Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Europe’s Worrisome Fence-Sitting on China

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alliances, allies, Biden, Bloomberg.com, China, Emmanuel Macron, Europe, export controls, France, free-riding, Mark Rutte, national security, Netherlands, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, semiconductors, technology

Ever since he belatedly admitted their importance (see here and here), a foundation of President Biden’s strategy for dealing with the wide-ranging challenges posed by China has been bringing America’s long-time treaty allies on board.

As the President made clear in a major speech shortly after his inauguration, China is America’s “most serious competitor” and “America’s alliances are our greatest asset” in countering this threat – and dealing with other global threats and crises.”

Mr. Biden seems to be making progress in mobilizing support from America’s Asian allies, both in terms of pushing them to get serious about their military budgets, and by winning meaningful cooperation for U.S. efforts to stay ahead of China in the means to produce ever more advanced semiconductors – which are central to creating the cutting-edge military systems of today and tomorrow.

But on the Europe front, this allies-focused strategy is hitting some serious roadblocks. Specifically, as Bloomberg.com just reported, although the continent’s major economies – especially the Netherlands, home of ASML, the company that makes the world’s most important semiconductor manufacturing equipment – have gone along to some degree with this American campaign, they’ve also warned that their cooperation will be limited in important ways.

Most disturbingly, particularly given U.S. plans to expand its new, sweeping controls on doing advanced semiconductor business with China, the Netherlands trade minister declared that the country “will not copy the American measures one to one. “We make our own assessment….” His remarks came after Chinese dictator Xi Jinping urged Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte to “oppose the politicization of economic and trade issues and maintain the stability of the global industrial chain and supply chain.”

Less disturbingly (because his country isn’t nearly as important a link in the global semiconductor supply chain) but disturbingly nonetheless (because it has always spoken with an outsized voice in European councils), France’s President Emannuel Macron told a group of business leaders, “a lot of people would like to see that there are two orders in this world. This is a huge mistake, even for both the US and China. We need a single global order.”

As a foreign policy realist, I can’t possibly criticize these and other countries for prioritizing what they view as their own national interests. Nor should American leaders. (Criticizing the accuracy of these views? That’s another story.) But Washington should call out avowed allies like the Netherlands and France for what looks like another version of long-time European national security free-riding, and make clear that continuing to play the game of what Bloomberg reporters call “carving out a middle ground when it comes to China” will carry severe consequences.

After all, Macron is right that the United States and China are “two big elephants” in a jungle, and that “If they become very nervous and start a war, it will be a big problem for the rest of the jungle.”

By the same token, however, allies that can’t be counted on when such conflicts start aren’t really allies at all, for their uncertainty makes impossible sound military planning, and could lead to dangerously erroneous miscalculation and other decisions.

In 1931, Florence Reece, the wife of a union organizer, wrote the classic protest song “Which Side Are You On?” to decry the notion of fence-sitting during times of conflict like those in Kentucky’s coal fields during that era. It’s a question that American allies like the Netherlands and France soon need to start answering much more clearly as China’s systemic threat to the United States grows ever more serious.

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Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Is Biden Learning the Limits of Multilateralism?

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Afghanistan, alliances, allies, America First, ASML, Biden, Biden administration, Blob, China, Chips Act, Europe, export controls, Japan, multilateralism, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, oil, oil price, OPEC, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Saudi Arabia, semiconductors, South Korea, Taiwan, Ukraine War

Remember the buzz worldwide and among the bipartisan globalist U.S. foreign policy Blob that Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election heralded the start of a new golden age of America’s relations with its longstanding security allies?

Remember how President Biden himself pushed this line with his claim that “America is back” and that Washington would end the supposed Trump practice of denigrating and even rupturing these relationships, and resume its post-World War II strategy of capitalizing on these countries’ strengths and fundamental agreement with vital American interests to advance mutually beneficial goals?

Fast forward to the present, and it’s stunning how thoroughly these American globalist hopes – and the assumptions behind them – have been dashed.

The latest example has been Saudi Arabia’s rejection of Mr. Biden’s request to delay an increase in oil prices announced by Riyadh and other members of the OPEC-Plus petroleum producers cartel. It’s true that few Americans currently view the Saudis as ideal allies. Continuing human rights abuses and especially evidence that its leaders ordered the assassination of a dissident Saudi-American journalist – and coming on top of revelations of Saudi support for the September 11 terrorists and Islamic extremism more broadly – will do that. Indeed, candidate Biden had even promised to make Saudi Arabia as a “pariah.”

