Tag Archives: foreign policy

Are We Projecting?

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The People’s Republic of China, in its latest national defense report, is accusing the US of “destabilizing” the Asia-Pacific region, because we’re shifting the focus of our attention there instead of keeping it on Europe.

PRC Defense Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun, referring to enhancements of our ties with our friends and allies around the Pacific and the South China Sea, and to our strengthening (a little bit) our military presence in the area:

Certain efforts made to highlight the military agenda, enhance military deployment and also strengthen alliances are not in line with the calling of the times and are not conducive to the upholding of peace and stability in the region[.]

We hope that the relevant parties would do more to enhance the mutual trust between countries in the region and contribute to peace and stability

Never mind that the PRC defense budget is second in the world only to our own, it’s grown by 500% over the last dozen, or so, years, and they’re currently engaged in a massive sea grab.  Things would be much more stable if we’d just abandon our allies, friends, and trading partners, and let the PRC get on with it.

Projecting, are we, Mr Yang?

And Here Come the Concessions

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South Korea and the U.S. both offered to return to negotiations with North Korea, aiming talks at Pyongyang’s nuclear program and broader security threats in a bid to reduce tensions on the Korean peninsula that American officials said run the risk of a direct military conflict.

Senior South Korean officials who met with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Seoul Friday, said their government also was willing to resume sending humanitarian assistance to the North following weeks of escalating threats by North Korean leader Kim Jong Eun[.]

And

Secretary of State John Kerry said Washington would consider resuming its own diplomatic channel should Pyongyang display a willingness to begin dismantling its nuclear-weapons program.

Notice that: not actually dismantle.  Just put on the show of willingness.

Just as predicted earlier.

The Diplomacy of John Kerry

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A statement Secretary of State John Kerry made while talking to reporters in Beijing last week caught my eye.

If Kim Jong Un decides to launch a missile, whether it’s across the Sea of Japan or some other direction, he will be choosing willfully to ignore the entire international community.  And it will be a provocation and unwanted act that will raise people’s temperatures.

Yeah?  And?  Northern Korea isn’t part of the international community; why would Kerry think Littlest Kim cares about ignoring it?  What is Kerry thinking about when he makes statements like this?

In fact, northern Korea was decidedly unimpressed:

North Korea has dismissed the South’s proposal to resolve tensions through dialogue, describing it as “a crafty trick” to disguise Seoul’s hostility.

The Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said it would not talk unless Seoul abandoned its confrontational posture….

Unfortunately, it’s of a piece with how this administration, and its predecessors, have been dealing with another of our enemies: Iran.  They think that the governments of both places think like we do, that the men of these governments share our values, share our goals.

This naive, if not outright ignorant.  The failure of this assumption, though, has been manifest for a very long time.

Hmm….

Maybe We Should Take Instruction from Europe

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Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew’s trip to Europe demonstrates that this might be useful, given the apparent role-reversal between the US and the EU on matters related to economics.

Lew spent his time there lecturing his European counterparts on the “need” for further government stimulus, further government spending, the irrelevance of national debt, especially concerning the southern European nations—those who are bankrupt in all but name and needing…bailouts.

It was those European counterparts, though, who were holding out for spending and borrowing (and taxing) discipline on the part of those bankrupt nations.  European Council President Herman Van Rompuy had this to say:

The European economies face a high level of debt, deep structural medium-term challenges and short-term economic headwinds that we need to confront.  There is no room for complacency.

I’ve long decried the EU’s methods in addressing its problem, but they’re learning the need for fiscal discipline.  It would be good if the other side of the Atlantic followed that example.

The Mouse that Roared?

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With The People’s Republic of China confirming the northern Korea has been conducting live-fire drills near its border with the PRC, and with northern Korea having closed the Kaesong factory complex jointly run by northern Korea and the Republic of Korea—the last formal tie between nK and the RoK—a rude thought occurs to me.

Is Kim the Youngest smarter, more Machiavellian, than we give him credit for?

He has to know, after vacationingschooling in Switzerland as a younger youth just how badly off the northern Korean people are.  He might even consider them “his” people.  If he does, and if he’s of a mind to do anything about it, he also has to know that proposing reunification talks—a lá occupied Germany and the FRG—both is a death sentence for him and will blow up the government.  After all, the PRC has not fallen, and so it can still prop up a follow-on nK government, even if like the failed Soviet Union, it has no interest in bettering the lives of commoners.  The blowup, then, would have no effect vis-à-vis the outside world; although it would make things even worse internally, especially during the turmoil.

So, what’s a boy to do?  Start a fight he knows he can’t win, lose the fight, and get occupied.  If he burns a few (tens of thousands of) innocent bodies in the process, well, he is the product of three-plus generations of give-a-s*t about human life.

About all of his bluster and buildup: it might be of a piece with prior blusters, now getting out of control in the hands of a tyro.  But his actions sure are guaranteeing that the ones he’s going to attack are very well prepared for that attack.

The rat that roared?

Nah.  Probably not.