Tag Archives: foreign policy

There’s Containment, and There’s Containment

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Recall President Barack Obama’s claim, on the morning of the Daesh’s terrorist attacks in Paris, that Daesh was contained.

Now he’s saying he was right in that assessment:

[H]e insisted that the reason he said they’re contained, hours before terror teams launched deadly raids across Paris, is because “they control less territory than they did last year.”

That may be marginally true: the Kurds have successfully pushed toward Raqqa in Syria, and they’ve driven Daesh from Sinjar in Iraq.

How important is that bit of geography, though? Daesh has expanded from attacks within and at the periphery of the geography it holds to attacks in two different continents—the airliner bombing in Egypt and those Paris attacks.

Physically contained? Geographically contained, maybe. Maybe. But plainly not physically contained—Egypt and France. And plainly not contained as a practical matter.

It’s hard to believe that neither Obama’s echo chamber nor Obama don’t understand this.

EU Border Policy

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Jean-Claude Juncker, European Commission President, says the Paris attack won’t cause the EU to change its strategy for handling the flood of refugees from Syria, North Africa, and elsewhere.

Jean-Claude Juncker…urged citizens and politicians not to confuse the Paris perpetrators with those seeking shelter from war and terror.

It’s becoming apparent that one of the Islamic terrorists entered France legally, via Greece, on a Syrian passport. But that’s just one of the seven, or so, terrorists who butchered so many innocents. How, exactly, does Juncker propose that “citizens and politicians” sort out the terrorists from the refugees (and “ordinary” migrants, legal or otherwise) when they’re all so thoroughly mixed in among each other as the flood crosses the EU’s “borders?” The Paris butchery clearly demonstrates that the EU’s existing strategy is worse than unequal to the task, it’s a signal and tragic failure.

Russia and the PRC Want Their Safe Spaces

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The two are upset over American Presidential campaign remarks. Zhu Haiquan, speaking for the PRC’s DC embassy:

We hope relevant US politicians will view China in an objective and rational way and refrain from making irresponsible remarks[.]

Yuri Melnik, Press Secretary for Russia’s DC embassy:

It is regretful that the anti-Russian rhetoric has become part of stump speeches for many candidates[.]

Zhu is right, our politicians do need to view the PRC (and Russia, come to that) objectively and rationally. Unfortunately, the Obama administration has left it to the Presidential candidates to do so. Regarding Melnik’s concerns, we do need to be more oppositionally oriented toward Russia, a staunch enemy of the United States and a naked aggressor toward its neighbors. Again, though, the Obama administration has abandoned the task to the candidates.

Strategy and Foreign Policy

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This is how Frank Bruni ended his Saturday op-ed in The New York Times [emphasis in the original]:

I felt sick. For a few hours, even a few days, I’d like to focus on the pain of Parisians and how that magnificent city reclaims any sense of order, any semblance of safety. I’d like not to wonder if Hillary Clinton’s odds of election just ticked upward or downward or if Donald Trump’s chest-thumping bluster suddenly became more seductive.

I’d like not to be told, fewer than 18 hours after the shots rang out, how they demonstrate that Americans must crack down on illegal immigration to our own country. I read that and was galled, and not because of my feelings about immigration, but because of my feelings about the automatic, indiscriminate politicization of tragedy.

The Paris atrocity inflicted by Islamic terrorists (Daesh is claiming responsibility) is but one battle in the long war against terrorists. Yet, in Bruni’s mind, we’re not supposed to assess the inputs to the battle, its outcome, or corrective actions to be taken from that analysis until enough time has passed to satisfy his safe space requirements. Time, incidentally, in which Daesh and/or other terrorist organizations can complete their own analyses and plan future battles.

This is how the Left understands strategy, this is how the Left understands foreign policy. Which is to say, they understand neither.

The Futility of our Secretary of State

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And the motorboat skipper who sits in that chair has another year left in his term….

Now he’s bragging about how progress has been made on ending the civil war in Syria.

Kerry and the other world leaders in Vienna agreed on a timeline for a political transition in Syria that is aimed at ending the country’s civil war.

And

However, key details, including the status of Syrian President Bashar Assad and a determination of which opposition groups are terrorists, remain unresolved.

Oh, yeah. Might be useful to involve the principles in any timeline or settlement.

John Kerry added, in all seriousness,

We do not agree on all of the issues. But we do agree on this: it’s time for the bleeding to stop.

Cool. Of course, that’s never been in dispute: it’s the underlying purpose of the efforts to stop the civil war.

It’s going to be an interminable year.