Tag Archives: foreign policy

China is our Friend?

Posted on by
Reply

What’s the likelihood of that?  The new President of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping, is actively reviving the cult of Mao Tse-Tung that was so destructive of China and of Sino-US relations in the last century, which continue to taint our relationship today, and which poison now is being refreshed.

Early, public symbols of the revival include

  • a visit to a village from which Mao attacked Beijing in 1949 and from which Xi vowed that “our red nation will never change color.”
  • a visit to a lakeside villa where Mao summered.  At the opening of a new exhibition there, Xi declared that the villa should be a center for educating youth about patriotism and revolution.  Notably, the exhibition wholly elides the 10s of millions of Chinese butchered by Mao, particularly during the mass starvation he inflicted with his cultural “revolution.”
  • echoing Mao, Xi  is launching a “rectification” campaign to purge the Communist Party and limit discussion of ideas such as democracy, rule of law, enforcement of the constitution, and other such evils.  This is how Mao presaged his cultural revolution.

In a reflection of Mao’s “reeducation” programs, both explicit and through state media, Xi has

  • commanded army generals and senior officers to reconnect with the “masses” by serving as privates for 15 days minimum.
  • ordered officials to combat the spread of such evils as universal values, press freedom, civil society, and judicial independence.
  • through his Communist Party, with its purification in progress, warned officials to combat “dangerous” Western values.
  • related to this, officials have been instructed to “cut off at the source channels for disseminating erroneous currents of thought.”
  • published attacks on “civil society” and the concept that Party power actually should be subject to constitutional limits.
  • had police detain political activists (although this represents no actual change).

Mao was a steadfast enemy of the West and of us in particular.  His successor is showing himself to be disinterested in friendship.

Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo, Redux

Posted on by
Reply

I wrote earlier about the Muslim Brotherhood and their assault on their fellow Egyptians’ freedom and on their very lives.

Here’s an update.

  • [Muslim Brotherhood] demonstrators torched two government facilities in Giza
  • attacks on Coptic Christians and their churches continued for a second day—as many as 39 incidents of violence against churches, monasteries, Coptic schools, and shops
  • protesters trapped a police Humvee on an overpass near the Nasr City camp and pushed it off…images…showed an injured policeman on the ground below, near a pool of blood and the overturned vehicle

Yet President Barack Obama is threatening a regime that answered the call of the people to get rid of the Muslim Brotherhood dictator Mohammed Morsi.  He’s condemning their role in attempting to restore order and reopen parts of Cairo occupied by the Brotherhood while saying nothing about the Brotherhood’s violence, torchings, and murders beyond the usual Obamatalk blandishments about the need for…restraint.  And he’s cancelled joint exercises with the Egyptian military—cancelled them, rather than postponing them so they’re not a distraction while the Egyptians attempt to restore order.

Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo

Posted on by
1

While the world, including our own government, decries the Egyptian government’s efforts to clear two Muslim Brotherhood encampments in downtown Cairo, it’s important to keep a couple of things in mind, regardless of what we might think about that crackdown.

The violence, the bloodshed, is entirely on the hands of the Brotherhood.  The police went in with water cannon and tear gas, and they were met with gunfire (including mortar rounds in other cities, as the Brotherhood’s decision to riot spread).  They’re openly rioting, but they’re cynically not limiting themselves to opposition to the Egyptian police: they’re also butchering any Coptic Christians that they can reach (generally in southern Egypt, as the Christians have been hunted out in the north, by this gang and others), desecrating these Christian churches in the process.  Never mind, just kill them all, seems to be the Brotherhood’s attitude.

The Brotherhood could have kept their protests peaceful.  Think what a powerful statement that would have been in the face of the force—however gentle—the police would still have had to use to clear those encampments.  Instead, the Brotherhood demanded violence, demanded to be killed in their protests so that they could be martyred.

This is a violent movement, bent on violent destruction of all who disagree with them.

To What End?

Posted on by
Reply

Matthew Dunn, ex of Great Britain’s MI6, had some thoughts, in a recent Fox News op-ed, concerning President Barack Obama’s decision not to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin one-on-one at the upcoming G-20 conference.  Naturally, I have some thoughts on Dunn’s thoughts.  Here they are, in no particular order.

My take on the man is that he is a measured, calm, cerebral, individual who—despite recent evidence to the contrary—doesn’t like a fight.  I could imagine him picking up the phone to Khrushchev, speaking privately to him without the pressure of media scrutiny, and averting a crisis.

