(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Why China Really is Like Nazi Germany

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Albert O. Hirschman, allies, Biden, China, dumping, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, intellectual property theft, Japan, multilateralism, NATO, Nazi Germany, nuclear umbrella, Robert D. Atkinson, sanctions, South Korea, tariffs, tech industry, technology extortion, Trade, tripwire, Trump, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Because Nazi references can be so irresponsibly inflammatory, and therefore have been so often abused, I haven’t yet compared the threat posed by China to the rest of the world to that posed by Nazi Germany. (In my view, these comparisons have been used even more recklessly lately in U.S. domestic politics, chiefly to describe former President Trump and his views and policies.) So even though the People’s Republic, its ambitions, and its burgeoning capabilities do scare the living daylights out of me (and should scare you), I was nonetheless pretty surprised to see precisely this comparison just made by Robert D. Atkinson.

Atkinson is the head of a technology-focused Washington, D.C. think tank who I’ve known since the early 1990s. I’ve admired some of its work and haven’t been so crazy about other examples of its output, but I’ve never, ever considered him a boat-rocker, much less a rhetorical bomb thrower. In fact, my criticisms of the numerous studies and articles issued by his Information Technology and Innovation Foundation stem from my view that they’re way too cautious when it comes to countering China’s wide range of predatory economic practices (which include predatory technology policy practices like the theft and extortion of intellectual property).

And I’ve attributed much of this caution to the Foundation’s donor base – which is dominated by the U.S. and in some cases foreign tech and manufacturing companies that have worked so hard to send so much production and employment, and (voluntarily) so much technology to China for decades. It’s true that many of these firms are now crying foul as Beijing in recent years has aimed to strengthen its own entities’ positions at the foreigners’ expense. Yet their stubborn opposition to the unilateral Trump tariffs and some key sanctions on the Chinese tech outfits that have been major customers made clear their vain hope that they could somehow have their China cake and eat it, too.

Yet here comes Atkinson in the Fall issue of The International Economy (a publication that’s as – proudly – establishment oriented as they come) with a piece titled “A Remarkable Resemblance” likening China’s international economic policies to those of “Germany for the first forty-five years of the twentieth century” – which of course include the twelve Nazi years (1933-1945).

As the author argues, Germany during these decades was:

“a ‘power trader’ that used trade as a key tool to gain commercial and military advantage over its adversaries. Likewise, China’s trade policy is guided neither by free trade nor protectionism, but by power trade, with remarkably similar strategy and tactics to those of 1940s Germany. Understanding how Germany manipulated the global trading system to degrade its adversaries’ capabilities, entrap nations as reluctant allies, and build up its own industries for commercial and military advantage, just as China is doing, can shed light and point the way for solutions to the China challenge.”

Atkinson reports that this description of German policies came from a 1945 book by the important economist Albert O. Hirschman, which concluded that “[I]t’s is possible to turn foreign trade into an instrument of power, of pressure, and even of conquest. The Nazis have done nothing but exploit the fullest possibilities inherent in foreign trade within the traditional framework of international economic relations.”

The author rightly observes that

“Hirschman’s key insight was that some countries— in this case Germany under three very different government regimes from 1900 to 1945—focus not on maximizing free trade or even on protecting their industries, but on changing the relative power of nations through trade to achieve global power. Germany’s policies and programs were designed not only to advance its own economic and military power, but to also degrade its adversaries’ economies, even if that imposed costs on their own economy relative to a free trade regime.”

Germany also consistently sought, as the author points out “to make it more difficult for its trading partners to dispense entirely with trade with Germany, thus creating dependency.” And if that’s not enough to convince you about the comparison with China today, Atkinson himself notes that the German policy recipe also included massive industrial espionage, and Hirschman identified a major element as the equally massive dumping (selling at prices way below production costs) of goods into foreign markets to destroy overseas competition.

Atkinson’s diagnosis of the problem is so spot-on that it makes his recommended solution especially disappointing. Kind of like President Biden, he believes that the best internationally oriented option by far (on top of more effective support for U.S. industry, which I strongly support) is forming a “NATO for trade” that would be

“governed by a council of participating [free trading] countries…if any member is threatened or attacked unjustly with trade measures that inflict economic harm, DATO [the “Democratically Allied Trade Organization] would quickly convene and consider whether to take joint action to defend the member nation.”

I’ve already pointed out that the consensus on standing against China economically among America’s allies is way too weak to enable such multilateral approaches to succeed. But as long as we’re talking in terms of NATO – the military alliance between the United States and much of first Western and now Eastern Europe – and the Cold War, let’s not forget two other big problems. First, NATO (and this also goes for America’s security ties with South Korea and Japan) was never so much an alliance as a protector-protectorate relationship. The vast bulk of the heavy lifting was always done by the United States.

This allied security dependence in turn has produced the second major obstacle to a DATO’s effectiveness. Because the United States coddled allied defense free-ridingcand opened its markets one-sidedly for so long, the allies’ protectorate status was substantially cost-free economically, and even came with trade rewards no other country could remotely offer. (In addition, as I’ve also written, the creation of an American nuclear umbrella combined with the stationining of U.S. “tripwire” forces on the NATO frontlines in Germany also greatly minimized the military risks of siding with Washington.)

Today, however, economic power between the United States and the allies is more evenly distributed, and the allies’ profitable trade with and investment in China has, as noted in my aforementioned writings, greatly increased the economic price they would pay for lining up against China.

Still, by comparing the China threat to the Nazi threat, Atkinson’s article significantly bolsters the case for the United States escalating its response to the “all of society” level – or at least intensifying it qualitatively. Let’s just hope, as the author writes, that this time around the United States fully awakens a lot faster.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Trumply Deranged Coverage of a Trump Security Policy Win

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alliances, allies, America First, burden sharing, deterrence, Financial Times, globalism, James White, Joe Biden, military spending, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, South Korea, tripwire, Trump

I know that there’s lots more to say about last week’s outrageous Capitol Hill riot and its political and even broader fallout, but sometimes a news development comes along that’s so underappreciated and at the same time so poorly reported that I just couldn’t resist weighing in right away.

