Tag Archives: foreign policy

China’s Aggressiveness, America’s Response

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China recently announced guidelines, effective January 1, for its maritime “police” to board and seize foreign vessels in waters around the Paracel Islands, which are also claimed by Vietnam.

And

Chinese fishing boats ha[ve] cut the cables of [Vietnam’s] seismic survey ship last week.

And

Philippines Foreign Minister Albert del Rosario revealed…that China had communicated its intention to station ships permanently at the Scarborough Shoal….

Never mind that the Republic of the Philippines, with the support of international law, claims this area.

Indeed, the PRC claims, with a straight face, fully two-thirds of the South China Sea as its sovereign territory.

And

Beijing also continues to challenge Japan’s control over the Senkaku Islands….  Chinese maritime surveillance and fisheries vessels loiter outside the 12-mile territorial limit, occasionally crossing inside to force the Japanese coast guard to respond.

The PRC also objects to the US’ rotating token units of Marines through a basing facility in Darwin, Australia.  Such a move is an affront to Chinese sovereignty, you see.

Yet President Barack Obama is bent on gutting American defense capability by $500 billion, beginning next month, despite his own Defense Secretary’s warnings of the consequences.  Which gives new meaning to the phrase “leading from behind.”

Another Demonstration of Leading from Behind

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…and of its…effectiveness.

Thomas Donnelly of The Weekly Standard wrote that

President Obama said at an August 20 news conference that it was a “red line for us [if] we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.”  That would “change my calculus,” he declared.

But then came the weasel words.

But what has changed is the definition of “move.”  Apparently, it doesn’t mean the Syrian Army moving chemical rounds in order to use them on rebel forces or mixing the “precursor” elements that give a chemical warhead its lethality, but, in the clarifying words of National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor, “ ’moving around’ means proliferation,” as in transferring them to Hezbollah.

Anything to avoid making a hard decision.  Please.

As long as the Obama administration continues to allow itself to be held hostage to such (imaginary) foreign threats—if that’s what the administration is doing—it will continue to be a helpless laughingstock in the eyes of our enemies.

Or, as William Kristol writes,

Obama’s inaction in Syria now is of a piece with his inaction in Iran in 2009, that the abandonment of Iraq in 2011 prefigured the prospective abandonment of Afghanistan over the next couple of years, and that defense cuts at home go hand in hand with an oh-so-light footprint abroad. The Obama administration has chosen a course of American retrenchment and retreat.

In which case, it’s not timidity but a deliberate retrograde advancement.  Which doesn’t change in any material way our enemies’ perception of us.

This is where trailing along behind events while yelling, “I’m going there, too” has gotten us.

YGTBSM

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In another demonstration of the Obama administration’s support for our Middle East allies, his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, said at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy last Friday that Israel is suspicious of Palestinians and doesn’t care enough about their plight.

Passing up no opportunity to demonstrate the administration’s support, Clinton added

I’m not making excuses for the missed opportunities of the Israelis, or the lack of generosity, the lack of empathy that I think goes hand-in-hand with the suspicion….  So, yes, there is more that the Israelis need to do to really demonstrate that they do understand the pain of an oppressed people in their minds, and they want to figure out, within the bounds of security and a Jewish democratic state, what can be accomplished[.]

Not a word about the “lack of generosity, the lack of empathy” from the terrorists whose only goal is to butcher Israelis and their children.  Not a word about there being “more that the [Palestinians] need to do to really demonstrate that they do understand the pain of a people [who are the objects of their terrorism] in their minds.”

And this Progressive administration insists, with a straight face, that they fully support Israel.  And they cynically elide the fact that with the UN’s recent vote, the Oslo accords have been abrogated, and so there is no one with whom to negotiate for the Israelis.

Can It Get Any More Feckless?

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Here’s a statement from our State Department’s statement concerning Mohamed Morsi’s power grab (coup?) in Egypt:

The decisions and declarations announced on November 22 raise concerns for many Egyptians and for the international community.  One of the aspirations of the revolution was to ensure that power would not be overly concentrated in the hands of any one person or institution.  The current constitutional vacuum in Egypt can only be resolved by the adoption of a constitution that includes checks and balances, and respects fundamental freedoms, individual rights, and the rule of law consistent with Egypt’s international commitments.  We call for calm and encourage all parties to work together and call for all Egyptians to resolve their differences over these important issues peacefully and through democratic dialogue.

This wishy-washy set of remarks is another example a foreign policy of leading from behind—which is to say following, and being influenced by the events ahead.

The answer to the question, then, seems to be…yes.  We just haven’t seen it yet.

Sufficient Reason

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Turkey has officially requested NATO to send them uprated PAC-3 model Patriot missile batteries for deployment along their Syrian border, where al-Assad’s butchery has been spilling across.  I had considered refusing to arm the Turks after they called the Israelis terrorists for the heinous crime of defending themselves against Hamas’ overt terrorist attacks during the just (temporarily) concluded conflict.

Then came this.

The militarization of the Syrian-Turkish border is an alarming signal,” [Russian Foreign Ministry] spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said.  “We have different advice for our Turkish colleagues—use their influence with the Syrian opposition to accelerate the start of a political dialogue.

And this:

“…in the military field, what is important is not intentions, but potential.  And when potential increases, the risks grow,” [Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov] said.

If the Russians don’t like a Turkey—which also sits astride the Dardanelles and the Strait of Bospherus—with the wherewithal to defend itself against incursion, then it’s not a bad idea.

NATO should expedite approval and the transfer and deployment of the missile systems.