Actually, as Obama demonstrated in a private conversation with a later Russian leader concerning a much more minor missile crisis, Obama would have surrendered to Khrushchev’s bullying and allowed the offensive nuclear missiles to stay in Cuba.  After all, Obama did surrender to Putin concerning defensive, non-nuclear missiles to which Putin objected and agreed to not deploy the systems in Poland and the Czech Republic—without so much as a fare-thee-well to the Poles or Czechs before he acceded to Putin’s demands.  After having committed this, Obama then made offer of further acquiescences with his “reminder” to then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that Obama would have more “flexibility” for then-Prime Minister Putin after the then-upcoming election.

The Syrian disasters getting worse—more people have died there than during the entire Bosnian War—and we need Putin fully at the Security Council negotiating table given that his support of President Assad is perpetuating the problem.

We may not like Putin’s stance on Syria, but distancing him from our thus far fruitless attempts to resolve the situation will only produce one outcome: further massacres.

This is nonsense.  The Security Council is one of Putin’s favored arenas for actively opposing us concerning Syria.  Putin already is as distant from us as he can get on this, among other matters.  He’s stonewalled and explicitly blocked every effort we’ve made at the UN and on the international scene, generally.  Based on what, exactly, does Dunn expect to change here?

Putin hasn’t only opposed us on Syria.  He’s set himself against our efforts to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program, he actively obstructed NATO’s and our efforts in supporting the Libyan people in getting rid of Gadhafi, and he’s joined the People’s Republic of China (otherwise a foe of Russia) to obstruct our efforts to bring northern Korea’s nuclear weapons program to heel.

With particular regard to Iran, Putin has gone further, actively helping the régime with its nuclear weapons program, with the latest aid coming in the form of assistance in building a nuclear reactor capable of producing plutonium for bombs.

US attempts to adopt a moral high ground over human rights abuses in Russia [are] pointless and some might say even hypocritical given allegations of human rights abuse during the American War on Terror and more recently the startling revelations about PRISM and its intrusion in the lives of law abiding US citizens.

Sure.  Because PRISM and the NSA, however reprehensible they may be—and that’s not a foregone conclusion—don’t kill anyone, while Russia (no mere allegations here) routinely murders newsmen who are critical of the Russian government, jail businessmen who get too uppity and independent of that government, lock up politicians who run too independently of that government, imprison entertainers who do satirical music criticizing that government….  Yeah, these are equivalent, all right.

Earlier this year, a CIA officer was caught in Moscow, publicly humiliated, and expelled.  For sure, Russia could have been handled the episode differently, but it’s not something we should get upset about.  We spy; they spy.  It’s what we’ve always done to each other.

Yes, Putin’s given [Edward Snowden] a visa to stay in Russia, but it’s only a 1-year visa.

The expulsion was simply an effort to embarrass the US, however trivially.  Moreover, the man had little of intelligence value-add for the Russians.  Snowden, on the other hand, as an NSA “official” has quite a bit.  Certainly, Putin’s condition that Snowden stop leaking to the public as a condition of asylum looks good in the Putin shower.  However, this just guarantees Russian exclusivity of access to the intelligence value-add that is Snowden.

And there’s the small matter of Dunn carefully eliding the fact that Russian one-year asylum visas are easily and routinely renewed.

In sum, Putin has no intention of cooperating with the United States, and he never has had.  Russia is our enemy, and Putin will do what he can to defeat his nation’s enemy, even if particular steps amount to little more than sticks in the eye.  Petulance, or legitimate diplomatic symbol, the refusal to meet will have no detrimental impact on relations with a nation or a man who has no interest in cooperation.

Obama, Ho, and Words

Posted on by
Reply

Last week in his press conference with Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang, President Barack Obama had this to say:

…we discussed the fact that Ho Chi Minh was actually inspired by the US Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and the words of Thomas Jefferson.

Obama waxed on in this vein for quite a bit in that press conference.

Here’s how Ho used his…inspiration:

  • October 1945…Ho ordered the slaughter of his political opponents, including 50,000 of the then-powerful Trotskyist communists.
  • …butchery of peasant farmers who resisted his brutal taxation in the early days of Ho’s regime.
  • …killing of landlords and bourgeois-class merchants….
  • Estimates…as high as half-a-million killed in Ho’s effort to consolidate power….
  • Following…US retreat from Vietnam, untold thousands of Vietnamese, deemed collaborators by the regime, were put to death.
  • [Ho]…used VI Lenin’s tactics: murder, terror and “reeducation” to obtain, maintain, and expand power.

Keep in mind that Obama is a highly trained lawyer and politician.  In the former capacity, knowledge of history was part of his training (he went to Harvard, after all), and in both capacities, words are his stock in trade.

Obama knew exactly what he was saying in the press conference.

Hmm….