I’m talking about decisions being made in South Korea to become more militarily self-reliant, and the way they were reported in the Financial Times a week ago. The article, by Edward White, had it all as far as my Trump-y, America First-type worldview is concerned: an (apparently unwitting account) of signs of a clearly emerging potential triumph for this approach to U.S. foreign policy; a comparably stinging (and unwitting) rebuke of its globalist counterpart; a complete failure to mention the benefits for the United States (as opposed to the impact elsewhere) coupled with  attempts by globalist supposed experts focusinf singlemindedly on the downsides and ignoring the consequences for Americans; and just plain sloppy journalism.

As known by RealityChek regulars, the news that long-time military ally (or protectorate, depending on your point of view) South Korea is revving up its defense spending is an unalloyed good for Americans. For decades, Seoul’s skimpy military budgets, which remained modest despite the country’s phenomenal economic progress, required the United States to supply the conventional forces needed to defend it against a North Korean attack.

The large American troop contingent stationed right at the Demilitarized Zone, directly in the North Koreans’ invasion path, might have made sense when Washington had no reason to fear any conflict going nuclear, and indeed viewed its possession of these arms as a pillar of its strategy of protecting South Korea by deterring aggression (because North Korea had no nukes of its own that could hit the U.S. homeland in retalition). But since North Korea is at the least so close to possessing this capability, the American units have turned into a tripwire all too likely to expose Americans to these risks, thereby rendering the U.S. nuclear guarantee a prime example of policy masochism. (This post described the changing Korean peninsula and overall Asian security environment, and its implications for U.S. strategy, back in 2014.) 

As also known by RealityChek regulars, President Trump has displayed some awareness of this situation, and, as White has reported, has pressed the South Koreans to get their self-defense act together – though in his often typically incoherent way, focusing almost entirely during his term on securing more South Korean financing of the expenses of deploying the U.S. forces on the peninsula than on planning to withdraw, and thereby eliminate the nuclear risk to America that their presence creates.

But White’s article cites evidence that Seoul has interpreted Mr. Trump’s harangues about rip off-obsessed allies as a clear sign that the United States is no longer a reliable ally, and that South Korea needs to build the manpower and especially weaponry it will need if the United States flies the coop. Especially interesting is the apparent South Korean conviction that these preparations must be made even though alliance fetishizer Joe Biden will become President on January 20.

Clearly, nothing could be better for the United States, and just as clearly, Trumpian impatience – following decades of coddling free-riding by globalist American leaders – deserves most of the credit. Even if Biden has no intention of withdrawing the American troops and bolstering his own country’s security, at least one major argument against such a step would be eliminated if South Korea became self-reliant.

But none of this side of the equation will be found in the article. Instead, South Korea’s stated new strategy is depicted as an regrettably inevitable result of “Mr Trump’s treatment of long-term allies.” And of course, grave risks abound, including the chance that “The build-up could send unintended signals of aggression or weakness, inviting miscalculations or adventurism from countries including North Korea, China and Russia.”

Typically, however, these experts ignore the screamingly obvious: If the U.S. troops leave, any miscalculations or adventurism would be problems for South Korea and its neighbors, not for the United States.

As for the sloppy journalism, that comes in when White tries to show that South Korea has already been an impressive military spender:

“South Korea’s annual defence bill is already high compared with those of many countries of a similar size and wealth. Military spending as a percentage of government expenditure was 12.7 last year, according to Stockholm Peace Research Institute data, ahead of 9.2 per cent in the US and the UK’s 4.5 per cent.”

To which the only serious response is, “Seriously?” Because why should anyone except an apologist care how Seoul’s defense spending compares with similarly sized or wealthy countries, much less with the United States’? After all, almost none of these countries lives in what’s probably the world’s most dangerous neighborhood, with an utterly deranged, nuclear-armed regime right next door for starters? Given South Korea’s (great) wealth, and North Korea’s impoverishment, the only important gauge of the adequacy of Seoul’s military budget is whether it can meet South Korea’s needs. And obviously, there’s a long way to go in this respect.

Moreover, even anyone who puts any stock in the numbers mentioned by White needs to ask themselves why the emphasis is on percentages of government spending? What actually counts is percentage of gross domestic product (GDP, or the entire economy). Because it’s the share of total national resources devoted to defense that genuinely makes clear the priority it enjoys. And with 2.7 percent the figure for highly insecure South Korea, according to the latest available data, and 3.4 percent that for the highly secure US of A, the only accurate way to describe defense as a South Korean priority is “not real high.”

Don’t get me wrong: As a sovereign country, Seoul has every right to skimp on defense spending. It also has every right to try to make another country bear an outsized measure of cost and risk for this decision. But the equally sovereign United States has every right to refuse to keep playing Uncle Sucker, especially when North Korea’s nuclear weapons make the stakes so potentially catastrophic. America’s outgoing President understood this, however imperfectly. Anyone believing that America’s security (especially from nuclear attack) needs to come first for Americans should be hoping that the nation’s incoming President quickly gets on this wavelength.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: US Allies Have Just Trashed Biden’s Allies-Centric China Policy

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alliances, allies, America First, Biden, China, European Union, globalism, investment, Jake J. Sullivan, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Phase One, Trump

Apparent President-elect Joe Biden says that, although he’s hoping for and expects some cooperation from Congresional Republicans once he assumes office, he’s also ready for a “punch in the mouth” from his political opponents.

This morning, though, he faces an at least equally important question about both political pugilism and about his vaunted foreign policy expertise: Has he been ready for a punch in the mouth from America’s allies? Because that’s what he’s just gotten from the European Union, which has just announced that it’s reached what it, anyway, touts as a major investment deal with China.

The agreement matters because Biden’s core claim about America’s China policy lately (in his supposedly post-flagrant coddling phase), has been that President Trump has gotten it all wrong about countering Beijing’s threats to U.S. national security economic interests with an “America First” approach that’s antagonized allies like the Europeans. He says he’ll meet the Chinese challenge much more effectively by fostering a united anti-Beijing front with these countries.

