Tag Archives: foreign policy

The Impotence of Bluster

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President Barack Obama’s sharp talk on what other countries ought to do with our own Edward Snowden is having no effect.

[T]he State Department pointedly warn[ed] a defiant Ecuador there will be “grave consequences” if the foreign government grants Snowden asylum.

And Obama expressed his disdain for Snowden the “29-year-old hacker,” saying he wouldn’t be “scrambling jets” to catch him.  But then, as Power Line put it, Obama couldn’t be bothered to scramble jets for Benghazi, either.

Just to demonstrate the effectiveness of Obama’s very stern finger wagging, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa

thumbed [his] nose…by offering the US $23 million a year in aid…in order to improve the humanitarian situation in the United States.

Yeah.  Obama showed him.

The PRC and American Defense

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Seth Cropsey, Deputy Undersecretary of the Navy for both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush, made some points in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week.

Beijing continues to build up its medium-range and long-distance missile arsenal, antiship cruise missiles, space weapons and military cyberspace capabilities.  China is also improving its fighters, building three classes of attack submarines, and has commissioned its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning.  It is, in short, building an advanced system of weaponry capable of striking Asian states from afar.

The US’ response:

plans for increasing the US Marine contingent based in Darwin on Australia’s north coast to 1,100 from 250 [ultimate goal in a nebulous future: 2,500].

And

Facing this…is a US fleet less than half the size it was…in the early 1990s.  The plan to build the 306-ship fleet that the Navy says is necessary to accomplish all its missions rests on assumptions about shipbuilding costs that the Congressional Budget Office and Congressional Research Service agree are unrealistic.  …  On Tuesday, Rep. Randy Forbes (R., Va.), chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on sea power, told a group at Washington’s Hudson Institute that “In 2007, the Navy was able to meet about 90% of America’s combatant commanders’ need [for ships].  This year that figure will fall to 51%.”

And

The defense budget since 9/11 has averaged 4.1% of GDP.  Under the budgets projected by the Obama administration, the figure is projected to drop to 2.5% in less than a decade.

Here is the American retreat in full throat.

Why?

In Which The Swiss Government Votes for National Sovereignty

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Switzerland’s lower house of Parliament voted 123-63 against the measure [to let Swiss banks otherwise violate Swiss banking laws to give up data demanded by the US], which would have enabled many of the Alpine nation’s banks to sidestep the Swiss banking secrecy laws and start handing information to the US Department of Justice about any past help they may have given to Americans hiding undeclared wealth in Swiss accounts.

Those lawmakers were worried about, among other things,

the heavy-handedness of the US effort to have them sign off on legislation that might have exposed the country’s banks and bank employees to legal hazards.  Lawmakers had also raised concerns about the lack of detail in the plan regarding potential fines for banks that would have opted to participate.

Peter Kunz, Professor of Business Law at the University of Bern, disagreed:

This is the major problem.  Swiss banks, and banks in general, need some certainty in their business—and right now no one really knows what’s going to happen.

I disagree with the good professor.  To the extent there is uncertainty, it’s in the Swiss government’s behavior.  With this rejection, Swiss banks remain free to obey Swiss law without fear of retaliation, which would not have been possible under the proposed law.  That law would have subjected Swiss banks to the vagaries of American law.

This may be more coming down the pike.

Senior officials from Germany, France, Japan and the European Commission have expressed deep concern to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke about the Fed’s proposed new regulatory regime for foreign banks under Section 165 of the Dodd-Frank Act.

This is what concerns them:

the Fed proposes to require over two dozen foreign banks to move their U.S. broker-dealer and other nonbranch operations under separately capitalized, intermediate holding companies that would be subject to U.S. bank capital requirements, liquidity buffers and single counterparty credit limits.

…

For purposes of complying with the Fed’s higher capital requirements under Section 165, U.S. bank holding companies would be allowed to take account of their global consolidated operations. Foreign bank-owned IHCs would not—which means that capital held at the foreign bank parent level would not be available to support U.S. operations. This would tilt the competitive playing field against foreign bank-owned broker-dealers, and it is a glaring violation of long-standing principles of equal national treatment.

Sovereignty—what a concept.

The Defeat of al Qaeda

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…Orwell style.

[President Barack] Obama said in a speech to the National Defense University May 23 that because of the death of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and most of his top aides, “we are safer.”

While terrorist threats still exist, “the core of al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan is on the path to defeat,” the president said.

Because, you see,

…focus on Pakistan and Afghanistan resulted in a lack of targeted counterterrorism efforts in other locations…. …counterterrorism efforts have been weakened by the administration’s policy of dissociating Islam from al Qaeda and other Islamist terrorism.  The policy was a key effort of John Brennan, White House counterterrorism chief during the first Obama administration.  As CIA director, Brennan has expanded the policy of limiting links between Islam and terrorism at the agency.

The result is that Islamist terror groups are flourishing, posing direct threats to the United States and to US interests outside the country[.]

And a report from Lignet, a private intelligence group run by ex-CIA officials, had this on the matter in a report published last Tuesday:

…the U.S. government’s overreliance on sanctions and surveillance has limited the war on terror.

The result is “a decentralized al Qaeda structure—and a much greater threat….

“Al Qaeda has transitioned from a hierarchical cell structure to a franchise organization that is now responsible for four times as many terrorist attacks a year as it was before 9/11….

“Al Qaeda training camps are now being established on the Arabian Peninsula, in Africa, countries of the former Soviet Union, and Southeast Asia.”

Indeed, the al Qaeda empire is rapidly spreading, and with more than just training camps.

Truly, a defeat of Orwellian proportions….

A Thought on American Foreign Policy

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The following thought was quoted by David Feith, in a recent The Wall Street Journal op-ed, from a 1975 Daniel Patrick Moynihan essay called “The United States in Opposition.”  Moynihan’s essay was published just before the Democrat became the US Ambassador to the UN.

It is time, that is, that the American spokesman came to be feared in international forums for the truths he might tel.   The point is to differentiate, and to turn their own standards against regimes for the moment too much preoccupied with causing difficulties for others, mainly the United States….  Such a reversal of roles would be painful to American spokesmen, but it could be liberating also.  It is past time we ceased to apologize for an imperfect democracy.  Find its equal.”

It seems that, over the last five years, President Barack Obama has…differentiated…significantly from his Better.