Obamapresidesoverunravelingofhispredecessors’foreign

Obama presides over unraveling of his predecessors’ foreign policy accomplishments

posted at 12:41 pm on August 12, 2014 by Noah Rothman

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President Barack Obama entered office in 2009 with an undeniable mandate to bring about a swift but favorable conclusion to the Iraq War. But by the time the president entered office, combat operations in Iraq were already winding down.

By the middle of 2008, the “surge” strategy and a political offensive resulting in the “Anbar Awakening” had greatly reduced internecine violence. Iraq was on a path toward reconciliation and, it was hoped, stability and peace.

“The surge had undoubtedly met its stated aim of buying the time and space necessary for the Iraqi government to advance national reconciliation and, at least in theory, develop the capacity to provide adequate public services,” a 2011 article in Foreign Affairs magazine by reporter Emma Sky read.

As I prepared to depart Iraq in August 2010, it was clear that the close partnership between the U.S. military and the ISF had paid dividends. Accompanying [Gen. Raymond] Odierno as he toured the country to review the progress, I witnessed U.S. and ISF soldiers celebrating each time the United States transferred one of its bases to Iraqi forces, conducting ceremonies in which U.S. commanders symbolically delivered the keys to their Iraqi counterparts. The strong individual and institutional relationships between the two forces contributed to a growing sense of security across the country.

That is not to say that the insurgency in Iraq had been entirely put down by 2009, or that the Bush administration bequeathed Obama an Iraq that was politically stable. The president had his work cut out for him in Iraq, but even those predisposed to be skeptical of the idea that Iraq could ever become a model state were forced to concede gains had been made.

By the summer of 2010, The New York Times, which long ago allowed the tone of the editorial page to color its supposedly neutral coverage of the Iraq War, was quoting even Iraq War skeptics who sounded notes of optimism. Framed as an iconoclastic voice of skepticism within the military establishment, Col. Alan Baldwin, a former Marine intelligence officer who warned before the invasion of Iraq that the United States would likely set off a civil war, marveled at America’s perseverance in pursuit of a stable Iraq.

“We opened a Pandora’s box,” Baldwin told Times reporter Peter Baker. “Lots of bad things were flying out of there. But good things are there now too. It’s amazing we had the patience to be where we are today.”

It was not America’s patience, but the patience of its political establishment that deserved the credit. The American public would have long ago abandoned Iraq to its own murderous devices had the political will existed in Washington to invite that kind of calamity. Sobriety and foresight guided Washington’s approach to the situation in Iraq, but only just long enough to provide Obama with the space he needed to desert Iraq entirely.

Today, that country is a failed state. The Islamic State militants who swept across the border from Syria occupy one third of the nation, a government in turmoil in the midst of an effort to oust a divisive prime minister controls another third, and the Kurdish proto-state governs the remainder. This condition was all but unthinkable when the last American troops boarded the final C-130 out of Iraq.

Iraq is not the first of Obama’s predecessors’ foreign policy accomplishments which he has undone.

When Richard Nixon took office in 1969, the geopolitical landscape in East Asia presented not merely challenges but opportunities as well. The Sino-Soviet split evolved in the later part of that decade from an ideological dispute between Beijing and Moscow into a military challenge. In March of 1969, a series of border skirmishes between the Red and People’s Liberation Armies resulted in heavy casualties. By October of that year, the two Communist poles were on the brink of war.

It was a master stroke for the Nixon administration to leverage this split in the Communist world to the United States’ advantage. The “opening” of China, culminating in Nixon’s 1972 visit to Beijing, put the Soviets on the defensive and made Nixon into a national hero. Just imagine what it would take today for two chambers of Congress controlled by Democrats offer a sitting Republican president a standing ovation in the summer of a presidential election year. U.S. intervention into the Sino-Soviet clash, and it was an intervention albeit a diplomatic one, froze that conflict in place until the collapse of the USSR in 1991.

The Russian Federation normalized relations with China and it was under Obama’s predecessor that the two countries again embarked on a path of military cooperation (what have now become regular joint military exercises between the two powers were first held in 2005 and 2007). It was, however, Obama’s presidency which saw this relationship evolve from a cooperative alliance of convenience into an anti-American bloc aimed at overturning the geopolitical status quo.

Russia, a revanchist power which aims to restore some measure of its Soviet-era regional hegemony, has been able to rely on China to offset any of the repercussions the West has imposed as a result of Moscow’s invasion and annexation of parts of Ukraine.

