Tag Archives: foreign policy

To What End?

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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

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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….

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.