But follow-through? Forget it – largely for fear of antagonizing the Saudis precisely because of their huge oil production and reserves, and because the President evidently still viewed them as a key to countering Iran’s hegemonic ambitions in the energy-rich region.

As for Saudi Arabia, it and much closer allies (including in Europe) were far from enthralled with how Mr. Biden pulled U.S. forces out of Afghanistan – which they charge took them by surprise and seemed pretty America First-y.

Under President Biden, the United States appears to have performed better in mustering allied support for helping Ukraine beat back Russia’s invasion. But look beneath the surface, and the European contribution has been unimpressive at best, especially considering that Ukraine is located much closer to the European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) than is the United States.

In particular, according to Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy, which has been tracking these developments since the war began, to date,

 “The U.S. is now committing nearly twice as much as all EU countries and institutions combined. This is a meagre showing for the bigger European countries, especially since many of their pledges are arriving in Ukraine with long delays. The low volume of new commitments in the summer now appears to be continuing systematically.”

In fact, European foot-dragging has reached the point at which even Mr. Biden’s Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, has just told them (in diplospeak of course) to get on the stick.

Apparently, America’s allies in Asia as well as Europe have hesitated to get behind another key initiative as well: Slowing China’s growing technological progress in order to limit its potential militar power.

In a September 16 speech, White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan confirmed that the United States had officially doubled down on this objective:

“On export controls, we have to revisit the longstanding premise of maintaining “relative” advantages over competitors in certain key technologies.  We previously maintained a “sliding scale” approach that said we need to stay only a couple of generations ahead. 

“That is not the strategic environment we are in today. 

“Given the foundational nature of certain technologies, such as advanced logic and memory chips, we must maintain as large of a lead as possible.”

And on October 7, the United States followed up by announcing the stiffest controls to date on doing business with Chinese tech entities – controls that will apply not only to U.S.-owned companies, but to other countries’ companies that use U.S.-owned firms technology in high tech products they sell and high tech services they provide to China.

Including these foreign-owned businesses in the U.S. sanctions regime – as well as in parallel efforts to rebuild American domestic capacity and marginalize China’s role in these sectors – is unavoidable for the time being, since the domestic economy long ago lost its monopoly and in some cases even its presence in the numerous products vital to semiconductor manufacturing in particular.

But as the Financial Times reported last month, a year after Washington drew up plans to create a “Chip 4” initiative to work with Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea to achieve these goals, “the four countries have yet to finalise plans even for a preliminary meeting.”

The prime foot-dragger has been South Korea, which fears Chinese retaliation that could jeopardize its massive and lucrative trade with the People’s Republic. But the same article makes clear that Japan harbors similar concerns.

Also unenthusiastic about the U.S. campaign is the Dutch manufacturer of semiconductor production equipment ASM Lithography (ASML). ASML’s cooperation is crucial to America’s anti-China ambitions because it’s the sole global supplier of machines essential for making the world’s most advanced microchips.

So far it’s been playing along. But similar complants about possibly losing business opportunities in China – which may account for nearly half of the world’s output of electronics products along with much of its production of less advanced semiconductors – have already persuaded the Biden administration to give some South Korean and Taiwanese microchip manufacturers a one-year exemption from the new export curbs. Could ASML try to win similar leniency?

In fairness, the Biden administration hasn’t wound up placing all its foreign policy bets on alliances and securing multilateral cooperation. Indeed, its new National Security Strategy re-states the importance of rebuilding American economic strength as a foundation of foreign policy success; the legislation it successfully sponsored to bolster the United States’ semiconductor and other high tech capabilities put considerable money behind that approach; and to its credit, it announced the new China tech curbs even after it couldn’t initially secure adequate allied cooperation – assuming, correctly, that an act of U.S. leadership could bring start bringing them in line.

Hopefully, a combination of these rifts with allies and its recognition of the importance of maintaining and augmenting national power mean that President Biden at least is learning a crucial lesson: that supporting multilateralism and alliances can’t be ends of a sensible U.S. foreign policy in and of themselves. They can only be means to ends. And although they can obviously be valuable in many instances, the best ultimate guarantor of the nation’s security, independence, and prosperity are its own devices.       

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Louder Talk and Still Too Small a Stick

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alliances, allies, Biden, China, Constitution, defense budget, Finland, Lippmann Gap, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear umbrella, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Sweden, Taiwan, Ted Galen Carpenter, treaties, Ukraine, Walter Lippmann

The foreign policy headlines have been coming so fast-and-furiously these days that they’re obscuring a dramatic worsening of a big, underlying danger: The dramatic expansion spearheaded lately by President Biden in America’s defense commitments that’s been unaccompanied so far by a comparable increase in the U.S. military budget. The result: A further widening of an already worrisome “Lippmann Gap” – a discrepancy between America’s foreign policy goals and the means available to achieve them that was prominently identified by the twentieth century journalist, philosopher, and frequent advisor to Presidents Walter Lippmann.