The former Vice President – and most of his fellow globalists in the U.S. foreign policy establishment who made the same arguments (e.g., here) – consistently overlooked the gaping holes in this case. Economically speaking both leading European and Asian allies have created and long maintained mutually beneficial trade and investment ties with China. Worse, many of their gains came at America’s expense, since Germany, Japan, and South Korea in particular supplied much of the capital equipment for the export-oriented Chinese manufacturing sector that relied crucially on selling to the United States – not back into their markets. (See here for Asia’s trade with China and the United States and here for Germany’s.)

Since the Trump tariffs on U.S. imports from China were threatening this lucrative arrangement, the allies were bound to be dead set against any American efforts to balance trade flows in particular better.

In terms of national security, these allies have nearly all practiced cynical defense free-riding, skimping on their own defense spending while counting on Washington to ride to their rescue if events go south. A key aim of Mr. Trump’s foreign policy was pushing the allies to act – after decades of globalist enabling – as if their own security mattered at least as much to them as to the United States. But the dogged resistance of most of the Europeans and Asians makes clear their determination to stay on the sidelines militarily, too.

The European Union (EU)’s talks with Beijing on the investment deal represented the first test of the Biden China strategy, and it’s failure couldn’t be more clear. The negotiations began in early 2014, but progress was modest until China evidently concluded that the end of the Trump era created a golden, costless, risk-less chance to notch a major diplomatic triumph. (See here for a good, short account.)

With a few concessions on protectionist practices that look just as vague and unenforceable as China’s standard pledges of economic good behavior, and promises on human rights abuses and climate change that appear even emptier, the big logjams were broken, and the Europeans wasted no time in seizing the resulting opportunity to curry favor with the Chinese.

And the EU’s haste was especially noteworthy because it amounted to an unmistakable rejection of a public Biden team request to consult and coordinate with the incoming administration before it moved forward. Although in response to news of rapid progress on the agreement, Biden’s national security adviser-designate Jake J. Sullivan tweeted on December 21 that “The Biden-Harris administration would welcome early consultations with our European partners on our common concerns about China’s economic practices,” the Europeans steamed ahead anyway.

The Europeans insist that their deal with China simply places their economic ties with the People’s Republic on the same footing as America’s as a result of the “Phase One” trade deal signed by President Trump a year ago. But this position doesn’t pass the laugh test, as there’s no evidence that China has made specific commitments to buy EU products and services, or that the investment deal’s enforcement mechanism is as loophole-free as that secured by Washington. (See this article for a detailed analysis of the Trump agreement.)

There’s no question that U.S. efforts to counter China would be more effective with genuine allied help than without it. But since the allies clearly aren’t on board with this agenda, any further Biden insistence on a multilateral approach would demonstrate that he’s not serious about this goal, either. Fortunately for the United States, for the last four years, it’s had a President who’s realized that the nation’s own devices – and maximizing the national strength and wealth behind them – are by far its best guarantee of satisfactorily advancing and defending its own China-related interests. Unless the allies or Biden change their tacks quickly, expect the next four years to be ones marked by major Chinese gains, and an America that’s considerably less secure and prosperous.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Biden Choices Signal a “What, Me Worry?” China Policy

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alliances, allies, Antony Blinken, BlackRock, Brian Deese, China, decoupling, Jake Sullivan, Janet Yellen, Joe Biden, Katherine Tai, Lloyd Austin, multilateralism, national security, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Robert Lighthizer, sanctions, tariffs, tech war, Trade, trade war, transition, Trump, U.S. Trade Representative, USTR, Wall Street

Apparent President-elect Biden so far is sending a message about his China policy that’s unmistakably bad news for any American believing that the People’s Republic is a major threat to the nation’s security and prosperity – which should be every American. The message: “I’d rather not think about it much.”

In some limited senses, and for the very near future, the impact could be positive. Principally, although he blasted President Trump’s steep, sweeping tariffs on imports from China as disastrously counter-productive for the entire U.S. economy – consumers and producers alike – he’s stated that he won’t lift them right away. Presumably, he’ll also hesitate to remove the various Trump sanctions that have so gravely damaged the tech entities whose activities bolster China’s military strength and foreign espionage capabilities, along with new Trump administration restrictions on these Chinese entities’ ability to list on U.S. stock exchanges.

Looking further down the road, however, if personnel, as widely believed, is indeed policy, Biden’s choices for Cabinet officials and other senior aides to date strongly indicate that his views on the subject haven’t changed much from this past May, when he ridiculed the idea that China not only is going to “eat our lunch,” but represented any kind of serious competitor at all. In fact, in two ways, his choices suggest that his take on China remains the same as that which produced a long record of China coddling.

First, none of his top economic or foreign policy picks boasts any significant China-related experience – or even much interest in China. Like Biden himself, Secretary of State-designate Antony Blinken is an indiscriminate worshipper of U.S. security alliances who views China’s rise overwhelmingly as a development that has tragically and even dangerously given Mr. Trump and other America Firsters an excuse to weaken these arrangements by making allies’ China positions an acid test of their value. In addition, he’s pushed the red herring that the Trump policies amount to a foolhardy, unrealistic attempt at complete decoupling of the U.S. and Chinese economies.

As for the apparently incoming White House national security adviser, Jake J. Sullivan – who served as Biden’s chief foreign policy adviser during his Vice Presidential years – he shares the same alliances-uber-alles perspective on China as Biden and Blinken, and is on record as late as 2017 as criticizing the Trump administration for “failing to strike a middle course” on China – “one that encourages China’s rise in a manner consistent with an open, fair, rules-based, regional order.” I’m still waiting for someone to ask Sullivan why he believes that mission evidently remained unacccomplished after the Obama administration had eight years to try carrying it out.

On the defense policy front, Biden has chosen to head the Pentagon former General Lloyd Austin whose main top-level experience was in fighting Jihadist terrorists in the Middle East, not dealing with a near-superpower like China. That’s no doubt why Biden failed even to mention China when introducing Austin and listing the issues on which he’d need to focus – an omission worrisomely noted by the U.S. Asia allies the apparent President-elect is counting on to help America cope more effectively with whatever problems he thinks China does pose.