A bilateral energy deal which Russia and China signed in June has been described as a “geopolitical tectonic shift.” Similarly, China has offered to help replace many of the imported Western food products that have been banned as the result of a volley of tit-for-tat sanctions. “Some believe that a China-Russia axis is now emerging and could eventually propose an alternative towards a multi-polar world order,” Al Jazeera reported in June.

This was not the only accomplishment of the Nixon administration that Obama unraveled. Just over 40 years ago, the Soviet client state of Egypt threw out the Russian military advisors which had supported that country since Gamal Nasser. The Nixon administration cemented Egypt’s new fealty to the United States when it mediated an end to the 1973 Yom Kippur War in a fashion that did not humiliate Cairo. Nixon’s successor, Jimmy Carter, and his national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, solidified the relationship between the U.S. and the Egyptian army during the Camp David Accord negotiations.

The Arab Spring upended all of that when the Egyptian military lost control of the government to the Muslim Brotherhood. In what the U.S. reluctantly deemed a coup, the military reasserted control over the state when they overthrew the deeply unpopular Mohamed Morsi in the summer of 2013. Bilateral relations with Egypt were severely damaged when the Obama administration cut off some aid to Cairo as a result of this putsch.

“Since then the U.S. has done little to mend fences with the military and demonstrated little understanding of the fact that Egypt had become a zero-sum game in which the only choices were the Brotherhood or the military,” Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin wrote in December. “With the administration announcing a partial aid cutoff to the new government, what followed next was entirely predictable. Cairo turned to Moscow for help and for the first time since 1973 Russia has a foothold in the Arab world’s most populous nation as well as the one that, with the Suez Canal, holds its most strategic position.”

On Tuesday, the Russian news source RIA Novosti announced triumphantly that Russia had finally reversed the embarrassment meted out by Anwar Sadat, and there would again be military cooperation between these two states. Russian President Vladimir Putin also revealed that the two countries are investigating the potential to create a free trade zone.

These are just a few of the most egregious examples of how the Obama administration has squandered the legacy achievements of his predecessors. With more than two years of the Obama presidency to go, he may secure for himself even more dubious accomplishments.

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Tags: Barack Obama, China, Egypt, George W. Bush, Iraq, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, Russia

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Video:JonKarllistsallthethingsgoing

Video: Jon Karl lists all the things going wrong with Obama’s foreign policy

posted at 10:01 pm on July 14, 2014 by Mary Katharine Ham

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Via the Free Beacon, forgive the length, but you understand there’s a lot to list.

The list is grave and important to hear all at once like that every now and then. Perhaps one of the PR strengths of this White House is to have so very many things going wrong at one time that one can forget about individual brush strokes of ineptitude as they blend into one magnificent mural of incompetence. Karl’s list doesn’t allow that so easily, and newly minted Press Secretary Josh Earnest must wrestle with it. His first tack— complain about media bias because a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal can’t possibly be an indicator of anything.

But the second tack is indicative of the White House’s problem. Granted, it is partially the press secretary’s job to say basically nothing, and given that Earnest’s longtime idol is the President, he is understandably a promising padawan of verbal piddling. But the level of nothingness herein, at the risk of mixing my science fiction/fantasy metaphors, is so great as to send Atreyu and Artax wading through the Swamp of Sadness.

Asked whether the president bears responsibility for these situations, and what he can do about it, Earnest dodged the questions and instead said that, in each situation, the president will consider “at the core the consequences it has for American national security.”

“In each of the situations you referenced,” Earnest continued. “People are asking a legitimate question about what is the proper role for the United States’ involvement,” curiously using the world’s confusion about Obama’s absence from action to pat the president on the back. I half expected him to end with, “and we are asking that question, too, and have no idea what the answer is.” Good news, though. The White House’s action item on the above list is to…consider a principle.

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Tags: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, China, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jay Carney, josh earnest, Palestine, press secretary, White House

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America confirms Mitt Romney was right about Russia in 2012

AmericaconfirmsMittRomneywasrightaboutRussia

SpeakingofWWII,Japanweakenedcommitmenttopacifism

Speaking of WWII, Japan weakened commitment to pacifism in their constitution

posted at 11:01 am on July 2, 2014 by Noah Rothman

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While we are on the subject of World War II and the worst things to have happened since that pivotal 20th Century event, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe defied domestic public opinion on Tuesday when he pushed for and the country’s coalition government approved of a shift in the nation’s defense policy.

For 70 years, Article 9 in Japan’s post-war constitution has prohibited that nation from undertaking offensive military operations or providing for its own collective defense. Abe gutted that pacifism provision, according to The Japan Times, on Tuesday when he signed a provision changing the law to allow Japan’s Self-Defense Forces to provide for their own defense and to come to the aid of allies.