The existence of such a gap of any substantial size is troubling to begin with because it could wind up ensnaring the nation in conflicts that it’s not equipped to win – or even achieve stalemate. As I wrote as early as March, 2021, a Gap seemed built in to Mr. Biden’s approach to foreign policy from the beginning, since he made clear that America’s goals would be much more ambitious than under the avowedly America First-type presidency of Donald Trump, but also signaled that no big increase in America’s defense budget was in the offing.

Since then, Biden aides have expressed a willingness to boost defense budgets to ensure that they keep up with inflation – and therefore ensure that price increases don’t actually erode real capabilities. But no indications have emerged that funding levels will be sought that increase real capabilities much. Congressional Republicans say they support this kind of spending growth to handle new contingencies, but the numbers they’ve put forward so far seem significantly inadequate to the task.

That’s largely because most of them have strongly supported Biden decisions greatly to broaden U.S. the foreign military challenges that America has promised to meet. As for the President, he’s specifically:

>not only supported the bids of Finland and Sweden to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), but stated that the United States would “deter and confront any aggression while Finland and Sweden are in this accession process.” In other words, Mr. Biden both wants to (a) increase the number of countries that the United States is treaty-bound to defend to the point of exposing its territory to nuclear attack, and (b) extend that nuclear umbrella even before the two countries become legally eligible for such protection via Congress’ approval. It’ll be fascinating to see whether any lawmakers other than staunch non-interventionists like Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul question the Constitutionality of this position; and

>just this morning declared that he would use U.S. military force to defend Taiwan if it’s attacked by China even no defense treaty exists to cover this contingency, either, and even though, again, there’s been no Congressional approval of (or even debate on) this decision.

This Biden statement, moreover, lends credence to an argument just advanced by my good friend Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute – that although Ukraine has not yet joined NATO officially, ad therefore like Taiwan lacks an official security guarantee by the United States, it may have acquired de facto membership, and an equally informal promise of alliance military assistance whenever its security is threatened going forward.

As a result, Ted contends, “the Biden administration has erased the previous distinction between Alliance members and nonmembers” – and set a precedent that could help interventionist presidents intervene much more easily in a much greater number of foreign conflicts without Congressional authorization, let alone public support, than is presently the case.

To be sure, lots of legal and procedural issues have long muddied these waters. For example, the existence of a legally binding treaty commitment doesn’t automatically mean that U.S. leaders will or even must act on it. Even America’s leading security agreements (with the NATO members, Japan, and South Korea) stipulate that the signatories are simply required to meet attacks on each other in accordance with their (domestic) constitutional provisions for using their military forces.  (At the same time, breaking treaties like these, all else equal, isn’t exactly a formula for winning friends, influencing people, and foreign policy success generally. As a result, they shouldn’t be entered into lightly.)

Further complicating matters: America’s constitutional processes for war and peace decisions have long been something of a mess. The Constitution, after all, reserves to Congress the power to “declare war: and authorizes the legislature to “provide for the common Defense” and to “raise and support Armies.” Yet it also designates the President as the “Commander in Chief” of the armed forces.

There’s been a strong consensus since Founding Father James Madison made the argument that limiting the authority to declare war to Congress couldn’t and didn’t mean that the President couldn’t act to repel sudden attacks on the United States – that interpretation could be disastrous in a fast-moving world. But other than that, like most questions stemming from the document’s “separation of powers” approach to governing, the Constitution’s treatment of “war powers” is best (and IMO diplomatically) described as what the scholar Edward S. Corwin called a continuing “invitation to struggle.”

Undoubtedly, this struggle has resulted over time in a tremendous net increase in the Executive Branch’s real-world war powers. But the legal issues still exist and tend to wax in importance when presidential assertiveness leads to conflicts that turn unpopular.

I should specify that personally, I’m far from opposed yet to NATO membership for Finland and Sweden. Indeed, their militaries are so strong that their membership seems likely to strengthen the alliance on net, which would be a welcome change from NATO’s (and Washington’s) habit of welcoming countries whose main qualification seems to be their military vulnerability (like the Baltic states) and tolerating long-time members that have been inexcusable deadbeats (like Germany).