As for the Biden economic picks, Treasury Secretary and former Fed Chair Janet Yellen has expressed little interest in China or trade policy more broadly during her long career in public service. (See here for a description of some of her relatively few remarks on the subject.) His choice to head the National Economic Council, Brian Deese, has been working for the Wall Street investment giant, BlackRock, Inc. – which like most of its peers has long hoped to win Beijing’s permission to compete for a slice of the potentially huge China financial services market. But his focus seems to have been environmentally sustainable investments, and his own Obama administration experience centered on climate change.

One theoretical exception is Katherine Tai, evidently slated to become Biden’s U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). Both as a former lawyer at the trade agency  and in her current position as a senior staff member at the House Ways and Means Committee, she boasts vast China experience.

But history teaches clearly that the big American trade policy decisions, like handling China, are almost never made at the USTR level. Mr. Trump’s trade envoy, Robert Lighthizer, was a major exception, and his prominence stemmed from the President’s unfamiliarity as an outsider with the specific policy levers that have needed to be pulled to engineer the big China trade and broader economic policy turnaround sought by Mr. Trump. So expect Tai to be a foot soldier, nothing more.

The cumulative effect of this China vacuum at the top of the likely incoming administration creates the second way in which Biden’s seems to reflect a lack of urgency on the subject: It signals that there will be no China point person in his administration. It’s true that reports have appeared that the apparent President-elect will appoint an Asia policy czar. But more than a week after they’ve been posted, nothing further has been heard.

All of which suggests that, by default, China policy will be made by the alliance festishers Blinken and Sullivan. And if their stated multilateralist impulses do indeed dominate, the result will be basically a U.S. China policy outsourced to Brussels (headquarters of the European Union), and the capitals of Asia. As I’ve written previously, many of these allies have profited greatly from the pre-Trump U.S. and global China trade policy status quo, and their leaders are hoping for a return to this type of world as soon as possible. And it’s no coincidence that’s the kind of world Joe Biden was happy to help preside over during his last White House job.  

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Out of the Mouths of Generals

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alliances, America First, Associated Press, Blob, China, deterrence, globalism, Jim Mattis, Joe Biden, Mark Milley, North Korea, nuclear umbrella, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Poland, South Korea, Soviet Union, tripwires, Trump

Here’s one that genuinely justifies that over-used term, “You can’t make this up.”

Practically ever since President Trump assumed office, his globalist foreign policy critics have been attacking his claims that maintaining the status quo with U.S. security alliances couldn’t be a top priority of American foreign and national security policy. In this vein, they contemptuously derided as “transactional” his belief that rather than viewing these arrangements as vital ends in and of themselves, Washington needed continuously to make sure that they were creating at least as many benefits as problems for the nation.

Indeed, fetishizing alliances was so deeply embedded in the consciousness of the globalist bipartisan U.S. foreign policy Blob that Jim Mattis, the retired Marine Corps General who served as the first Trump Secretary of Defense, based his resignation largely on the argument that the President did not share his “core belief…that our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships.”

So imagine my surprise upon reading an Associated Press story Thursday reporting that U.S. Army General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff (the nation’s top military office), has recommended that Washington – obviously meaning the probably incoming Biden administration – should reconsider “permanently positioning U.S. forces” overseas in instances where these servicemen and women are not actively engaged in combat.

Now it’s true that Milley, at least reportedly, was never especially tight with Mattis in particular. But in this age of political generals and admirals, he couldn’t have risen through the ranks this high had he dissented significantly from the globalist line. And Milley has spoken of the need for U.S. alliances in pretty urgent terms himself.

But there he was this past week, giving a speech on the future of warfare that not only called for more selectivity in creating and maintaining an American military footprint abroad, but basing this proposal largely on his unhappiness – and this is the real shocker – that the so-called forward deployment of these units has usually been accompanied by the families of soldiers, sailors, and airmen, and therefore places them in harm’s way.

His position is a shocker because, as I’ve explained before, stationing spouses and children so vulnerably has been a linchpin of globalist strategy toward alliances. They play a crucial role in turning the units they’re linked with into genuine tripwires – forces whose likelihood of defeat at the hands of much larger and stronger invaders like the Soviets or the North Koreans would give an American President little choice but to use nuclear weapons to avert disaster.

Of course, this approach didn’t stem from itchy nuclear trigger fingers in Washington. Quite the opposite: The working assumption was that the high probability of U.S. nuclear weapons use would deter conventional military aggression to begin with. And the probability that their attacks would wind up killing American non-combatants as well as troops was seen as an even stronger forcing event for nuclear weapons use – a situation that, in strategic parlance, would make this contingency more credible, thereby further inhibiting (or, again using strategy-ese, deterring) enemies from striking.

Skeptical? This is exactly why countries like Poland have been urging recent American Presidents to replace the policy of rotating various U.S. units in and out of their lands with big, permanent deployments. And weirdly and alarmingly, Mr. Trump has taken some steps in this direction.

I’ve concluded that, although the creation of such so-called nuclear umbrellas was defensible during the Cold War, when it was used to protect genuinely vital regions like Western Europe and Japan, and when its use in Asia was aimed at prospective foes that lacked nuclear retaliatory forces, it’s recklessly dangerous today. For the Soviet Union is an increasingly distant memory, many major U.S. allies are amply capable of their own defense, Asian adversaries have become able to strike the American homeland with their own nuclear weapons, and the security of South Korea in particular is no longer crucial for the United States’ own safety and well-being (as opposed to Taiwan, which, as I’ve recently argued, has moved into this category because of its world-class semiconductor manufacturing capability).

Not even the America First-y President Trump has gone remotely this far in actually changing U.S. alliance policy. Yet there was Milley, including in his remarks the statement that if war came with North Korea, “we would have a significant amount of non-combatant U.S. military dependents in harm’s way….I have a problem with that.”

The General didn’t make the needed follow-on case that the presence of these civilians has turned these alliances into “transmission belts of war” that could easily go nuclear and bring on the incineration of entire American cities. But an administration that followed his recommendations would greatly reduce this unnecessary potential danger.