The Cabinet decision, pending related changes to relevant laws, paves the way for the SDF to use force overseas to defend Japan’s allies even if Japan itself is not under attack. In other words, it allows Japan to take part in conflicts abroad, potentially putting SDF members in harm’s way.

“The global situation surrounding Japan is becoming ever more difficult,” Abe told the country in a televised press conference. “Being fully prepared is effective in discouraging any attempt to wage a war on Japan. The cabinet decision today will further lessen the chance of Japan being engaged in war. That is my conviction.”

Japanese relations with its rising neighbor and historic adversary, China, have been worsening in recent weeks since the People’s Republic announced its claim to territory in the South China Sea the Philippines regards as within its economic zone.

Chinese, Filipino, and Japanese naval and air assets have come into close contact on multiple occasions in recent weeks as those nations test each other’s defensive parameters.

In response to Japan’s planned constitutional adaptations, China sent two naval vessels to sail just 12 miles off the coast of the Japanese Senkaku Islands – a chain which China also claims.

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Tags: China, Japan, shinzo abe, World War II

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Bostonstudentbannedfrompromforwritingpro-democracy

Boston student banned from prom for writing pro-democracy notes on China trip

posted at 9:21 pm on June 10, 2014 by Mary Katharine Ham

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You see, this school trip to China is an exchange built on “respect” and “mutual education” within the confines of the Chinese government’s definitions. It’s most definitely not an exercise in respecting the individual rights of Chinese and American students and supporting mutual education that involves critical thinking instead of upholding the polite fictions the state requires. Because thinking critically and exchanging those thoughts is dangerous in a repressive country. Which you might think would be a lesson for the school officials involved, here, but that’s not how this story goes:

Newton North High School senior Henry DeGroot was visiting a school outside Beijing on a semester abroad this year when he decided to have some fun and also make a point by writing prodemocracy messages in the notebook of a Chinese student.

“Democracy is for cool kids,” he recalls writing. “Don’t believe the lies your school and government tell you,” said another message, and “It’s right to rebel.”

But when Chinese school officials found out, he had to serve five hours of detention. And when he returned home, it got worse: Newton school officials barred DeGroot from his prom.

Newton school officials say he violated semester abroad rules, embarrassed the principal of the Chinese school that was hosting Newton students, and showed so much disrespect for the Chinese that the longstanding relationship with the school may be harmed.

The founders of the exchange program are deeply concerned. Their response to this makes me sure I’d never send my kids on any kind of educational endeavor with them:

“Until this week, we have never had an incident with a student disobeying the written code of conduct that they all sign,” Claire Kanter said from her home in Florida. “And then he refused to apologize in person. He refused to take a 30-minute train ride to apologize. I can’t tell you what I feel about this, we are an educational exchange, not a political exchange.”

So, do they send a bunch of impressionable high-school students to China while willfully keeping them ignorant of the Chinese governmental system, its differences from ours, the moral conflicts this might cause for free people engaged in free inquiry, and any of the atrocities it visits upon its people? Exactly what are they educating them about if they’re subtracting any and all context from the trip?

DeGroot’s take on his actions:

“I felt as a human being on this planet I have an inalienable right to free speech if I’m doing it in a non-vulgar, appropriate way, as this private conversation was,” DeGroot said in an interview.

“Throughout this exchange, we and those that followed us taught our students to recognize and respect the cultural differences between our countries,” their letter said. “The purpose of this exchange was and still is the understanding and respect as well as the mutual education of all our students so that solid appreciation of each other’s cultures would result.”

The Kanters have sent an abject apology to the principal of the school. The student signed a code of conduct and violated it, which I suppose means they can dole out some kind of punishment. Civil disobedience does not always come without a price, and he should be willing to face it. But a prom banning sounds a little drastic for speaking out for democracy to a fellow student in China.

The school system, he says, taught him the importance of civil disobedience and speaking his mind, but then punished him when he practiced what he learned.

I suppose it was implied in his instruction that that kind of thing should only be deployed on wingers in the U.S.

Now, I’m not intimate with the rules of exchange programs. I know the politics and sensitivities of setting these things up are likely daunting. There is, of course, sometimes value in cultural exchanges, even with countries where the system is not so friendly to individual or human rights. But those exchanges should be preceded by some very rigorous thinking by educators about how much freedom of inquiry their students are being made to give up to participate. Such an exchange should also be bolstered by some very rigorous instruction about the differences between our system and theirs and the costs and benefits of acquiescing in another culture’s system to learn about it.

