Tag Archives: foreign policy

Obama Has Threatened Russia

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Or so he says, while continuing his partisan and petty attacks on his opponents.

The US will “take action” against Russia for alleged cyberattacks on Democratic officials, President Obama warned Thursday, hours after his spokesman claimed that President-elect Donald Trump “obviously knew” about the breaches and leaks that critics say propelled him to victory in last month’s election.

President Barack Obama’s (D) tough talk about retaliatory action against Russia comes against the backdrop of his Vice President Joe Biden’s threat to retaliate against Russia for its cyber invasions and his own threat of retaliation regarding Syrian use of chemical weapons.

Obama’s tough talk about what Trump knew and when he knew it comes against the backdrop of his refusal to let his intelligence community Directors let Congress know the same things he claims Trump already knew.

Obama in his own words:

I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections … we need to take action.  And we will—at a time and place of our own choosing. Some of it may be explicit and publicized; some of it may not be.

Sure he will.

I’m reminded of what bully wannabes on the playgrounds where I grew up used to chant: “Boy, oh boy, when I get you.”

Permissions of the PRC

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Tom Shorrock, who touts himself as having been raised in Japan and South Korea during the Cold War, has an interesting, if incoherent, piece in his Wednesday TomDispatch article.  He opened with a repeat of President-Elect Donald Trump’s tweet in response to the faux outrage of the NLMSM and the People’s Republic of China over his brief telecon with Republic of China President Tsai Ing-wen, a tweet that was concerned with whether the PRC had asked permission before building “a massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea.”

Shorrock then supplied a series of potential PRC President Xi Jinping tweets.

“Did America ask us if it was OK to…maintain a massive military complex of more than 100 bases in nearby Japan? I don’t think so!”

“Did America ask us if it was OK to…rent space at the massive U-Tapao military complex in nearby Thailand? I don’t think so!”

“Did America ask us if it was OK to…use portions of the military complexes at Antonio Bautista Air Base, Basa Air Base, Fort Magsaysay, Lumbia Air Base, and Mactan-Benito Ebuen Air Base in the nearby Philippines? I don’t think so!”

And on and on, ad ridiculum; you get the idea.

What’s missed here, or ignored, you pick ’em, is that the PRC seized and occupied islands that are either sovereign territory of other nations rimming the South China Sea or are well within those nations’ Exclusive Economic Zone, and so the PRC is present—vandalizing those islands with its construction—wholly illegally.  On the other hand, the US did, indeed, ask permission and conclude formal, freely negotiated treaties with the owning nations to allow our presence in the named locales.

The comparisons are so inapt as to be risible.  Which may well be why Xi didn’t make those tweets.  Or make those responses in any milieu.

One China and One China

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Here’s the People’s Republic of China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, still on about the Republic of China’s President, Tsai Ing-wen’s congratulatory telecon with President-Elect Donald Trump:

We urge the new US leader and government to fully understand the seriousness of the Taiwan issue, and to continue to stick to the one-China policy[.]

He went on to say that US-PRC relations would be “badly affected” were such behaviors to continue.

Indeed we do fully understand the seriousness of the Taiwan issue and the seriousness of the status of the RoC, which sits on that island.  It’s about time our administration gained that understanding, too, and began moving away from the…foolishness…of the last 45 years.

And Geng had this:

The Taiwan question has a bearing on China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and is one of China’s core interests.

Indeed.  The “Taiwan” question has a very large bearing on the island nation’s sovereignty and its territorial integrity and is at the center of the RoC’s core interests.

If our relationship with the mainland Chinese government is “badly affected,” that would be to the PRC’s detriment, not ours.  Furthermore, our relationship with the mainland already is—or would be with a less timid administration—badly affected by the PRC’s naked aggression in the East and South China Seas and by its use of northern Korea’s behaviors as levers against the Republic of Korea, Japan, and us.