Similarly, as I’ve written, because American policymakers recklessly allowed the country’s semiconductor manufacturers to fall behind a Taiwanese company technologically, I now believe that Taiwan needs to be seen as a vital U.S. national security interest and deserves a full U.S. defense guarantee.

Yet I remain worried that the Biden administration’s Ukraine policy risks plunging the United States into a conflict with Russia that could escalate to the nuclear level on behalf of a country that (rightly) was never seen as a vital U.S. interest during the Cold War.

So my main concern today doesn’t concern the specifics of these latest Biden security commitment decisions. Instead, it concerns the overall pattern that’s emerging of talking loudly and carrying too small a stick – and ignoring the resulting Lippmann Gap widening. However Americans and their leaders come out on handling these individual crises, they need to agree that the responses  urgently need to close the Gap overall. Otherwise, it’s hard to imagine satisfactorily dealing with any of them on their own.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: U.S. Allies are Standing (A Tiny Bit) with Ukraine

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alliances, allies, burden sharing, EU, Europe, European Union, free-riding, Kiel Institute for the World Economy, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia war

Even a long-standing critic like me of the record of U.S. allies in Europe in sharing the burden of their own defense found the graphic below to be quite the stunner. It makes clear that, so far, countries that for decades have been deadbeats and free-riders when it comes to fielding armed forces capable of defeating first Soviet and then post-Soviet Russian aggression, are behaving just as selfishly and miserly in supporting Ukraine’s resistance to the Kremlin’s invasion – and presumably keeping themselves safe from attack or bullying by Moscow.

The graphic comes from a leading German think tank – the Kiel Institute for the World Economy – and it shows that between the February 24 start of the invasion of Ukaine through March 27, the United States, in the words of the Institute’s research director, “is giving significantly more than the entire [European Union], in whose immediate neighborhood the war is raging.”

The specific amounts of combined financial, humanitarian, and military assistance (in euros) , according to Kiel: the United States, 7.6 billion; all European Union countries combined, 2.9 billion; EU institutions (like the European Investment Bank, 3.4 billion. Adding the United Kingdom (not an EU member) increases the European total by $712 million euros – and would still leave this figure below that of U.S. aid in all forms.

True to RealityChek‘s long-time insistence that data be presented in context, the Europeans come off somewhat better when these aid figures are presented as percentages of total economic output. After all, it’s completely unrealistic to expect even the most vigilant very small economy to donate as much in absolute terms as a much larger economy, all else equal.

But as the Kiel graph beow shows, most of the Europeans don’t come off that much better.

In fact, except for Estonia, Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia, and Sweden, the United States holds the lead according to this measure, too. And remember: Poland and Slovakia are right next door to Ukraine, Estonia and Lithuania border Russia, and Sweden is located just across the Baltic Sea to them. As for the rest of Europe, I’ll just circle back to the point made by the Kiel Institute research director: It’s their “immediate neighborhood”! So their relative efforts should be exponentially greater than America’s, as should those of the countries even closer to the fighting.

Moreover, it’s easy to understand why European military aid has been so modest. These countries have been skimping on their militaries for decades. But as a result, they should be compensating by providing much greater amounts of economic and humanitarian assistance.

These figures are damning enough as examples of continued European fecklessness. But they’re even more important because the continent’s free-riding means that for the foreseeable future, American military forces will keep playing a predominant role in any response to the Ukraine invasion. And even if President Biden sticks with his pledge to keep U.S. troops out of the fighting in Ukraine, their very presence in the vicinity of a conflict could expose the U.S. homeland literally to mortal danger. 

For as I’ve noted, if the war spills over borders into the countries where the American units are based, and that enjoy a legally ironclad promise of protection by the United States and the rest of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), U.S. and Russian forces will almost surely wind up shooting at each other, and the prospect of escalation to the all-out nuclear war level becomes terrifyingly real. 

A Europe willing and therefore at some point able to defend itself would reduce this danger to acceptable levels. But as the Kiel data show, because the Europeans remain protectorates much more than genuine allies, this point looks as far off in the future as ever.                     

 

 

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Biden’s Worrisome State of the Union Message to China

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alliances, allies, Biden, China, energy, inflation, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, sanctions, State of the Union, Taiwan, Ukraine, Ukraine invasion, Vladimir Putin, Xi JInPing

Let’s start with a confession: I’m one of the numerous viewers and listeners who has no idea what President Biden meant when he ended his State of the Union address last night with an ad-libbed “Go get him!” right after his usual closing, “May God protect our troops.”

This seemingly provocative placement notwithstanding, it probably wasn’t a suggestion that the U.S. military would be roaring into action to help Ukraine win its war with Russia – which segues nicely into today’s theme of what message China probably gleaned from the speech.