So whether Milley recognizes the full implications of his stance or not, all Americans should hope that he keeps pushing this position as he continues as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs past Inauguration Day, and that even some of the globalist enthusiasts of the Biden administration start listening.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Another (Really) Surprising Endorsement of America First

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Afghanistan, allies, America First, Gaza, globalism, Golan Heights, Iran, Iran deal, Iran nuclear deal, Israel, Jerusalem, Joe Biden, Middle East, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Palestinians, Saudi Arabia, Sunnis, The New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman, Trump, West Bank

It’s one thing for globalists in politics and the think tanks and the media and even appointees of apparent President-elect Joe Biden to admit tacitly that the kind of America First-y strategy unevenly pursued by Donald Trump is the only sensible approach to U.S. foreign policy. (As I’ve noted recently here and here.)

It’s something else entirely for a major cheerleader for pre-Trump policies (and an outspoken Never Trumper) explicitly to credit such Trump-ism for constructively realigning the geopolitics of a region best known lately for spawning major threats to U.S. interests and epically failed official American responses in dramatically favorable ways.

This shock was delivered yesterday by New York Times pundit Thomas L. Friedman, who holds a special place in the globalist pantheon.  For decades, he’s touted the virtues of an increasingly globalized and benign world that was rapidly leaving the United States no choice but to stop clinging to national sovereignty, and to leave the big decisions impacting the safety and prosperity of the American people to the private sector visionaries spearheading such progress in technology and finance, and to the disinterested supposed experts, foreign and American alike, who staffed international bureaucracies.  (See here and here in particular.)   

It was amazing enough to see Friedman warn apparent President-elect Joe Biden not to rush the United States back into an Iran nuclear deal lauded by the Obama-style Never Trumpers (including the former Vice President) who negotiated it as the crowning glory of global diplomatic history. Perhaps that’s because one subject in which Friedman’s expertise is truly genuine is the Middle East, where his decades of coverage include many years on the ground. So quite sensibly, he noted that the region has changed dramatically in the years since Biden was in power.

But more amazing still was Friedman’s contention that the main agent of this change – which “may enable America to secure its interests in the region with much less blood and treasure of its own” – has been Mr. Trump’s transformation of U.S. policy.

Friedman focuses on the President’s Trump’s decisions in the fall of 2019, when Iranian aggression against U.S. ally Saudi Arabia threatened to spark yet another regional conflict into which America could well be dragged.

But rather than order the U.S. military to jump to Saudi Arabia’s defense, the President announced in October, “We are sending troops and other things to the Middle East to help Saudi Arabia. But — are you ready? Saudi Arabia, at my request, has agreed to pay us for everything we’re doing. That’s a first.”

And as Friedman makes emphatically clear, it was a first based on a revolutionary (by hidebound pre-Trump U.S. foreign policy standards) insight, and one for which Americansshould be deeply grateful. In the author’s words, the President’s announcement sent the following message:

“Dear Saudis, America is now the world’s biggest oil producer; we’re getting out of the Middle East; happy to sell you as many weapons as you can pay cash for, but don’t count on us to fight your battles. You want U.S. troops? Show me the money.”

And the results? According to Friedman:

“In effect, Trump forced Israel and the key Sunni Arab states to become less reliant on the United States and to think about how they must cooperate among themselves over new threats — like Iran — rather than fighting over old causes — like Palestine. This may [as noted above] enable America to secure its interests in the region with much less blood and treasure of its own. It could be Trump’s most significant foreign policy achievement.”

Actually, Trump’s departure from the dangerously stale globalist conventional wisdom began a good deal earlier, with decisions like his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and movement of the U.S. Embassy to that historic city, endorsement of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and support for Israeli settlements on the long-occupied West Bank of the Jordan River.

Combined with Mr. Trump’s determination to keep the United States an oil production powerhouse, these moves also revealed that Washington was no longer going to permit Arab regimes in effect to have their cake and eat it, too at America’s expense — using the threat of Arab public opinion exploding and radicalizing over the West Bank and equally occupied Gaza to both (1) sustain open-ended U.S. military support, and (2) thereby continue indulging their ideological determination to keep their embryonic ties with Israel as covert as they were limited.

Something else Friedman should have mentioned: All these Trump decisions have been strongly opposed not only by most American globalists, but by the European allies that Biden is so determined to woo.

I personally still can’t give Mr. Trump an “A” on Middle East policy — not while he still hasn’t put his foot down and pulled nearly all American troops out of Afghanistan over his own military advisers’ objections, and while the United States still maintains way too any forces in the region overall.  But he’s at least pointed U.S. policy in the right direction — as even a committed globalist like Friedman has just told the nation, and the likely next President.      

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why the Public Knows Best

Tags

Alexis de Tocqueville, Barack Obama, Democracy in America, Financial Times, globalism, Joe Biden, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, public opinion, Trump

Since the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville came out in 1835 with his classic Democracy in America, insightful foreign analysts have used their outsiders’ perspective to help Americans themselves learn much about their own country.

The Financial Times‘ new editorial about the Never Trump-y globalist approach to foreign policy sure to be taken by a Biden administration continues this tradition – however unwittingly. In the British newspaper’s enthusiasm for a return to a pre-Trump U.S. international strategy, it valuably reminds Americans of how far that globalism has taken these American foreign policy traditionalists from the objectives that should always make up the nation’s overriding priority in world affairs.

The editorial contains the usual mindless paeans to content-free “multilateralism, free trade and an active American role around the world. That is, it regurgitates the idea that America’s best bet for maximal security and prosperity lies in pushing practices and positions that in the end are nothing more than means (in other words, tools, or tactics) that may or may not be useful in the kinds of circumstances that ultimately require countries to conduct foreign policies in the first place – those where a valued objective needs to be achieved.

But what really stands out about the article is its inadvertant acknowledgement that the agenda of the globalist President-elect and his establishmentarian team is not only highly unpopular with the public, but rightly so.

It’s become standard operating procedure for foreign policy professionals and self-appointed thought leaders to bemoan Everyday Americans’ reluctance to recognize the importance of globalism’s devotion to (quoting from the editorial) “restoring US leadership,” playing “global policeman,” and the like, and here the Financial Times writers don’t disappoint.

Much more unusual is their acknowledgement that there exists a “perceived disconnect between the Washington view of US interests and middle America’s more immediate concerns for its physical and economic security.”