The tone of the Kanters’ response to this “transgression” suggests they’re giving up way too much. If your educational relationship depends upon students upholding the propaganda line of a repressive government at all times in private conversations, as this one seems to, there’s probably not much education going on.

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Tags: China, civil disobedience, democracy, dissent

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Moreshotsfiredintheongoingsolar-poweredtrade

More shots fired in the ongoing solar-powered trade dispute between China and the U.S.

posted at 8:41 pm on June 3, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

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The United States, the European Union, and China have been caught up in a trade-war-triangle for at least the past couple of years over, apparently, who is “fairly” subsidizing their domestic solar manufacturing industry, and who isn’t. I must confess, I rather fail to see the distinction between the myriad cash grants, loan guarantees, tax credits, and portfolio standards that both China and the U.S. offer the solar industry at various levels of production and installation — but I suppose we’re meant to believe that there is one, since the Obama administration just imposed further duties on our Eastern competitor’s solar market, via Reuters:

The United States slapped new import duties on solar panels and other related products from China on Tuesday after the Commerce department ruled they were produced using Chinese government subsidies, potentially inflaming trade tensions between the two countries.

The U.S. arm of German solar manufacturer SolarWorld AG filed a petition complaining that Chinese manufacturers are sidestepping duties imposed in 2012 by shifting production of the cells used to make their panels to Taiwan and continuing to flood the U.S. market with cheap products.

The new complaint seeks to close that loophole by extending import duties to also cover panels made with parts from Taiwan.

In a preliminary determination, the Commerce department imposed duties of 35.21 percent on imports of panels and other products made by Wuxi Suntech Power and five other affiliated companies, 18.56 percent on imports of Trina Solar and 26.89 percent on imports from other Chinese producers.

Oh, good grief. Protectionism, which happens to be yet another form of special treatment for domestic solar panel manufacturers, is never a good idea, but neither is the subsidization that just keeps on escalating this travesty of free trade. Subsidization is a really great way to discourage the kind of price efficiency and innovation that can actually help newer, less established technologies gain their own competitive merits — which is probably one of the reasons why China’s solar-panel market is a hot mess of over-supply, corner-cutting, poor quality, and environmental self-defeat, via the NYT:

Although China may be a cheaper place than Europe for producing solar panels, the savings come at a higher cost to the environment, a new study says.

Weaker environmental standards and the more highly polluting sources of energy used by Chinese manufacturers are the reasons for the discrepancy, according to research by Northwestern University and the United States Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory. …

The environmental cost of Chinese- made solar panels is about twice that of those made in Europe, said Fengqi You, a corresponding author of the paper, which will be published in next month’s issue of the journal Solar Energy.

‘‘While it might be an economically attractive option to move solar panel manufacturing from Europe to China, it is actually less sustainable from the life cycle energy and environmental perspective — especially under the motivation of using solar panels for a more sustainable future,’’ Dr. You, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern, said in a news release last week from the Argonne National Laboratory.

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Tags: China, Europe, free trade, green energy, manufacturing, solar energy, tariffs, United States

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So. Russia and China just signed a major natural-gas deal.

So.RussiaandChinajustsignedamajor

Video:MilitarycoupinThailand postedat

Video: Military coup in Thailand

posted at 8:01 am on May 22, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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The political situation has deteriorated for months in this Southeast Asia tourist haven, with the government and its opposition mired in a stalemate that now appears irresolvable. The military imposed martial law on Tuesday, and today announced that it was dispensing with any remaining illusions of civilian control, at least for the next few months. The army has already started rounding up the usual suspects in their second coup over the last seven years:

The Thai military has taken control of the government in a coup, the country’s military chief announced in a national address Thursday.

The move came after rival factions were unable to come up with a suitable agreement to govern, the military chief said.

Hours earlier, members of the military and opposition parties met for a second day to try to find a solution to the crisis in Thailand, which has been under martial law since Tuesday.

During the meetings this week, Thai election officials said the country’s caretaker prime minister and his Cabinet should resign and a new interim government should be named ahead of elections to be held in six to nine months.

But interim Prime Minister Niwatthamrong Boonsongpaisan said there’s no chance that the caretaker government will resign.

This coup takes place as other military clashes in the Pacific Rim have begun to light up. China and Vietnam went to the brink of military action over disputed territory, which resulted in riots in Vietnam’s cities that drove out Chinese merchants (but left Americans alone, interestingly). This morning, the two Koreas exchanged artillery fire over a longstanding dispute over territorial waters:

North Korea fired into disputed waters near a South Korean warship Thursday, a Joint Chiefs of Staff officer said, in the latest sign of tension rising between the bitter rivals in recent weeks.