The subject matters greatly because Chinese leaders have been eyeing a takeover of Taiwan and threatening the island’s independence even longer than Vladimir Putin has been eyeing a takeover of Ukaine, and for similar stated reasons. Just as Putin insists that Ukraine historically has been part of Russia, Beijing views Taiwan as a renegade province of China. And although there’s no important connection I can see between Ukraine’s fate and America’s own security and prosperity, Taiwan is the world leader in semiconductor manufacturing technology – which is crucial to U.S. military power and economic well-being.

That’s why I’m concerned that too much of the Biden speech signaled to China that its increasingly aggressive moves against the island can continue and even intensify with impunity.

For not only did the President once again vow that “our forces are not engaged and will not engage in conflict with Russian forces in Ukraine.” He added that “I’m taking robust action to make sure the pain of our sanctions  is targeted at Russia’s economy. And I will use every tool at our disposal to protect American businesses and consumers.”

In other words, although “we the United States of America stand with the Ukrainian people,” that’s only true as long as Americans themselves don’t run any significant risks or pay any significant price.

Nor is this Biden qualification limited to words. It’s precisely to avoid boosting already lofty U.S. inflation rates even higher than the President has excluded energy from his anti-Russia sanctions package so far – even though Putin’s massive earnings from oil and gas exports clearly help finance his Ukraine war. 

Mr. Biden did repeat his pledge that “the United States and our Allies will defend every inch of territory of NATO countries with the full force of our collective power.” But like Ukraine, which is not a member of that North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Taiwan is not an official ally. Therefore, China could well conclude that the United States would stay out of a Taiwan conflict for similar reasons.

The State Department has warned that “We have an array of tools that we can deploy if we see foreign companies, including those in China, doing their best to backfill U.S. export control actions, to evade them, to get around them.”

But if the administration’s top Ukraine sanctions priority to date has been shielding the U.S. economy from their impact, you couldn’t blame Xi Jinping’s regime for not taking seriously the notion that Washington would punish China for propping up Putin.

After all, the United States (unforgivably) has become highly dependent on his economy for a wide range of products. China’s markets for U.S. goods and services simply dwarf Russia’s. And indeed, these links have become so broad and deep that nearly the entire American big business community has become an ardent and highly effective lobby for preventing any boat-rocking. .

None of the above is to say that U.S. rhetoric and moves on the Ukraine, or any other foreign policy fronts, will be the sole or even the main determinants of China’s Taiwan strategy. After all, Beijing has been ramping up pressure on the island long befor the conflict in Eastern Europe broke out – for reasons ranging from concerns about Taiwan declaring its formal independence and potentially exposing China as a paper tiger in the process to Xi’s decision to link “reunification” to his legacy.

But just as American leaders should never make threats they can’t or won’t back up (or make commitments that create many more dangers than they can prevent, which I believe to be the case with NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe and years of talk about adding Ukraine and other Russian neighbors), they need to be careful about signaling weakness or timidity. And I fear that’s exactly what was conveyed to China by the sharp contrast between President Biden’s apocalyptic warnings about the need to resist Putin’s aggression and the tight limits he revealed to his willingness to do so.              

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Biden’s Foreign Policy Pillar is Looking Hollow at Best

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alliances, allies, Beijing Olympics, Biden, China, Emmanuel Macron, European Union, France, Fumio Kishida, Germany, Japan, multilateralism, NATO, Nordstream 2, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Olympic boycott, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Putin, Russia, sanctions, Southeast Asia, Taiwan, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Winter Olympics

What’s worse than “terrible”? It’s an important question because if that’s a term that accurately describes President Biden’s last week or so in office, then something even stronger is clearly needed for the setbacks suffered recently by multilateralism – the foundation of his foreign policy. And most troublingly, the idea that U.S. foreign policy success requires the cooperation of major allies has been failing most conspicuously when it comes to dealing with America’s two biggest global rivals – Russia and China.

Let’s deal with Russia first, but not because I view it as the biggest threat to the United States – or even much of a threat at all. In fact, I’ve long and repeatedly written that the fate of Ukraine has no importance for America’s national security, and that Washington should accept some form of the kind of spheres of influence-type deal in Eastern Europe that Russian leader Vladimir Putin has proposed.

But the Ukraine crisis is making the most headlines right now, the subject dominated his long press conference last Wednesday, and Mr. Biden is nowhere near taking my advice. Indeed, that presser added powerfully to the evidence that the United States and its allies are deeply divided over how to respond to actual and possible Russian moves against Ukraine.