A longtime hallmark of globalism has been to equate the two – and insist, in fact, that preserving that physical and economic security simply isn’t possible without globalism’s characteristic energetic international engagement in every dimension imaginable.

To be sure, the editorial’s use of the word “perceived” signals its belief that any such disconnect exists only in the minds of the uninformed or the shortsighted. But its use of the phrase “more immediate” inadvertantly indicates that the disconnect has a basis in reality. For although this wording doesn’t flatly deny the linkage, it carries the suggestion that the nation’s physical and economic security can be achieved to a significant, and even for the time being, an adequate extent without assuming all of globalism’s labors.

Globalists can still (and no doubt will) maintain that, even if true, this minimalist version of success can’t last indefinitely without completing more ambitious tasks – specifically, eliminating the very sources of threats to that American physical and economic security. To which critics of globalism can and should reply that this challenge is so formidable, and therefore costly and risky, that its pursuit risks turning the utopian into an enemy of the good.

Further, given how cloudy the personal crystal balls of even the most brilliant globalists undoubtedly are, and therefore how unpredictable many future challenges and opportunities will inevitably be, a more modest strategy of coping, reacting, muddling through, and avoiding “stupid stuff” (an unusually sound bit of non-globalist advice from globalist former President Barack Obama) logically makes the most sense – and doubly so for a country like the United States that’s already blessed with the kinds of strengths and advantages that can enable a low-risk, low-reward foreign policy to deliver results that are eminently acceptable, especially compared with many of the alternatives.

A final theoretical reason to pursue globalist foreign policies might be called the spiritual case – condemning the low-risk, low-reward alternative as utterly uninspiring. This supposedly lackluster nature matters crucially because, as explained in last Monday’s post, so many globalists seek foreign policy careers and push for their characteristic proposals not to help achieve ostensibly mundane aims like ensuring narrow-bore security and prosperity for their country, but out of loftier hopes to prove America’s historical worth by curing various global ills and slaying various global dragons. As a sympathetic author I quoted wrote of the globalist Biden team, they’re “eager to leave their mark on American foreign policy—and the world.”

But as even the Financial Times editorial writers point out, seeking global goals for there is absolutely no domestic political mandate could be a formula for “sparking a counter-reaction” strong enough to return “Trumpism to the White House in four years time.” All Americans have major stakes in hoping that a new administration learns this lesson sooner rather than later.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Biden Multilateralism Looks Ever More Muddled

Tags

alliances, Antony Blinken, Biden transition, China, decoupling, globalism, international institutions, Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden, multilateralism, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, technology

Attention to anyone in touch with the Biden foreign policy transition folks – I’m offering a deal.

I’ll stop charging that its top members (and especially Cabinet and similar nominees) keep spouting patently and dangerously vapid globalist foreign policy ideas if they provide some evidence that something other than patently and dangerously vapid globalist foreign policy ideas are going to shape their upcoming stewardship of American strategy and diplomacy.

So far, however, the evidence keeps showing that they have a long way to go, starting with Secretary of State nominee Antony Blinken. In his remarks accepting the position (subject to Senate confirmation of course), this quintessential Clinton and Obama administration retread spoke movingly about his family’s Holocaust roots, but committed one of the cardinal sins of not only diplomacy but any policymaking or politicking: He advertised weakness.

On top of failing either to mention or – more likely – recognize that the international cooperation and multilateralism that’s he’s elevated from a foreign policy tactic to a goal in and of itself will inevitably have content, and that therefore America will often need to play hardball in order to ensure favorable outcomes, Blinken emphasized that “as the President-elect said, we can’t solve all the world’s problems alone. We need to be working with other countries. We need their cooperation. We need their partnership.”

It was nothing less than an open invitation for U.S. friends, foes, and neutrals alike to assume that such problem solving efforts matter more to the United States to them, and that they can therefore repeatedly roll Washington by playing hard to get, and often simply stonewalling until the United States caves in to their stances.

And if you think that America’s wealthy, powerful, and influential allies, whose agreement will be rucial to the success of any international cooperative efforts, would never sink to these tactics, you need to learn some Cold War history. Even when the free world faced a Soviet threat that all of its members viewed as existential, countries like (then) West Germany and South Korea, which literally lived on the front lines, successfully free-rode for decades on Washington’s defense guarantees because U.S. leaders continually spoke and acted as if they’d maintain these military (including nuclear) umbrellas at all costs because they were vital to America itself.

To make matters even weirder, shortly before the election, Blinken – the fetishizer of international cooperation and multilateralism — justified these globalist priorities with an argument drawn straight from the very foundation of America First-ism, at least as I’ve defined it.

I’ve written that America First is the foreign policy approach most suited to the United States is one understanding that, although the United States is not strong, rich, and or smart enough to create a benign global environment or meet truly global challenges all by itself, it is plenty strong, rich, and smart enough to remain safe and prosperous in a world sure to stay anything but benign.

So imagine how surprised I was to see this Blinken statement at a foreign policy conference in October, when he was firmly established as a leading Biden spokesman: A new administration’s approach to world affairs would include “humility, because most of the world’s problems are not about us, even though they affect us.”

Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with addressing overseas situations that “affect us,” as opposed to representing mortal threats. If opportunities arise for the United State to better its lot, it’s of course reasonable to pursue them. But they shouldn’t be pursued until U.S. leaders ask themselves whether the best way to achieve such goals is by joining international cooperative efforts, or relying on any foreign policy approaches at all, rather than trying to build up its own capabilities and reducing its own vulnerabilities. As I’ve also written, in many instances, the latter, America First-y approach will be the superior or more promising, if only because the nation will always be able to influence its own affairs much more effectively than the affairs of others.

Finally, even when Biden aides do display some awareness that U.S. foreign policy needs to be something more than a content-free quest for cooperation, regardless of the stakes for Americans, they haven’t made much progress on figuring out what this content should be – or sharing the results with the public.

More than a year ago, the apparent President-elect’s choice for White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, wrote in the leading journal Foreign Affairs, that the central task of U.S. China policy must be to find a way to establish a modus vivendi with Beijing recognizing that the People’s Republic is here to stay as a great power. He stated that “Such coexistence would involve elements of competition and cooperation,” which sounds like yet another glib formula for emphasizing means over end. But Sullivan did specify that America’s policies must identify and seek outcomes favorable to U.S. interests and values.”