The officer said North Korea fired artillery toward a South Korean navy ship engaged in a routine patrol mission near the countries’ disputed maritime boundary in the Yellow Sea. The South Korean ship was not hit, said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of office rules.

The official could not confirm a report from Yonhap news agency that South Korea’s military returned fire at waters near a North Korean warship. South Korean television network YTN said South Korea fired two rounds of artillery shells at the North, but other details were unknown, including whether artillery was fired from sea or land.

YTN reported that residents on the frontline Yeonpyeong Island were being evacuated. In 2010, North Korea fired artillery at the island, killing two civilians and two marines.

In the long run, this kind of unrest throughout the Pacific Rim area will boost China, which wants to dominate the region both economically and militarily, at the expense of the US and Japan. The less stable these nations are, the more likely their factions will apply to Beijing for patronage in settling accounts. That will give China a lever by which to keep these nations firmly in its orbit of influence. Whether or not that works out well for China in the short run — which it certainly didn’t in Vietnam — is beside the point. That may be why the Vietnamese authorities took care to protect American interests in the recent unrest, realizing 40 years after the Vietnam War that the US might be a better choice of ally.

For now, though, the coup presents some difficulty for the US. Martial law and military coups are antithetical to the American mission of democratization, but Thai attempts to hold an election in February to settle the matter turned into a disaster. The opposition wants a “people’s council” government instead of an election, which sounds a lot like a Communist takeover, which would be worse than the coup, as long as the military handed over power after a valid election. Expect the US to cluck its tongue at the coup in public, but don’t expect a lot of sanctions over it — like we saw when Egypt overthrew Morsi.

 

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Tags: China, coup, North Korea, South Korea, Thailand, vietnam

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ObamaadminaccusesChinaofcyberhacking;Chinadoth

Obama admin accuses China of cyberhacking; China doth protest too much

posted at 8:41 pm on May 19, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

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On Monday, the Obama administration finally went ahead and formally charged five Chinese government officials with coordinating cyberattacks against six major American companies — marking the first time the U.S. has specifically called out hackers acting on explicit orders from a foreign government. Here’s the official statement from the FBI:

WASHINGTON—A grand jury in the Western District of Pennsylvania (WDPA) indicted five Chinese military hackers for computer hacking, economic espionage, and other offenses directed at six American victims in the U.S. nuclear power, metals, and solar products industries.

The indictment alleges that the defendants conspired to hack into American entities to maintain unauthorized access to their computers and to steal information from those entities that would be useful to their competitors in China, including state-owned enterprises (SOEs). In some cases, it alleges, the conspirators stole trade secrets that would have been particularly beneficial to Chinese companies at the time they were stolen. In other cases, it alleges, the conspirators also stole sensitive, internal communications that would provide a competitor, or an adversary in litigation, with insight into the strategy and vulnerabilities of the American entity.

“This is a case alleging economic espionage by members of the Chinese military and represents the first-ever charges against a state actor for this type of hacking,” U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said. “The range of trade secrets and other sensitive business information stolen in this case is significant and demands an aggressive response. Success in the global market place should be based solely on a company’s ability to innovate and compete, not on a sponsor government’s ability to spy and steal business secrets. This administration will not tolerate actions by any nation that seeks to illegally sabotage American companies and undermine the integrity of fair competition in the operation of the free market.”

And of course, on cue, here come the protestations of the communist party officials who believe themselves fundamentally incapable of any sort of breach of international ethics:

Chinese government officials on Monday strongly rebuked the U.S. over its claims of cyber-spying by five Chinese military officers, saying the Justice Department indictment was based on  “fabricated facts” and would jeopardize U.S.-China relations.

“The Chinese government, the Chinese military and their relevant personnel have never engaged or participated in cyber theft of trade secrets,” Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Qin Gang said in a statement. “The U.S. accusation against Chinese personnel is purely ungrounded and absurd.”

The Chinese government demanded that the U.S. indictment, unsealed Monday, be withdrawn. Chinese officials also said they would suspend activities of the China-U.S. Cyber Working Group, created last year to address allegations of hacking. …

“Well today, we are” providing proof, said John Carlin, assistant attorney general for national security. “For the first time, we are exposing the faces and names behind the keyboards in Shanghai used to steal from American businesses.”

