Tag Archives: foreign policy

On Bergdahl’s…Release

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Leaving aside the fact that acceding to the terrorists’ ransom demands placed at risk all Americans and especially our soldiers from every two-bit terrorist wannabe looking to make a buck—and from every serious terrorists, there are other concerns.

But wait. Terrorists already are kidnapping “young school girls, business people and other innocent people.” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said as much in defending this ransom payment. Unfortunately, he carefully elided the fact that, with empirical evidence that the thing works with our government, that risk has gone up sharply. The United States does not negotiate with terrorists? This administration just did.

But back to my main point. The law of the land—the just passed (!) 2014 National Defense Authorization Act requires the administration to give a 30-day notification to Congress before releasing detainees—five of whom, in the present case, constituted the ransom—from Guantanamo. Here is where the dishonesty so ingrained in this administration’s senior personnel that they don’t even recognize what they’re doing becomes obvious.

Hagel justified the lack of notice by claiming there wasn’t time. He deliberately omitted to give that required notification because

We believed that the information we had, the intelligence we had, was such that Sgt Bergdahl’s safety and health were in jeopardy. In particular his health was deteriorating. It was our judgment that if we could find an opening and move very quickly, we needed to get him out of there, essentially to save his life.

He also said, though, in that same discussion with a distracted press,

This didn’t just start; this has been an ongoing effort. The timing was right, the pieces came together. Our consistent efforts that we have been making over the years paid off.

By his own words, this administration had the time to obey the law. The law, though, was inconvenient.

A Coup in Thailand

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The Thai Army has tossed the civilian government and seized control of the country, for the 19th time in the last 80 years—just about once per election cycle….

General Prayuth Chan-ocha had convened and chaired, over the preceding two days, a meeting between government and anti-government leaders at “an army facility in Bangkok,” and when that didn’t produce outcomes suitable to him, his henchmen took into custody most of the participants.

Among those detained by the army after the talks broke down were five government ministers, the leadership of the governing Pheu Thai Party and the opposition Democrat Party…as well as leaders of anti- and pro-government groups.

And then Prayuth said this over now-army controlled television:

The military has to return peace and order to the country as soon as possible and to reform [the] political and social structure to ensure fairness for every side.

Because factions and democracy are too messy for the army. Especially for an army too used to its own power in that country.

Democrats and the Benghazi Investigation

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I’ve written elsewhere about the troubling nature of the Democrats’ reluctance to actively investigate the Benghazi failure.

Now, after weeks of publicly professed angst, the Democrats have agreed to appoint members to the House Select Committee whose express purpose is to investigate that mess.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) named her members while insisting that

Democrats’ participation was the only way to assure Americans of a “fair process.”

She also claimed that Democrats must participate in order

to make [the investigation] a “fair process” and to bring “openness and transparency” to the investigation.

Elijah Cummings (D, MD), the Ranking Democrat on the Select Committee, added this:

I believe we need someone in the room to simply defend the truth.

With the Democrats approaching this insisting that Republicans are fundamentally dishonest, though, how will it be possible to trust the Democrats’ objectivity, and their own integrity, as they pretend to carry out their responsibilities on this committee and during this investigation?

Oh, and Congressman Pelosi: you keep using this term “openness and transparency.” I do not think it means what you think it means.

Ukraine and Energy

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America’s booming natural gas production could help Ukraine keep the heat and lights on amid Russia’s latest threat to cut off supplies, if the US cuts through troublesome red tape, lawmakers said. … The U.S. has port facilities that turn natural gas into liquid for export and more are under construction, but shipping to any country not bound by a free trade agreement with the US requires a federal permit. Since 2011, DOE has approved six [count ’em] applications for permits to export natural gas to non-free trade agreement nations, but Ukraine is not one of them. … [The] “Domestic Freedom and Global Prosperity Act”…would grant immediate approval of the 24 pending applications currently filed with the Department of Energy…. “This would send the clear signal that we are serious about enlarging the scope of natural gas exports, and immediately undercut Russia’s dominance,” [Congressman Fred (R, MI)] Upton said. “Russia has chosen to wield its energy resources as a geopolitical weapon to inflict harm on others. As the world’s emerging energy superpower, America has a newfound responsibility to help our allies.”

There are a lot of logistics problems along this path to work out, but that puts a premium on getting started; these problems cannot be allowed to serve as excuses for not bothering. Again.

On top of that, we also need to stop sending signals and start sending stuff—like oil and gas, like weapons, like intel, like…—to Ukraine, as well as sending oil and gas to Germany and the rest of the EU.

“Elections” in Ukraine

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Pro-Russian “insurgents” in the Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk are claiming that 90% of voters backed sovereignty and separation from Ukraine (and eventual incorporation into Russia). (Why is that the supporters of such things always claim 90% of the vote went their way? Why not something more plausible, like 55%, even 62%?)

That 90% number is especially interesting here, given the demographics of those oblasts. 30% of the folks living in Luhansk, the oblast that forms the eastern tip of Ukraine, jutting into Russia, are native Ukrainian speakers, not Russian, which suggests they’re ethnic Ukrainian, not ethnic Russian (leaving aside the understanding that all of the citizens there are Ukrainian citizens, regardless of ethnicity). 24% of Donetsk, which sits on the southwestern boundary of Luhansk and fronts on the Sea of Azov (which opens into the Black Sea, and thence into the Mediterranean), are native Ukrainian speakers.

To get to that 90% number, then, two-thirds of those ethnic Ukrainians in Luhansk and three-fifths of them in Donetsk would have had to have favored leaving Ukraine, also. That’s not very plausible.

Alternatively, the ethnic Ukrainians would have had to have not voted at all in significant number—afraid to vote, apathetic (unlikely in that charged atmosphere), or…. Which makes the “elections” not at all representative of what the folks truly want.

Also, keep in mind that these two oblasts, in 1991, voted for independence from Russia by an 83%-13% margin.

Hmm….