptuously wadded up and tossed back at our feet.

Here’s another.

Only yesterday [9 Oct], Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Washington of aggression without raising so much as a ripple on Twitter.

This came as Russia, thumbing its nose at us, was moving nuclear-armed missiles into Kaliningrad.  This occurred, also, without so much as a bleat from Obama.  (Yes, yes, I know the missiles are rated only as nuclear-capable.  But nobody moves nuclear-capable missiles anywhere without also moving their nuclear warheads along with them.)

Here’s another.

The Philippine defense chief [Delfin Lorenzana] said Friday that he had suspended participation in any joint patrols with the US of the disputed South China Sea, the first concrete sign of a crack in the military alliance following the election of President Rodrigo Duterte.

This is the foreign policy Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton wants to continue.

Recall, though, her own foray into foreign policy with her Reset button when she was Secretary of State.  She was so inept then, or so incompetent, or so…forgetful…that she couldn’t even get a simple translation of a single word, Reset, translated into Russian properly.

Even could a case be made that Obama’s foreign policy was a good idea, Clinton has shown she cannot be relied on from a simple competency perspective to carry it on.

Another Memory Failure

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Sunday’s townhall debate between Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican Party Presidential candidate Donald Trump was memorable for a lot of exchanges, but this one may be symptomatic of a larger medical problem of Clinton’s.

When Trump brought up President Barack Obama’s (D) red line about Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s chemical weapon use and then proceeded to retreat from it when al Assad called his bluff, he said Clinton played a role in that failure through her position as Secretary of State at the time.

Clinton responded by saying that she was not Secretary of State at that time; she’d already left the office.

I was gone.  At some point, we need to do some fact-checking here.

Indeed.

However, Clinton, in fact, ran the State Department for Obama from 2009 until 2013, during which time Assad continued to use chemical weapons.

This kind of memory lapse isn’t useful for our President to be having, nor is the rate at which she’s experiencing them.