Puh-lease. China has been all up in our cyber-grill spying on both our national security and commercial systems for ages now — and I suppose that the Obama administration at least saying something on the record about it is certainly better than doing absolutely nothing. Unfortunately, however, it is practically speaking a pretty mild gesture, and while it may escalate some already-escalating tensions, it won’t amount to anything in the way of getting the Chinese to actually back off of the espionage:

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Beijinghasbeensecretlypreparingforthecollapse

Beijing has been secretly preparing for the collapse of North Korea

posted at 8:21 pm on May 5, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

That China has contingency plans on the books concerning the possible implosion of their starving communist gulag state of a neighbor certainly isn’t much of a surprise. China is North Korea’s last major economic and financial supporter, supplying the country with food, weapons, and energy, and headache-inducing, saber-rattling, off-the-wall, costly annoyance that North Korea may be for the Chinese, they are still fellow communists, after all — and that means covering their collective behind in the event of collapse and especially preventing any undesirable foreign influence from entering the region. (Hint: They’re talking about us/South Korea.) Via the Telegraph:

China has drawn up detailed contingency plans for the collapse of the North Korean government, suggesting that Beijing has little faith in the longevity of Kim Jong-un’s regime.

Documents drawn up by planners from China’s People’s Liberation Army that were leaked to Japanese media include proposals for detaining key North Korean leaders and the creation of refugee camps on the Chinese side of the frontier in the event of an outbreak of civil unrest in the secretive state.

The report calls for stepping up monitoring of China’s 879-mile border with North Korea.

Any senior North Korean military or political leaders who could be the target of either rival factions or another “military power,” thought to be a reference to the United States, should be given protection, the documents state. …

The report suggests “foreign forces” could be involved in an incident that leads to the collapse of internal controls in North Korea, resulting to millions of refugees attempting to flee.

It’s also no secret that China’s patience with North Korea has been growing particularly thin of late, brought on by their bizarre delusions of nuclear grandeur. Just last month, China was again finding it necessary to remind the NorKs that they would do well to toe the line on that front:

China said Thursday it will not permit chaos on its doorstep, in another thinly veiled warning to its wayward ally North Korea amid indications that the North is technically ready to conduct a fresh nuclear test.

“Peace and stability is in the immediate interests of China. We will by no means allow war or chaos to occur on our doorstep,” China’s foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters, when asked about the possibility of a fourth nuclear test by North Korea.

The comments by Qin echo those of Chinese leaders, but were the strongest yet by the Chinese foreign ministry in response to recent reports that North Korea appears to have completed technical preparations for a nuclear test.

Tags: China, communism, Kim Jong-un, North Korea, nuclear weapons, poverty

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Democratic fault lines: Hillary knocks Snowden for fleeing to Russia

Democraticfaultlines:HillaryknocksSnowdenforfleeing

ObamaflopsontradeinJapan posted

Obama flops on trade in Japan

posted at 9:21 am on April 25, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Normally, state visits by US presidents follow a carefully prepared script, even more carefully prepared than on Chicagoland. Open issues only get broached if a resolution has already agreed upon by lower-ranking envoys, lest the Commander-in-Chief end up with egg on his face during his foreign-policy tour. It’s not that there is a lack of issues where Japan and the US currently agree, either, even while the open-trade agreement that has languished for years is unresolved. And yet, Barack Obama made it a point to highlight the lack of a deal on trade in his remarks in Tokyo:

While failing to seal a deal on his ambitious plan to expand trade in the Pacific Rim, President Barack Obama on Thursday said a long-stalled trade pact still can be finalized if Japan opens its markets and accepts more U.S. exports of everything from cars to farm goods.

“That’s my bottom line, and I can’t accept anything else,” Obama said at a news conference in Tokyo.

After meeting privately with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the president said that “important progress” had been made in trying to wrap up the deal, adding: “I continue to believe we can get this done.”

The issue, according to McClatchy, is the competing tariffs on auto sales, grains, and meat products that restrict trade between the two industrial giants. If we want to sell more ag products in Japan, we will have to lower tariffs on cars, and then enforce open-market agreements so that Japan doesn’t cheat on pricing. Needless to say, this requires stakeholders in both nations to either grudgingly agree to support the deal or to at least stop agitating against it. Neither the auto industry here nor the ag interests in Japan apparently have reached that point — so why bring it up at all, especially on a trip where the President already looks more like a tourist than a world leader?

That’s not just my assessment, but also Dana Milbank’s. He wrote his criticism on Wednesday before this flop:

The seven-day, four-country Asian tour promises to be an excellent adventure for the president. He’ll visit the Meiji Shrine in Japan and dine with the emperor. He’ll visit Gyeongbokgung Palace in South Korea and lay a wreath at the National War Memorial. In Malaysia, he will attend a “royal audience” and visit the National Mosque in Kuala Lumpur. And in the Philippines, he’ll check out an electric vehicle, place another wreath and enjoy his third state dinner.

