Tag Archives: foreign policy

A NATO Drill

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NATO has a Monday drill set up to exercise and demonstrate its largest-ever air force deployment in its history to stimulate an attack on an allied nation, and the NATO response.

The drill…will take place Monday over Germany and involve 10,000 participants and 250 aircraft from 25 countries, including 100 aircraft and 2,000 personnel from the US, as first reported [by] German news outlet DW.
The exercises are meant to ensure a coordinated response from NATO allies under Article 5 of the alliance’s charter, which states that an attack on a NATO member nation is considered an attack on all the members.

This is a drill that ought to be emulated in another part of the world, too. The Republic of Korea, Japan, Australia, the Socialist Republic Vietnam (yes, them, too), the Republic of the Philippines, and the United States should conduct similar air drills, in conjunction with naval drills—a broad joint operations exercise tailored to the facts of eastern Asia and western Pacific Ocean—across the South China Sea, through the Taiwan Strait, and over the Republic of China.

The People’s Republic of China’s President Xi Jinping needs to get the same message that the NATO drill is aiming at Russian President Vladimir Putin, only much more loudly and with far greater clarity. The nations of the South and East China Seas, Australia, and the US need to draw a bright red line along the midline of the Taiwan Strait and tie off the Nine-Dash Line grab and make the point that the RoC’s sovereignty is not to be questioned and neither is the territorial integrity of the nations proximately rimming those two Seas.

Sandbagging

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General Li Shangfu, the People’s Republic of China’s Minister of National Defense, says war between the US and the PRC would be an unbearable disaster for the world, and further,

China seeks to develop a new type of major-country relationship with the United States. As for the US side, it needs to act with sincerity, match its words with deeds, and take concrete actions together with China to stabilize the relations and prevent further deterioration.

Li says this against the backdrop of the PRC actively preparing for war with us as a part of its preparation for invading and conquering the Republic of China. If Li’s words are accurate, then the PRC side needs to act with sincerity, match its words with deeds, and take concrete action with the United States to stabilize relations and prevent further deterioration.

That concrete action begins with the PRC ending its threats against the RoC, including ceasing its preparations for invasion and disbanding the units assembled for that purpose. That sincere action needs to be followed by the PRC side’s withdrawal from its seizure of the South China Sea and from its occupation of the islands of that Sea, islands that are owned by (if disputed among) the other nations rimming the Sea. The PRC then needs to cease its aggressive moves in the East China Sea, including its moves against the Japanese islands there.

Along the way, the PRC must leave off from its hostile acts against military aircraft and shipping that are operating in international airspace and international waters.

If the PRC side chooses not to do those things, if the PRC side continues on its present course, Li’s words will be revealed to be completely insincere, to be a cynical effort at sandbagging.

“Defense or Democracy?”

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That’s the question the Biden administration is worrying about in Chad.

The Biden administration is in a bind over whether to provide military aid to Chad, one of Africa’s most reliable bulwarks against the spread of Islamist militants and an opponent of Russia’s growing influence in the Sahel region.
Chad’s longtime president, Idriss Déby, was killed in battle two years ago and quickly replaced by his son, violating the line of succession laid out in the Central African country’s constitution. Now, the US government is struggling with the question of whether the ruling junta is too brutal and undemocratic to merit US assistance, or whether the country’s value as a military ally trumps those concerns.

There’s another interpretation of the situation, though, that seems more cogent to this ignorant Texan. That is that the question presents a false dichotomy. No, the reality is that without defense, there can be no democracy.

Without defense, the autocracy that currently reigns over Chad can become entrenched, or the nation can be overrun by the terrorists, whether Islamists like Boko Haram and Daesh-West Africa, or by elements of the Wagner Group. All of these are operating in the country.

With defense, though, Chad has a strong chance of both crushing the terrorists and making the current autocracy an aberration and returning Chad to democratic governance.

Two “Whys”

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Carefully—cowardly—anonymous Biden administration officials have leaked to the press that

A drone attack on the Kremlin earlier this month was most likely orchestrated by Ukraine, which has conducted a series of attacks on Russian targets, US officials said.

Why is the Biden administration even talking publicly about this? Who conducted the strike would seem to be a national security matter, for us and for the nation—if there was one—that conducted the strike, especially when that nation, supposedly, is heavily supported by the US. The leak and its claimed attribution of who did it seem especially egregious in light of the nature of the attack: it was blatantly amateurish and so wholly inconsistent with the quality of operations which the Ukrainian military has otherwise executed.

 

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has cautioned Ukraine against conducting attacks inside Russia over fears that Moscow could escalate the conflict….

Why does President Joe Biden (D) insist that Russia should be a sanctuary nation, free to assault a sovereign nation with impunity and without fear of response?

The Right Answer

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I don’t often agree with Mark Zuckerberg, but in this case, I do, to the extent he has the courage of his words. The European Union’s Internal Market Commission has fined Meta $1.3 billion for the crime of sending the data its Facebook facility collects on European citizens to servers in the US.

The ruling raises pressure on the US government to complete a deal that would allow Meta and thousands of multinational companies to keep sending such information stateside.
Tech companies have been especially vulnerable to regulatory scrutiny absent such a deal. But most large international companies rely on a relatively free flow of data across the Atlantic….

No, the “pressure” applied is only what Biden and his staff choose to feel. Instead, this would be a good time for Biden and his to act like they care more about what benefits America than about what benefits other polities. The vast majority of those large international companies are, after all, American companies, and the requirement to keep that kind of data on EU servers is nakedly aimed at our companies. Apparently, the Commission thinks that EU companies are unable to compete without anchors tied around our companies’ ankles.

Zuckerberg is on the right track. In addition to appealing the Commission’s order (Meta must stop sending information about European Facebook users to the US and delete data already sent) and fine, he says:

Meta has said in securities filings that if ordered to suspend transfers, it may have to stop offering services in the EU….

All of our transnationals should take that tack. If the EU wants to compete only on the race to regulatory control, it should be left to play by itself. The race to be the most controlling administrative state is one our nation should happily lose.

This is where Biden backstops Zuckerberg. We’re waiting.

And one more, separate, thing. Biden also could backstop all of our transnationals and all of our domestic companies by getting the Federal government out of the business of spying on American citizens and rifling through private papers stored on American soil. On that, the EU has a valid beef.