Tag Archives: foreign policy

Obama’s Global Policy

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There has been much discussion concerning the motivation behind President Barack Obama’s major foreign policy initiatives; Power Line has offered a useful summary and links (which should be followed).  PL then offered its own view from that summary:

In my view, the deeper source of Obama’s strong tilt towards Iran is the same as the one that caused his “reset” with Russia, his early cozying up to Assad, and his support for Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.  That source is an attraction to anti-American strongmen, a familiar phenomenon among American leftists for the better part of a century.

Given the outcomes of Obama’s initiatives (and of his other moves, particularly vis-à-vis Israel), that’s certainly a plausible view, and I don’t entirely disagree with it.

However, I also don’t think that’s all there is to it, and I don’t think that’s even a major part of Obama’s motivation.  I think his motivation is (nearly) entirely domestic.

He spent most of his first administration ramming through Obamacare and Dodd-Frank, and he has been pushing for his version of immigration reform and his version of various welfare programs, and he’s had to fight with the minority party every step of the way.

I think he knew that would be the case from the jump—as far back as his community organizing days and his time in the Illinois Senate.  I think he just wanted to reach accords—any accords—with our major adversaries and outright enemies so he could back burner external affairs and focus on his domestic agenda.

Recall that his first foreign policy initiative was bringing about America’s surrender to the Russians concerning our now functionally scrapped ability to defend ourselves against missile attack—Iran’s or Russia’s.  Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Iran, terrorist organizations, the EU, etc, etc, etc were, and are, just additional distractions from his domestic imperatives, and that’s why his external policies have been so poorly thought out and hastily executed.  This also explains his choice of State Department Secretaries—shallow thinkers who won’t distract him too much with external initiative wants or needs.

He’s given those and his Secretaries all of the attention that distractions get.

A Risk for Future Food Prices?

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Or of land…acquisitions…or both?

About one tenth of China’s farmland is polluted by lead, zinc, and other heavy metals to “striking” levels exceeding official limits[.]

And

About…8 million acres…of China’s farmland is too polluted to grow crops, a government official said on Monday, highlighting the risk facing agriculture after three decades of rapid industrial growth.

The area of China’s contaminated land is about the same size as Belgium.

The Wall Street Journal reports that

Figures released by the Ministry of Land and Resources on Monday in Beijing indicated as much as 2.5% of China’s soil could be too contaminated by heavy metals and other pollutants to farm.  Meanwhile, the share of China’s land that is arable fell by a fifth of a percent during the three years ended in 2009 due to pollution, urbanization, and other reasons….

And

The pollution figure equals about 2.5% of China’s 2.027 billion mu [roughly 340 million acres] in total arable land in 2012, according to a calculation by The Wall Street Journal.  The total arable land figure, down about 0.2% from 2.031 billion mu [338 million acres] in 2009, was also…newly released by the [Land Bureau] on Monday.

Further, much of the PRC’s farmland starts out as not good farmland:

Almost a quarter of China’s arable land is located in areas considered poor for farming, such as hillsides, the bureau said.

One result is this:

In recent years, China’s land shortage has helped drive facets of its foreign policy, from state-supported purchases of farmland and agro-business groups around the world to its appetite for foreign agricultural commodities like US corn.

The PRC also is concluding a deal to lease 3 million hectares (7.4 million acres) of Ukrainian farmland for the next 50 years, for instance.

This comes on the heels of another pessimistic report on the viability of Chinese farmland.

Chinese demand—need—for food won’t explode overnight, or even necessarily over the next few years.  If Chinese demographics don’t improve, the demand might not get much larger than it is today.

Still, for a world that has trouble feeding itself, at least in part through the affordability of food, this is a matter on which it’s useful to keep an eye.  Among other things, as the competition for farm-grown food heats up, so will prices and the competition for fisheries, including those in the South and East China Seas.

China Doesn’t Like It

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So it can’t be all bad.

China’s Foreign Ministry on Monday accused Japan’s prime minister of hypocrisy and said he would not be welcome in China after he visited a shrine honoring Japan’s war dead.

The People’s Republic of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Qin Gang said,

[Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo] Abe’s hypocrisy in his claims of prioritizing relations with China and hopes for dialogue with the Chinese leaders has been fully revealed.

The Chinese people do not welcome him.  Now, Abe needs to admit his mistakes to the government and people of China, cut loose from the past and make a new start.

Because a nation’s leaders honoring their war dead is wrong.  And because the People’s Republic of China gets to dictate to other nations how those nations must behave internally.  Sure.

Withal, that’s of a piece with dictating to other nations how they must behave in international waters and airspace—like the South and East China Seas and the airspace above the East China Sea.

In the end, I have to ask: when will the PRC cut loose from the past and make a new start?

Puff Piece

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…by a newspaper that masquerades itself as a serious journalism producer?

The New York Times published their report on the Benghazi terrorist attack that included the murders of our ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three ex-SEALs who were trying to protect him.

Months of investigation by The New York Times, centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context, turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault.  The attack was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi.  And contrary to claims by some members of Congress, it was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam.

The NYT spent six “chapters” in that vein.

Never mind actual facts, from eyewitnesses on the ground during the attack.  Eyewitnesses who reported no particular gathering for a protest over a video, indeed no protest at all.  One special operator said

Guys were coming into the compound, moving left, moving right…and using IMT (individual movement techniques).  …  That’s not a spontaneous attack.

One guy was shooting, one guy was running.  There are guys watching the gates.  …  The bosses on the ground were pointing, commanding and coordinating—that is a direct action planned attack.

Never mind that the leader of the attack, Ahmad Abu Khattallah, is tied in with Ansar al Sharia, al Qaeda’s primary affiliate in Libya.

Never mind that the mortar fire in the second phase of the terrorist attack was too accurate, too rapid-fire for amateurs or spontaneous rioters to have been able to get going at night with no line of sight to their targets.

Never mind real-time reporting from within the compound back to State describing the terrorist attack underway.

Never mind searches that turn up no mention of any video in the social media until after the terrorists’ attack was over.

Never mind pesky any of those facts.  It’s Republicans and their sycophants who keep on about them; they can be discounted entirely, given the source.

It’s not even a very puffy piece.  Just foolishly fatuous.  Another cover-up attempt.

Iran, Centrifuges, and Negotiation

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Tehran has announced that during the present six-month…deal…they’ll be testing a new generation of centrifuges that are capable of more efficiently and quickly spinning down uranium.  And of course, there’s no better way to test this new generation than by ops testing them through spinning down…uranium.  This during that just concluded arrangement wherein Iran agreed they would not spin down more uranium.  Such a deal President Barack Obama has negotiated.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez (D, NJ) has the right of it:

If you’re talking about producing more advanced centrifuges that are only used to enrich uranium at a quicker rate…the only purposes of that and the only reason you won’t give us access to [a military research facility] is because you’re really not thinking about nuclear power for domestic energy—you’re thinking about nuclear power for nuclear weapons[.]

Forty-seven Senators are co-sponsoring legislation that would tighten sanctions on Iran further, should Iran fail to come to a permanent agreement or violate the current arrangement.  Yet,

Obama argues that Congress could step in at any time to approve new sanctions if Iran violates the terms of the agreement.  Further, he argues that legislation at this stage could imperil the hard-fought Geneva deal.

When has Obama ever successfully negotiated anything in the last five years?  He doesn’t control the mullahs like he did Congress his first two years, so he can’t railroad his wants through with no negotiations at all.  He’s negotiated no deal domestically or globally since.  Why should his protestations here be taken seriously?