But one thing is missing from the president’s otherwise exciting itinerary: making news. The one hope for a breakthrough on the trip — an announcement of a trade deal called the Trans-Pacific Partnership — fell through. National security adviser Susan Rice said work will continue in the “coming weeks and months.”

Obama will have the requisite news conferences with foreign leaders, although questions are likely to be about Ukraine. Rice described the purpose of the tour in vague and airy terms: “This is a positive trip with a positive agenda that underscores that the United States’ commitment to this region is growing, and is a cornerstone of our global engagement and is going to be there for the long term.”

Nothing is wrong with an American president spreading goodwill and eating good sushi, but the photo-op nature of the trip risks contributing to a perception that Obama’s Asian policy, and his foreign policy in general, is similarly itinerant. He’s seeing the sights, getting some good pics and moving along — more tourist than architect of world affairs.

Michael Auslin notes for the Daily Beast that Obama did manage to look a little more like a world leader in Tokyo on another topic, but that it’s not likely to instill confidence in our allies abroad. He set another red line, this time over the Senkaku Islands, which Obama asserted would come under the existing mutual-defense pact between the US and China. Auslin isn’t terribly impressed:

[G]lobal bullies have shown the president’s red lines to be drawn in pencil, not ink. Syria and Russia ignore the White House with impunity, while North Korea broke its only agreement with the Obama administration. Meanwhile, Iran’s leadership proclaims it will never give up its nuclear program even as it keeps the Americans tied up in negotiations.

Perhaps President Obama’s threats are simply seen as no longer credible. Beijing may well decide that the president offers little but rhetoric. In that case, it is not a question of whether the United States has the means to deter Chinese aggression (we do, for now), but whether President Obama has the will. If the leaders of revisionist or disruptive states are betting that the White House will shy away from any real confrontation, then they will embrace aggressive opportunism when the chance offers itself.

In the case of China and Japan, that could lead to the largest clash in Asia since Vietnam. The two have no relations of trust, and the trend line has shown that they are unwilling to solve their dispute peacefully. The worst outcome would be if President Obama’s promise actually worsened the situation in the East China Sea rather than stabilize it. That would truly test U.S. resolve and credibility.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. This, however, demonstrates the massive damage that Obama did in drawing a red line in Syria while failing to build the requisite political support to act when it got crossed. Syria, Russia, and China may have concluded that the US now speaks loudly and carries no stick at all — and that will make the world a very dangerous place.

Tags: Barack Obama, China, Japan, red line, trade

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MajorHillaryaccomplishment:SellingBoeingjetstoRussia

Major Hillary accomplishment: Selling Boeing jets to Russia

posted at 10:01 am on April 14, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Over the last few weeks, we’ve noted the bemusement of Hillary Clinton supporters when asked to name a major accomplishment of the presumed Democratic frontrunner for the 2016 presidential nomination. Yesterday, the Washington Post managed to succeed where most analysts failed. The former Secretary of State turned out to be very good at selling Boeing jets — and then reaping the windfall afterward, political and otherwise:

On a trip to Moscow early in her tenure as secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton played the role of international saleswoman, pressing Russian government officials to sign a multibillion-dollar deal to buy dozens of aircraft from Boeing.

A month later, Clinton was in China, where she jubilantly announced that the aerospace giant would be writing a generous check to help resuscitate floundering U.S. efforts to host a pavilion at the upcoming World’s Fair.

Boeing, she said, “has just agreed to double its contribution to $2 million.”

Clinton did not point out that, to secure the donation, the State Department had set aside ethics guidelines that first prohibited solicitations of Boeing and then later permitted only a $1 million gift from the company. Boeing had been included on a list of firms to be avoided because of its frequent reliance on the government for help negotiating overseas business and concern that a donation could be seen as an attempt to curry favor with U.S. officials.

The jet deal took place in November 2009. Notably, this was several months after the “reset button” fiasco with Sergei Lavrov that all but shrugged off efforts by the previous administration to get tough with Moscow after the invasion of Georgia in the summer of 2008. The Post’s Rosalind Helderman mentions this deal as the Obama administration’s “enticing symbol” of their diplomatic “reset.”

What isn’t mentioned in this piece was the cancellation of the US missile shield program with Poland and the Czech Republic two months earlier than the Boeing sale. Russia had long opposed the missile-shield program in eastern Europe, pushed by the Bush administration as a response to Iranian development of both its missile and nuclear-weapons programs. At the time, no one could quite figure out what we got in trade for this retreat. Now it appears all we got was a sale of some commercial airliners to Aeroflot.