On broader matters, Sullivan even contended that “Going forward, Washington should avoid becoming an eager suitor on transnational challenges. Eagerness can actually limit the scope for cooperation by making it a bargaining chip.” Hopefully, he’ll communicate this “Don’t advertise weakness” to Blinken and the rest of a Biden administration.

So that’s progress. But in the year that’s passed since this piece came out, we’ve heard little from Sullivan or anyone else connected with Biden on what will be acceptable to a new adminstration and what won’t be, and less in the way of plausible tactics for achieving these goals or creating these conditions.

For example, Sullivan’s description in his article of ways to deter a Chinese attack on Taiwan – or other targets in Asia – demonstrates no awareness that Beijing’s ability to hit the U.S. homeland with large numbers of nuclear weapons looks formidable enough to inhibit conventional American military responses strong enough to threaten Chinese gambits with defeat.

Sullivan allows that Washington will need to use “some enhanced restrictions on the flow of technology investment and trade in both directions,” in order to “safeguard its technological advantages in the face of China’s intellectual property theft, targeted industrial policies, and commingling of its economic and security sectors.”

But because Sullivan’s overarching goal appears to be avoiding the “Balkanization” of “the global technology ecosystem by impeding flows of knowledge and talent,” he’d place limitations on these curbs that would result in a piecemeal response to a systemic threat. And even individual restrictions that are approved would surely be watered down to the point of ineffectiveness thanks to Sullivan’s insistence that they be “undertaken in consultation with industry and other governments” – two groups that have displayed not the slightest inclination significantly to disrupt business with China that they’ve each found tremendously lucrative.

And in fact, Sullivan ends up ignoring his own sage advice about the limits of international cooperation and multilateralism for their own sakes by declaring a faith in their capabilities that looks stubbornly blind. Why else would he end his article with these declarations?

“Establishing clear-eyed coexistence with China will be challenging under any conditions, but it will be virtually impossible without help. If the United States is to strengthen deterrence, establish a fairer and more reciprocal trading system, defend universal values, and solve global challenges, it simply cannot go it alone. It is remarkable that it must be said, but so it must: to be effective, any strategy of the United States must start with its allies.”

Which sounds like we’re back to Blinken-ism. With my offer still firmly on the table.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Globalism on Steroids on the Way for America?

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alliances, America First, Antony Blinken, Blob, Cold War, containment, Foreign Affairs, George F. Kennan, globalism, international institutions, Joe Biden, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Trump

I’ve written at length on how President Trump has conducted a foreign policy that follows America First principles unevenly at best. Now the evidence is growing that if Joe Biden becomes President, he’ll pursue a strategy that will look like globalism on steroids – in other words, an approach certain to return the nation to a diplomacy that minimizes or ignores completely America’s unique advantages on the world stage, maximizes its vulnerabilities, and needlessly increases its exposure to danger.

Aside from Biden’s own strongly globalist impulses, the main evidence so far is the news that he’s decided to appoint longtime aide Antony Blinken as his Secretary of State. Practically all you need to know about this Washington foreign policy veteran, his priorities, and the almost congenitally globalist worldview from which they spring was summed up in this New York Times headline: “Biden Chooses Antony Blinken, Defender of Global Alliances, as Secretary of State.”

For those still doubting his hallmark, The Times stressed in its homepage subhead that, “Mr. Blinken is expected to try to re-establish the U.S. as a trusted ally ready to rejoin international agreements” – which had the added virtue of making clear that Blinken (along with Biden) is thinking not only about America’s security arrangements with Europe and East Asian countries, but about the entire raft of international institutions ranging from the United Nations to the World Trade Organization.

As I’ve explained, this globalist obsession with multilateralism overlooks (1) the potential of the security alliances in particular to plunge the United States into nuclear war for stakes far less than vital; and (2) America’s matchless overall capabilities and potential to achieve security and prosperity in an inevitably unstable, dangerous world through its own power, favored geographic position, and wealth, rather than by making quixotic attempts to pacify the international environment.

At least as worrisome, Blinken seems utterly oblivious to the importance of cultivating and wielding national power when international arrangements of various kinds do offer advantages to the United States. No one could reasonably disagree with his recent observation that

“Simply put, the big problems that we face as a country and as a planet, whether it’s climate change, whether it’s a pandemic, whether it’s the spread of bad weapons — to state the obvious, none of these have unilateral solutions. Even a country as powerful as the United States can’t handle them alone.”

You’ll search in vain, however, for any awareness that the multilateral solutions in which he places so much stock will have content. As a result, countries with different strengths and weaknesses, with differing histories and social and economic priorities will be pushing for outcomes likely to differ significantly from those optimal for America. So achieving those optimal outcomes is fanciful without the leverage to compel or to bribe, or some combination of the two.

But there’s another maxim of globalism possibly exemplified by Blinken (and other likely Biden appointees) that’s potentially even more dangerous for the United States. It’s the notion that striving for and achieving triumphs in the international arena are much nobler as well as much more important endeavors than seeking success in domestic affairs. Indeed, globalists have become so convinced of the paramount stakes of foreign policy not only out of sheer necessity but for moral reasons as well that they have crowned foreign policy ambition as nothing less than the ultimate test of the nation’s character and worth.

In this vein, back in 1993, as Americans and especially their leaders were still struggling to grasp the implications of the Cold War’s end, I wrote that that epic contest

“generated some troubling theories about America’s national identity and purpose which have become all too uncontroversial. Specifically, many of us have come to believe that America will never be true to its best traditions unless it is engaged in some kind of world mission, that creating a more perfect United States is not a noble or an ambitious enough goal for a truly great people, that we will be morally and spiritually deficient unless we continue to be the kind of globe-girdling power we have been for the past half century.”

