Tag Archives: foreign policy

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?

Why Are We Abandoning the High Ground?

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China’s first lunar rover has successfully separated from the probe that carried it into space has and made its first track upon the surface of the moon, Chinese state media reported Sunday.

Here’s the rub:

The soft landing—the term for a landing in which neither the spacecraft nor its equipment is damaged—was the first on the moon by any nation in 37 years

And not only was it not done by us, it was done by a nation with clear enmity toward us and toward our friends and allies.  Moreover, the People’s Republic of China is making no bones about its future plans for the moon.  They’re planning a sample return mission in their present Chang’e series as soon as 2017 and an astronaut landing after 2020.

The US’ space program?  Well, we don’t have much of one, and none at all where the moon is concerned.  We send the occasional robot off to Mars (those are spectacular missions, doing important science, to be sure), but that’s about it.  American astronauts have to thumb rides to the space station on Russian rockets.  American private companies are (finally!) figuring out how to send supply missions all the way to the space station.  That’s about it.

As for the moon, we got nothing.

Never mind that the back side of the moon is an excellent platform for exploring space.  Never mind that the regolith on the moon—all that moon “soil”—is rich in rocket fuel (it’s loaded with oxygen and aluminum, each a key ingredient).  Or that producing that rocket fuel on the moon and loading it into rockets there considerably cheapens exploration of the rest of the solar system, since all that mass doesn’t have to be carried uphill out of Earth’s gravity.

Never mind that the moon is militarily useful high ground: rocks dropped from there impact Earth’s surface with force of nuclear bombs, and by destroying our launch facilities, any rock throwers will be able to deny us access to space entirely.  Other weapons launched from the moon will be able to destroy our satellites with impunity, which with no launch facilities, we’ll be unable to replace.

But we’re ceding all of that to the PRC.

Mr Cohen Addresses the Iran Nuclear Weapons Deal

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…in a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier in the week.  David Cohen is the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the Treasury Department, and he admits that he is the principal in “crafting and enforcing our sanctions program” against Iran.

With this…interest…in mind, Cohen defended his sanctions program as they exist under this nuclear weapons deal [emphasis added].

[T]he relief package…lion’s share…comes from granting Iran access, in installments, to $4.2 billion of its own revenues currently trapped outside Iran.  In addition, US sanctions on Iran’s petrochemical exports and its auto industry will be temporarily suspended.

We estimate that this additional trade could generate about $1.5 billion in revenue over the next six months….
…
[T]he deal also allows Iran to transfer $400 million of restricted Iranian funds to defray tuition costs for Iranian students studying abroad.

If the Iranians comply with their obligations under the Joint Plan, over the next six months they will stand to receive $6 billion to $7 billion in relief, mostly by gaining access to their own money.  Not $1 comes from US taxpayers.

What a monumental failure of understanding.  The problem with this deal, in Cohen’s context, is not that none of the monies going to Iran are coming from us, it’s that these are monies going to Iran.  Full stop.

These are $6 billion to $7 billion to which Iran did not have access until we lifted eased the sanctions.  Full stop.

These are $6 billion to $7 billion which the Iranian government will not use to better the lot of the Iranian people.  No, this is money with which Iran will

reverse that neutralization [of its stockpile of near-Highly Enriched Uranium]; money with which to reconnect those centrifuge cascades and to generate additional ones; money with which actually to develop the engineering capacity to assemble a deliverable warhead (which, recall, requires no missiles—although Iran now will get a taste of money with which to continue that development—but only a train car or a collection of suitcases separately carried into the target zone); money with which to fund its terror operations, its support of its Syrian and Iraqi operations; etc; etc; etc.

Full stop.