But that’s not all Hillary got:

In 2010, two months after Boeing won its $3.7 billion Russia deal, the company announced a $900,000 contribution to the William J. Clinton Foundation intended to rebuild schools in earthquake-ravaged Haiti. The foundation, which Hillary Clinton now helps lead with her husband and daughter, has become a popular charity for major corporations.

The company’s ties came into play again this month when its in-house lobbyist, former Bill Clinton aide Tim Keating, co-hosted a fundraiser for Ready for Hillary, the super PAC backing her potential presidential run.

What did Boeing cough up for its $3.7 billion sale? It donated $2 million to the State Department’s World Fair pavilion a few months later, plus another $900,000 for the Clinton’s foundation — and apparently a bundler for Hillary 2016. That seems like a great swap for national security, no?

Small wonder Google is ramping up its lobbying presence in Washington these days:

The rise of Google as a top-tier Washington player fully captures the arc of change in the influence business.

Nine years ago, the company opened a one-man lobbying shop, disdainful of the capital’s pay-to-play culture.

Since then, Google has soared to near the top of the city’s lobbying ranks, placing second only to General Electric incorporate lobbying expenditures in 2012 and fifth place in 2013.

The company gives money to nearly 140 business trade groups, advocacy organizations and think tanks, according to a Post analysis of voluntary disclosures by the company, which, like many corporations, does not reveal the size of its donations. That’s double the number of groups Google funded four years ago.

This summer, Google will move to a new Capitol Hill office, doubling its Washington space to 55,000 square feet — roughly the size of the White House.

Google’s increasingly muscular Washington presence matches its expanded needs and ambitions as it has fended off a series of executive- and legislative-branch threats to regulate its activities and well-funded challenges by its corporate rivals.

It’s prudent to plan for the future, after all.

Tags: 2016 election, China, crony capitalism, Google, Hillary Clinton, reset button, Russia

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Source from: hotair

Video:UkrainedigginginontheRussianborder

Video: Ukraine digging in on the Russian border

posted at 5:31 pm on April 5, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

“This region has seen both Soviet and Nazi occupations,” the AFP narrator notes about the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, “and has no desire to see history repeated.” With Russian forces massing on their eastern frontier, Ukraine’s military has dug in on their side of the border in an attempt to deter Vladimir Putin from seizing more Ukrainian territory. In an all-out fight they probably wouldn’t stand a chance, but they want to at least give Putin second thoughts about another easy occupation and annexation:

Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk hit out at Russia for carrying out “an armed robbery” and said the country would respond if it tried to annex the eastern regions, home to many Russian speakers as well as industries on which Moscow relies.

“I want to officially warn Russia: we will respond firmly, including through military means, against any attempt to seize Ukraine, to cross borders, or annex eastern or other regions by Russian troops,” Yatsenyuk said.

Moscow has brushed off concerns about the massive military drills it is carrying out near the Ukrainian border. Reports it had withdrawn a battalion of about 500 soldiers have done little to ease what the European Union said Friday was a “very dangerous” situation. …
Ukrainian officials are guarded on the size of the border deployment of an army that experts say is ill-equipped to stave off a Russian invasion after years of underinvestment.

At some point, that underinvestment will likely become a bigger story, too. The new government in Kyiv has demanded that the West take at least some steps to enforce the Budapest Memorandum, in which Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons (Soviet leftovers that they probably couldn’t effectively use anyway) in exchange for security guarantees from Russia and the West. While pro-Russian governments ruled in Kyiv, it made sense for Ukraine’s capital to go elsewhere other than defense, but that situation must have suited Moscow’s purposes, and does even more now. Don’t be surprised if Ukrainians begin looking into defense decisions made by Viktor Yanukovich and accusing him of deliberately leaving the country relatively defenseless against Russia.

They’re not happy with the Western response either, and Japan may be getting a little nervous, too. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel went to Japan this week, and tried to reassure Pacific Rim allies through his comments to the media traveling with him:

Hagel’s reassurances are that the US remains highly engaged with China and is committed to keeping the status quo in place in the Pacific Rim. Other than geography, what about that is different than the US assurances about Russia before the seizure and annexation of Crimea? Japan is not Ukraine, obviously, but the Philippines might not feel quite as sanguine about American reassurances regarding the ability to contain aggressive and acquisitive empires.

Tags: China, Chuck Hagel, Japan, Philippines, Russia, Ukraine

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Source from: hotair