Tag Archives: foreign policy

More, Please

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A US Navy destroyer sailed within 12 nautical miles or within the territorial waters of an island [Triton Island, part of the Paracel Islands] claimed by China in the South China Sea, in a sign of increasing tension in the region days after Secretary of State John Kerry visited Beijing attempting to settle long standing territorial disputes. Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims to the island as well.

One small correction: the destroyer, the USS Curtis Wilbur, did not sail within the territorial waters of the PRC, even though it sailed within 12 nm of Triton in the western part of the South China Sea, roughly 250 miles east of Vietnam. The Paracels are not the territory of the PRC; its claim is just part of its overall grab for the entire Sea.

That’s part of the reason such sails-by are necessary: to emphasize the illegitimacy of the PRC’s claim and of its attempts to occupy the islands. We need more of these sailings, and we need frequent flyovers, too. These are things, though, that the Obama administration is too timid to do, or is unable to understand the necessity of the doing, or both.

Captain Jeff Davis, speaking for the Pentagon (and so for President Barack Obama (D)):

This operation was about challenging excessive maritime claims that restrict the rights and freedoms of the United States and others, not about territorial claims to land features[.]

And

[Last] week in Beijing, Secretary Kerry refused to criticize his host publicly or accuse the Chinese of wrong doing in the South China Sea over the build-up of artificial islands worrying its neighbors in the region. …the United States “does not take sides on the sovereignty questions underlying the territorial disputes.”

This is what’s wrong. We should be challenging the PRC over its expansionist occupation. If we truly do not “take sides on the sovereignty questions,” then we really do need to challenge, explicitly, the PRC’s seizures; that’s the bare minimum necessary to preserve the balance among the competing claims over those islands, and of the Spratlys, and of the South China Sea as a whole, which the PRC has occupied (and of the East China Sea, which the PRC also has moved to occupy).

The South China Sea and Chinas

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Taiwan’s president, defying a rare criticism from key ally the United States, visited an island in the disputed South China Sea on Thursday to emphasize Taiwan’s sovereignty claims in the increasingly tense region.

A small correction: that’s the Republic of China, which sits on the island of Taiwan.

And good for President Ma Ying-jeou, who along with 30 staffers visited the island of Taiping in the Spratly Islands, a collection variously claimed by the RoC, Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, and which lie within Brunei’s EEZ, but which has been seized and occupied by the People’s Republic of China.

Each of these nations and the United States should make more of this sort of visit, independently and together, to emphasize both their competing claims (which they’re willing and capable of settling among themselves, amicably) and the illegitimacy of the PRC occupation.

Lawlessness

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The intelligence community has deemed some of Hillary Clinton’s emails “too damaging” to national security to release under any circumstances, according to a US government official close to the ongoing review. A second source, who was not authorized to speak on the record, backed up the finding.

But they weren’t too damaging for Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to bruit about via her unprotected email server: to pass along to staffers lacking the clearance to have access to this sort of information, to make available to the intelligence services of our enemies, or to make available to any hacker who might have taken a notion to go look at what Clinton had on her unsecured server.

Once again, whether the emails were marked classified is irrelevant. Classified data are classified by their existence and nature; markings do not classify anything, they only indicate data that are classified.

Once again, intent in the handling of classified data is irrelevant. Simply mishandling them is a felony.

Despite these plain facts, the Democratic Party continues to support Clinton for President, and it continues to deny the lawlessness of Clinton’s behavior and to minimize the damage to our country from her lawlessness.

This is the party that would rule us after the coming elections, if we’re not very careful.

Another Advantage

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…of low oil prices. Low prices are good for American consumers, especially in winter, when we not only have to drive, but we have to heat our homes.

Here’s an additional advantage, though.

But falling crude prices, US-led sanctions and diminished oil exploration threaten Russia’s oil industry and raise questions about its capacity to continue underwriting President Vladimir Putin’s ambitions at home and abroad.

Sanctions hurt Russia in a lot of economic ways, but that interference with Putin’s designs on eastern Europe can last only as long as the sanctions régime holds up. The falloff in exploration actually would work to Russia’s (and Iran’s) benefit, were it to last a long time, as that would diminish supply relative to demand, and so would raise oil prices.

That’s the kicker, though. Russia (and Iran) need $100+ oil in order to balance their budgets. Today’s $30 price, which I think will last at least into the intermediate future, if fracking and shale oil haven’t more permanently altered the supply availability environment, means that if Putin wants to continue his aggression against his neighbors, if he wants to continue to try to reconquer those nations and so reconstitute the old Soviet Union empire, he’ll have to borrow money to do so.

However, the only thing he has with which to repay such debt is revenue from oil and natural gas sales; the Russian economy is that dependent on extraction—it produces nothing else. At today’s prices, Putin will have to sell 3+ times as much oil as he would have had to just a couple of years ago. That creates a vicious circle: the more oil he produces and sells, the longer downward pressure on oil price continues.

And with Iranian production entering the market shortly, courtesy of Khamenei’s Best Bud President Barack Obama, those prices will be the recipient of additional downward pressure.

Arrogance of the PRC

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Tsai Ing-wen, of the staunchly pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, resoundingly won election to be President of the Republic of China. The People’s Republic of China was not happy; the PRC has long wanted to get the island nation back under the mainland’s thumb.

In keeping with that, Li Zhenguang of the PRC’s Beijing Union University’s Institute of Taiwan Studies is insisting that

Beijing would be in no rush to engage with Ms Tsai. Rather…”It’s up to Tsai Ing-wen to decide whether she needs to initiate dialogue with the mainland. It’s up to her to find a formulation on cross-Strait ties that’s acceptable to the mainland.”

PRC arrogance has led them to get this backwards. It’s up to Xi Jinping, PRC President, to decide whether he wants honest relations with the RoC. It’s up to Xi to develop a cross-Strait policy that works for the RoC.