As the President made clear, “[I]t’s very important that we keep everyone in NATO on the same page.  And that’s what I’m spending a lot of time doing.  And there are differences.  There are differences in NATO as to what countries are willing to do depending on what happens — the degree to which they’re able to go.”

Indeed, that very day, France’s President Emmanuel Macron proposed that the European Union seek separate from U.S. efforts a new security agreement with Russia. Macron did state that “It is good that Europeans and the United States coordinate” but added “it is necessary that Europeans conduct their own dialogue, We must put together a joint proposal, a joint vision, a new security and stability order for Europe.”

Since Europe is a lot closer to Russia and Ukraine that the United States, and will be much more dramatically affected by events in that region, this French position seems entirely legitimate to me. At the same time, it’s tough to believe that Macron would place such importance on a Europe-only effort if he was completely happy with what he knows of American diplomacy so far.

Germany’s views seem even farther from Washington’s. Its new government has not only refused to join some other European countries (notably, the United Kingdom) in supplying defensive weapons to Ukraine. It’s blocked at least one NATO country – Estonia – from sending its own Made in Germany arms to bolster Kiev’s military.

Moreover, trade-dependent Germany, whose trade with Russia in energy and other goods is substantial, doesn’t even seem very keen on deterring or punishing Moscow for invading Ukraine with the kinds of sanctions that are widely viewed as the strongest – cutting Russia off from the global network used by almost all the world’s financial institutions to send money across borders for all the reasons that money is sent across borders. At least Berlin is sounding more open to halting final approval of the Nordstream 2 natural gas pipeline if Ukraine is invaded.    

Asian countries seem more prepared to resist aggression from China, especially the military kind (as opposed to Beijing’s economic efforts at intimidation). Since this post last September reporting on steps they’ve taken to transition from U.S. protectorates to countries more closely resembling genuine allies, some have made even more encouraging moves.

For example, Indonesia reportedly “is preparing itself militarily” to deal with Chinese moves against islands located in its territorial waters and major straits through which much of its (and the world’s commercial shipping) travels. The Philippines – another Southeast Asian country embroiled in maritimes disputes with China, has just bought cruise missiles from India, and reportedly some of its neighbors are interested in these devices, too.

At the same time, despite a virtual summit between President Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Japan’s policy on using its forces to help any U.S. attempt to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack remains ambivalent at best. South Korea looks more hesistant still.

Nor is Japan backing the United States to the hilt on sanctioning Russia economically following a Ukraine attack, or even close. After the Biden-Kishida session, an anonymous U.S. official said (in a briefing posted on the White House website) that although the Japanese leader “made it clear his country would be ‘fully behind’” Washington on the issue, his response concerning economic responses Tokyo would support was “We did not get into the specifics about possible steps that would be taken in the event that we see these [potential Russian] actions transpire.”

The refusal of so many U.S. allies and others to join the Biden administration’s diplomatic boycott versus the upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing also casts major doubts on the President’s emphasis on multilateralism. Can any countries declining even to keep their officials alone out of China for the games (as opposed to their athletes) be counted on to push back more concretely and powerfully against future provocations from China?

Athletes and sports fans know well the expression “Change a losing game.”  For all you others, it means that if a strategy or approach is failing, switch to an alternative.  But for the future of American foreign policy, the most important part of it remains unspoken, and the one that the President needs most urgently to heed:  “Change it before you’ve lost.”   

 

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Time for a Nuclear-Armed Taiwan?

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alliances, allies, Asia, China, East Asia, geopolitics, Indo-Pacific, Japan, national interests, national security, nuclear proliferation, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Porcupine Theory, semiconductors, South Korea, Taiwan, vital interests

Since early in the nuclear age, students of international relations scholar from time to time have advanced a dramatically heretical idea: that a world in which more than a few countries possessed nuclear weapons would be safer than a world in which such arms were limited to those countries that already had them. The  reasoning: Attacking nuclear-armed countries is a lot riskier for the aggressor than attacking non-nuclear countries, so the risk of wars breaking out would fall. If you think about the success of the little mammal with big quills, you can see why this notion has become known as the “Porcupine Theory”.

I bring up the subject because I increasingly find myself wondering whether encouraging Taiwan to build a nuclear arsenal would be the best way for the United States to safeguard interests in the island’s independence that have become vital recently because Taiwan has become the world leader in manufacturing advanced semiconductors – which are so crucial to the national security and prosperity of every country, including the now lagging United States.