In fact, I was always struck by the fact that even a major foreign policy decision-maker and thinker such as George F. Kennan – who for most of his career was not much of a globalist at all – fell under this idea’s sway (or did during his most globalist period). Why else would he have ended his famous 1947 Foreign Affairs article outlining the anti-Soviet containment strategy with this description of the upcoming challenge:

“The issue of Soviet-American relations is in essence a test of the over-all worth of the United States as a nation among nations. To avoid destruction the United States need only measure up to its own best traditions and prove itself worthy of preservation as a great nation.

“Surely, there was never a fairer test of national quality than this. In the light of these circumstances, the thoughtful observer of Russian-American relations will find no cause for complaint in the Kremlin’s challenge to American society. He will rather experience a certain gratitude to a Providence which, by providing the American people with this implacable challenge, has made their entire security as a nation dependent on their pulling themselves together and accepting the responsibilities of moral and political leadership that history plainly intended them to bear.”

In the Blinken context, I was reminded of these claims by this sentence from someone as embedded in the think tank-centered globalist foreign policy Blob as the likely Secretary-to-be has been. Biden, writes this author, “will be flanked and assisted by a group of ambitious, sophisticated, and energetic aides eager to leave their mark on American foreign policy—and the world.”

This observation isn’t exactly the same as identifying Blinken as a foreign policy-uber-alles type. But it’s close enough to unnerve me, and raises the question of what makes these Biden staffers believe that the vast majority of Americans want them to “leave their mark on…foreign policy – and the world,” as opposed to expecting them to reserve blood and treasure for genuinely, and nationally, vital purposes, and hoping that they’ll avoid major blunders?

The answer, of course, is “nothing,” and makes clear that if Biden foreign policy team members are is thinking of shining in the history books, they’ll lower their sights, keep their collective noses to the grindstone, and view America’s international business as a sacred trust rather than a vehicle for their personal — or even the nation’s — reputation.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: China Advice that Biden (Unfortunately) Could Take

Tags

America First, Barack Obama, Biden administration, China, decoupling, globalism, Joe Biden, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, technology, Trump, University of California at San Diego

Since due to Election 2020’s results, the United States may be at a turning point in China policy, a new report from a bunch of supposed experts assembled by the University of California at San Diego that would ordinarily deserve obscurity merits some coverage. Not that any of the analyses or policy recommendations in this blueprint for a post-Trump approach make much sense, or even hang together coherently.

Instead, Meeting the China Challenge is most noteworthy for unwittingly showcasing key reasons why America’s strategy for the People’s Republic failed so dangerously for so many decades until an America First-y President won the White House – and why its recipe for renewed blundering previews much of a likely Biden administration approach.

Right off the bat it needs mentioning that Meeting flunks the important test of accountability. The “Working Group on Science and Technology in U.S.-China Relations” that wrote it is filled with Obama administration veterans and other backers of the pre-Trump strategy. Further, the University’s 21^st Century China Center that’s one of two co-sponsors (along with the corporate funded Asia Society) declares that its mission is “enhancing U.S.-China relations.” That’s an appealing goal in the abstract, of course. But in practice, even in the best of circumstances, it’s represented the kind of gauzy globalist hopium that tends to give short shrift to specific, concrete uniquely American interests.

And since this strategy’s long-time pursuit created circumstances not remotely qualifying as “best,” an intellectually honest team of authors would have asked itself why its previous recommendations turned out so badly, what lessons it’s learned, and how they can be applied to the U.S.-China policy landscape today. Since the report addresses none of these questions, readers are fully entitled to ask why this group’s advice should be taken seriously now.

Substance-wise, Meeting the China Challenge sets the stage for permitting it actually to worsen by foundering on one of the biggest policy rocks that have undercut other leading criticisms of the Trump approach.

Specifically, although the report does a surprisingly good job of portraying the China challenge as systemic and genuinely menacing, it generally calls for responses that are piecemeal and subordinate to that overarching objective of “enhancing the relationship” – including preserving opportunities to cooperate on “shared interests in such global issues as economic growth and stability, climate change, and public health.” In fact, the Working Group is convinced that “Permeating every facet of the U.S.-China relationship will be crucial capabilities in science and technology that will feature both intense rivalry and necessary cooperation.”

I’d be the last one to rule out categorically any overlap between U.S. and Chinese interests, or the possibility of threading the above policy needles. But as yesterday’s post explained, international cooperation has content, and if Washington wants to make sure that it unfolds on terms acceptable to Americans, it will need the relative power to wield the needed leverage and drive the necessary bargains.

More fundamentally, though, Meeting the China Challenge‘s optimism on cooperation assumes maintaining a degree of policy compartmentalization that even the authors seem to doubt ultimately can be maintained – as indicated by the following passage:

“We recognize that the United States faces real and growing security threats from China. While we hope that radical decoupling will never be necessary, and understand that such a step would have dire consequences for the global and American innovation systems, we would be foolish to ignore the possibility that it may become unavoidable. Unless and until such a decision is made, the role of the scientific and tech community [and presumably the U.S. government] should be to pursue worldwide collaboration in accordance with practices that mitigate the risks from openness.”

The big and obvious problems are that (1) maintaining a (pre-Trump) business-as-usual posture on “worldwide collaboration” risks permitting further Chinese catch up with the United States and (2) even if Washington wakes up to the need for decoupling before it’s too late, does anyone truly believe that American strategy can shift quickly enough to preserve an adequate edge?

The weaknesses of Meeting the China Challenge hardly stop here. The authors, for example – just like ostensible President-elect Biden – also put way too much stock in mobilizing allied support and working through international institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO) to manage the China risks it perceived – even though the lucrative economic ties many of these allies have created with Beijing (often at the United States’ expense) will surely keep them firmly on the fence for the foreseeable future. And precisely because they’re so compromised, the international institutions these countries numerically dominate will keep resisting in effect outlawing Chinese transgressions.

Other recommendations are much better – e.g., bolstering “U.S. innovation capabilities through meaures ranging from increased funding for fundamental research to selective upgrading of our production system.” But these are anything but distinctive nowadays.  (See, e.g., the bipartisan support described here for reviving domestic semiconductor manufacturing prowess.)  

But the most insightful observation made by Meeting the China Challenge underscores a challenge that continues to defy the authors themselves and other globalists: the “expert community has serious homework to do if it is to get right…foundational issues for the bilateral relationship….”