The PRC isn’t helping matters either, when it trots out its token, and crony, capitalist Wang Jianlin to make naked threats against American citizens:

I’ve invested $10 billion in the U.S. I have 20,000 employees there.  If things aren’t handled well, those 20,000 people won’t have food to eat[.]

(The PRC and Wang are projecting their own failings, too: Americans don’t starve from our government’s retaliation against those who disobey it.)

The beginning of Trump’s recognition:

Trump said on “Fox News Sunday” that he doesn’t feel “bound by a one-China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade.”

It’s remotely possible for reasonable men to debate the degree of linkage involved in the fate of a sovereign nation, but it’s entirely appropriate for Trump—or anyone—to not feel bound by a “one-China” policy.  Throughout these last 45 years, the US has never recognized a one-China policy; we’ve only acknowledged that the PRC and an early, weak RoC had such a policy, even though too many American administrations have meekly behaved as though we accepted it.

On the other hand, one China: The Republic of China.  One China: The People’s Republic of China.

One China, and one China.

Sanctions

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The People’s Republic of China said Saturday that it opposes unilateral sanctions against northern Korea over the latter’s nuclear weapons program.  Such things must have the auspices of the UN.  The PRC also said it opposes the Republic of Korea having the ability to defend itself against northern Korea’s nuclear weapons, insisting that the deployment of a missile defense system would be a threat to the PRC’s security.

This is risible.  The PRC wants sanctions to go through the UN where, via its Security Council veto power, the PRC can water down joint sanctions to the point of uselessness.  The PRC doesn’t want sanctions and it doesn’t want the RoK to be able to defend itself against nuclear attack because the PRC wants to damage the RoK as a means of damaging further a timid US.

Of course, we need to make the deployment—and to press upon the (likely) new RoK government the importance of missile defense—and we need to impose such unilateral sanctions as we can on northern Korea and to make them as broad as we can.

We need to do this for a couple of reasons.  One is to demonstrate to the PRC that they don’t get to dictate our foreign policy.  Another is to demonstrate to the RoK, to Japan, to the nations rimming the South China Sea, and to ourselves that we’re done being timid in the Pacific.

A Hack

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The Russians are alleged to be behind the hacks into the Democrats’ IT systems, and they’re alleged to have so engaged in order to sow distrust in our election system and procedures and especially to influence our just concluded election in favor of the ultimate winner, President-Elect Donald Trump.  Indeed, the CIA and other of our intelligence agencies have said that the hacks have all the earmarks of Russian hackers.

A couple things about that.  The NLMSM’s bold, declarative statements based on those intelligence agency statements that the Russians did it notwithstanding, “have all the earmarks” does not mean the Russians did it, only that it looks like they did it.  Of course getting actual proof in the intelligence or the hacking world is more difficult even than getting “proof”—sufficient reduction of reasonable doubt—in a criminal trial.  Nor does that difficulty, or the limitation of a statement of “all the earmarks,” mean the Russians didn’t do it, especially in the face of their history.

The other thing centers on the assumption that the Russians really did do the hacks and for the reasons named.  Now the NLMSM, whose favored Democrats were losers in the last election at all levels from the Presidential level on down, is pushing at the top of its collective lungs the idea that the Russians did it, and to favor Trump, as though these were facts.

So: assume the Russians really did do the hacks for the reasons named.  The NLMSM, in its temper tantrums over their loss and their having been ignored by American voters, is playing along with that Russian goal and with that serving, wittingly or not, to discredit Trump and the elections, and to sow doubt about the legitimacy of both.

Congress is pressing for bipartisan investigations into the matter, and it’s pushing for President Barack Obama to release all of the report that will result from the investigation he’s ordered into the matter.  He should, and so should President Trump if the Obama investigation isn’t complete before Trump takes office.

The question is valid, and it should be investigated and answered, but press hysteria contributes nothing to an objective resolution while sowing the doubts the press alleges the Russians want sown.