There can’t be any doubt that the burgeoning importance of Taiwan’s independence and the apparently burgeoning determination of China to reestablish control over what it views as a renegade province, have produced a situation that’s increasingly dangerous for the United States. China, after all, is a power whose conventional military forces may now be strong enough to defeat America’s if it decides to help Taiwan fight off a Beijing attack.

In principle, Washington could resolve to turn the tide by using its own weapons of mass destruction in a battle for Taiwan. But China’s own arsenal is now so powerful that the result could be a full-scale nuclear exchange that brings disaster to the U.S. homeland. In other words, as I’ve written for years, America arguably has lost escalation dominance in Asia, and may have no choice but to acquiesce in China’s takeover of the island and its world class tech capabilities.

Nonetheless, this dire threat so far hasn’t deterred U.S. leaders from moving closer to declaring their intent to defend Taiwan militarily (notably, e.g., as reported here), and ending the posture of “strategic ambiguity” that has so far helped keep the peace in the region. So no one can responsibly rule out push coming to shove in this intensifying crisis.

To date, the United States has opposed countries like Taiwan from crossing the nuclear weapons threshhold mainly because Washington has rejected the Porcupine Theory. In addition, however, this anti-proliferation stance, especially toward allies and quasi-allies like Taiwan, has stemmed from the nuclear weapons parity that the United States enjoyed vis-a-vis the old Soviet Union and today toward Russia, and the overwhelming superiority of its nuclear forces versus those of China and North Korea in Asia. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, the Asian nuclear balance has deteriorated from the U.S. standpoint.

The United States has also always viewed its security alliances with Germany and Japan in particular to be essential to preventing their reversion to the disastrously militaristic ways of the 1930s and 1940s. Nuclear weapons controlled by these two countries were therefore completely out of the question. (Interestingly, a revealing difference of opinion between then President Barack Obama and then presidential candidate Donald Trump was sparked by these issues in 2016.)    

Reliability concerns, however, have also dominated Washington’s position on nuclear weapons spread outside the U.S. alliance network. Specifically, American leaders have always worried about these devices being acquired by unstable governments (which supposedly are less capable of securing them against terrorists and other extremists) and so-called rogue states (which supposedly would be more likely to use them or threaten their use).

A nuclear-armed Taiwan could resolve the prime dilemma for the United States by letting it off the hook for the island’s defense. After all, if China hasn’t yet pulled the trigger on a Taiwan without nukes, it makes sense to believe that it would be much less likely to attack the island if a conflict could bring Taiwanese nuclear warheads falling on Chinese soil.

It’s true that, as I’ve heard various observers argue, that the semiconductor problem may be exaggerated – because, for example, the United States could keep the relevant technology out of Chinese hands by bombing the factories and labs. In theory, the Taiwanese may have plans to blow up these facilities themselves. But it’s also true that these speculations could be way too optimistic – especially since the most crucial knowhow resides in the heads of Taiwanese scientists and engineers, who would need to be protected somehow against a Chinese roundup.

An American endorsement of a nuclear Taiwan could also bring benefits throughout Asia, signaling to Beijing that continuing its bellicose behavior could convince the United States to give a nuclear green light to Japan and South Korea.

Moreover, the longstanding main U.S. anti-proliferation rationales look a lot weaker today. Taiwan is clearly neither a rogue state nor a country with an unstable government. Ditto for Japan and South Korea, for that matter. Besides, precisely because of the weakening U.S. military position in East Asia, and consequently growing worries about Washington’s willingness to make good on its nuclear commitments, many observers believe that all three countries are already latent nuclear powers. (See, e.g., here.) That is, they could build nuclear weapons quickly whenever they wished.

Yet encouraging Taiwan to go nuclear would hardly be risk-free. If and when openly announced, it could spur the Chinese to attack – to enable them to capture the island before its nuclear-ization was completed. A nuclear Taiwan would also be less deferential to American wishes. In fact, its semiconductor superiority has already enabled it to resist some U.S. demands related to plans for increasing microchip production and supply chain security cooperation between the two countries. (The same has held for South Korea, as reported in the linked article immediately above.)

More broadly, nuclear weapons acquisition by Japan and South Korea would certainly undermine America’s post-World War II status as kingpin of East Asia, and all the benefits it ostensibly creates for Americans in one of the world’s most economically important regions.

But even if those benefits were nearly as great as widely believed (and continuing U.S. difficulty opening Asian markets to American exports makes clear that they haven’t been), a nuclear-armed Taiwan would create much bigger benefits: dramatically reducing the odds that China acquires some of the world’s most important technology, and that the risk of a Chinese nuclear attack on the United States if Beijing resulting from a conflict over Taiwan.

