Tag Archives: foreign policy

A Foreign Policy Fallout

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Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced Tuesday that the biggest military contract in Australia’s history, a $40 billion tender to build 12 submarines, will go to a French naval contractor.  That’s a defeat for Japan’s bid, and with it a lost opportunity to deepen cooperation among the leading Pacific democracies facing China’s rising military.

For all of Turnbull’s rationalizations, this was a major factor in rejecting the Japanese offer:

The most significant influence may have been China, Australia’s largest trading partner, which openly campaigned against Japan’s bid. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned his Australian counterpart in February to remember World War II….

Yeah.  The PRC disapproved, and Australia, with the strength of its American ally demonstrated by our response to the PRC’s occupation of the South China Sea, knuckled under.  Don’t think Japan, in the face of our response to the PRC’s occupation attempts in the East China Sea, isn’t watching this very carefully, and not only for the implications to its shipbuilding industry.

Divide and conquer works.  Especially when the two being divided from each other have been abandoned by a United States become timorous in the face of PRC behaviors.

Another PRC Challenge of the US

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The PRC now is exploring Scarborough Shoal with the intent to expand its control over the South China Sea and to pose a more proximate threat to an American ally, this one the Republic of the Philippines.  Scarborough Shoal, as most of you know, is just 120 nautical miles from the Philippines 200 nautical miles from the capital, Manila.  Scarborough also is 470 nautical miles from the PRC.

In posing this challenge to the Philippines, the PRC also is making an in-your-face move against the US, with the intent of separating the RP from the US and of showing to the rest of the nations in the region just how little is the value of aligning with us.  The Obama administration is answering that challenge in just the way the PRC is anticipating—with timidity [emphasis added].

The six US aircraft that flew near Scarborough Shoal on April 19 are based at Clark [AB, 50 miles NW of Manila].  The four A-10 Thunderbolt fighters and two HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters “conducted a flying mission through international airspace…providing air and maritime situational awareness,” the US Air Force statement said.

None of the US flights flew to within 12 nautical miles of Scarborough, according to a US official, which would have amounted to a legal challenge to China’s claims on the shoal, but the proximity of the flights was clearly intended to send a message to Beijing.

A message was sent, all right.  By deliberately not challenging the legality of the PRC’s claims, the Obama administration said most clearly, “We accept your legal rights; we’re just making a feeble face-saving gesture.  Please.”

Elections have consequences.  And not only for us Americans.

Russian Intimidation

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Russia’s ambassador to NATO accused the US Wednesday of trying to intimidate Moscow by sailing a Navy destroyer in the Baltic Sea, and vowed Russia would respond to future incidents with “all necessary measures.”

Is Russia establishing a nine-dash boundary?  After all, Russian MFWIC Vladimir Putin has been watching President Barack Obama’s (D) remarkably timid response to the PRC’s boundary-setting in the South China Sea.

The Situation in Ukraine

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This is a YouTube video showing the front lines in Ukraine over the last two years.  The title translates as Two Years ATO [Anti-terrorist Operation] in Two Minutes; the text in the lower right names the months as they pass.

The description below the video translates, roughly, as

TSN.ua [a Ukrainian news agency] assembled in one video map all hostilities in the Donbass, distributed in Ukrainian media in the last two years.  The first of them began to appear on the network in June 2014 and since July [has been] updated almost daily.  After reviewing a two-minute infographic, you can see how over time the front line changed, and in that period as long as ATO occurred relative lull.

Notice how the front, after some time, stabilized in the north, and then then in the west: by October (ЖОВТЕНЬ) 2014.  What might the Ukrainians have been able to accomplish against this Russian invasion had they been permitted by the Obama administration and/or the Europeans to have actual weapons with which to defend themselves?

A Timid Administration

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Saudi Arabia has told the Obama administration and members of Congress that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

And in response, President Barack Obama (D) once again bowed to Adel al-Jubeir, Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, who personally delivered the threat, and virtually to King Salman bin Abdulaziz.  Obama then responded to the Saudi threat, meekly.  He

has lobbied Congress to block the bill’s passage, according to administration officials and congressional aides from both parties….

This timidity is a part of what Democratic Party Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT) insist they will perpetuate, should they be elected.

Elections have consequences.