Tag Archives: foreign policy

What Obama Hath Wrought

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Syrian pro-regime forces backed by Russian airstrikes have expanded their ground offensive to the strategic city of Aleppo…. But with the backing of Russian warplanes, Iranian forces, and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, Mr Assad’s forces could now be in position to regain large parts of the city and the surrounding countryside.

Notice that: in addition to Assad’s military, the Russians are there attacking, the terrorist organization Hezbollah is there attacking, the Iranians are there attacking.

And President Barack Obama continues to do nothing but Obamatalk about getting rid of Bashar al Assad, as he…said…he would do all those years ago. Before he drew his red line regarding al Assad’s use of chemical weapons and then let al Assad use those weapons with impunity.

Obama’s timidity passivity has invited these in, to the detriment of the rebels, to the detriment of the Syrian people, to the detriment of Israel, to the detriment of Jordan, to the detriment of the Middle East in general.

We Welcome Every Drop of Blood Spilled in Jerusalem

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That’s what President Barack Obama’s and Secretary of State John Kerry’s favorite peacemaker is saying about the Palestinian knife and gun attacks against Jewish citizens currently going on in Jerusalem.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was talking about Palestinian blood spilled as Israeli police and soldiers defended those citizens; he had not a word about the Jewish blood shed—that’s beneath his notice. Jews, after all, in Abbas’ terrorist mind, are but “barbaric monkeys” and “wretched pigs.” Abbas went on:

This is pure blood, clean blood, blood on its way to Allah. With the help of Allah, every martyr will be in heaven, and every wounded will get his reward.

This is what those two American administration persons say must be balanced by Israeli efforts to tamp down their own “violence.”

This is what President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry say is the moral equivalent of Israel defending itself against such terrorists.

Unchanged Behaviors

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The US and the PRC made an agreement during the month-ago PRC President Xi Jinping visit with President Barack Obama that the PRC would stop hacking into US corporate computers for industrial espionage or any other purpose.

Unchanged behavior

Chinese hacking attempts on American corporate intellectual property have occurred with regularity over the past three weeks….

Unchanged behavior

The US will continue to directly raise concerns regarding cybersecurity with the Chinese, monitor the country’s cyber activities closely and press China to abide by all of its commitments, the [a senior Obama administration official] added.

Unchanged behavior

This administration continues to do nothing about the PRC’s hacking beyond finger wagging and stern words.

Wishful Thinking

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Russian President Vladimir Putin is looking for an exit strategy from Syria already? That’s what the AP thinks….

Putin certainly realizes that some 30 Russian combat jets won’t be able to change the course of the war, and allow Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces to win.

As an aside, AP is commenting, whether it understands it or not, on President Barack Obama’s “commitment” to changing the course of the war in Syria with the tepidly applied occasional potshots he’s authorized our own Air Force to take.

More to the point, though, the AP has misunderstood Putin and forgotten Russia’s long-term relationship with Syria and why that relationship exists. Russia needs Syria for a couple of reasons: seaports on the Med and to limit our influence in the Middle East. To those ends, Putin needs Bashar al Assad to stay in power in Syria; a western oriented replacement, or no replacement at all and the attendant chaos do neither of those reasons any good.

There is, too, the use to which those 30 combat jets are being put. Their combat tempo is much higher than ours, the targets much more carefully and coordinatedly selected to take out forces that are explicitly anti-Assad (and so more or less allies of us for the moment), and they’re being used in coordination with Assad’s ground forces against those anti-Assad forces.

Yeah, they can change the course of the war, especially given the fractured nature of those opposition forces.  And Putin is in Syria to stay; he has no exit strategy because he wants no exit.

The AP does have the right of it on a couple of other Putin goals:

to show all players that they will not be able to unseat Assad by force;…to foster political talks that could allow Moscow to protect its interests in the region.

Another key task for Putin is bring Moscow and Washington together in a security dialogue, which he hopes would make Russia appear as an equal….

In these, Putin also has a willing partner in Obama. Obama’s behavior in Syria can’t possibly be intended to unseat Assad, no matter Obama’s chit chat to the contrary. Obama, too, already has engaged in the beginnings of a security dialogue, initially to keep our aircraft out of Putin’s way, and after that to accede to a Putin security arrangement.

Thinking that 30 combat aircraft are insufficient to accomplish anything meaningful on the ground, though, is wishful thinking, a hope that Russia will fail and leave. The proper and determined application of airpower in coordination with ground forces will demonstrate otherwise.

A Misunderstanding

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The People’s Republic of China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, misunderstands. Or maybe not.

Wang last month began urging the rest of the Six-Party Talks members (the PRC, Japan, the RoK, Russia, and the US) to resume negotiations with northern Korea (the sixth member) regarding its nuclear weapons program. That’s Wang’s misunderstanding.

There’s nothing to negotiate. Northern Korea stands in gross violation of a number of UN mandates requiring it not to have a nuclear weapons program and not to have nuclear weapons. In addition, northern Korea stands in gross violation of prior agreements reached in earlier iterations of the Six-Party Talks.

What’s required now is enforcement of those mandates and agreements. What’s required now is the dismantlement of northern Korea’s nuclear weapons programs and nuclear weapons. By all means necessary.

Of course, the PRC well knows this about its client. A militarily capable—even a little bit—client is a useful tool in the PRC’s power struggle with us. This client, in this condition, is a useful tool in the PRC’s implied threats and open aggression against the nations ringing the East and South China Seas, many of whom are our friends and allies.

Maybe there’s no misunderstanding at all here. The PRC also well knows that talks will produce nothing substantive concerning northern Korea’s nuclear weapons or its belligerence.