The key, as suggested above, would be supporting nuclearization without provoking all-out Chinese aggression – suggesting that this goal deserves more attention in Washington than it’s receiving these days.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Ukraine Crisis Update

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allies, Antony Blinken, Biden, China, Germany, international law, NATO, natural gas, Nord Stream 2, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, sanctions, spheres of influence, Taiwan, Ukraine

The Russia-Ukraine crisis at this point looks like a good news/bad news story – except as was the case when I posted last on the subject, the bad news still looks more important.

The good news: It’s now clear that President Biden knows how dangerously loony it would be to oppose a Russian invasion of Ukraine or intensification of hybrid war against the former Soviet republic with U.S. military forces.

Last Wednesday, he told reporters that putting “U.S. troops on the ground…in or around Ukraine to stop an invasion” was “not on the table” – at least “right now.” And despite that qualifier, he said three days later that this idea was never “on the table.”

That’s good news because, as I explained a week ago, geography makes Ukraine completely indefensible against Russia with conventional weapons, and largely as a result, it’s all too easy to imagine scenarios in which a President would face heavy pressure to rescue endangered American units with nuclear weapons use, which would almost certainly prompt a similar response by Moscow that could also easily escalate to a full-scale nuclear conflict. Worse, this risk would be run on behalf of a country that was never deemed anywhere remotely resembling a U.S. vital interest even during the Cold War.

Potentially better news: At least according to this Associated Press (AP) report, Mr. Biden is considering accommodating Russia’s stated security concerns about Ukraine and its relationship to the West – to the point of pressing “Ukraine to formally cede a measure of autonomy within its eastern Donbas region, which is now under de facto control by Russia-backed separatists who rose up against Kyiv in 2014” and reportedly telling Ukraine that “NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] membership is unlikely to be approved in the next decade….”

It’s not yet clear whether such steps would be enough to appease Russia – which has demanded a formal guarantee on the NATO issue, among others. And the AP report, which looks like a standard Washington trial balloon, doesn’t exactly square with Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s public insistence yesterday that “One country can’t exert a sphere of influence over others.”

But the evident decision of Biden administration officials to float compromise ideas along with the President’s ruling out of military options at least signals a welcome American awareness that its leverage and stakes in this part of the world are severely limited, and that ringing declarations of support for principles like “international law” and “territorial integrity” can often create more and more serious problems than they solve.

As also mentioned at the start, however, the Ukraine news isn’t all good. My first ongoing concern: President Biden is still talking about responding to an invasion of Ukraine by sending “more American and NATO troops into the [alliance’s] eastern flank…where we have a sacred obligation — to defend [those countries] against any attack by Russia.”

Mr. Biden is correct about U.S. treaty obligations. But as I wrote last week, this move, which could deploy large numbers of western forces very close to large numbers of Russian forces, is also a great recipe for an accidental war that, like a deliberately entered conflict, could go nuclear.

The administration and the U.S. main allies (see, e.g., here) are calling economic sanctions against Russia the main focus of their retaliatory plans, and that’s certainly less dangerous, at least in the short run, than military steps. But for two teasons, that doesn’t mean “completely safe.” First, these economic measures could push Russia and China closer together (as I mentioned last week). And as I didn’t mention, but was worried about nonetheless, such an alliance, or quasi-alliance, creates the possibility of the United States fighting two simultaneous wars against two formidable military powers – over Ukraine and over Taiwan.

It would be comforting to think that the President and his advisors are worried about this prospect, too, and further, recognize that unlike Ukraine, Taiwan’s security has become a U.S. vital interest because of its world leadership in semiconductor manufacturing technology. But even despite Mr. Biden’s reported interest in accommodating important Russia-related Ukraine concerns, I wish I saw more and more public signs of such priority-setting.

Second, I’m not so sure that all of America’s European allies would go along with all or even most of the U.S. sanctions. After all, with the worst of winter still surely on the way, they depend heavily on Russian exports of natural gas. And Germany, in particular, seems determined to increase this reliance ith its involvement in constructing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

Berlin seems to be having second thoughts about this project. But Ukraine has officially accused Germany of blocking some of NATO’s efforts to supply it with weapons supplies. So it’s anyone’s guess where the policy of Germany’s new government is actually headed. And unfortunately, that’s my main conclusion so far about the Biden administration’s approach, too.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Biden’s Anti-China Coalition is Flunking an Olympian Test

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allies, Australia, Beijing Olympics, Biden, boycotts, Canada, China, European Union, Germany, Indo-Pacific, Italy, Japan, multilateralism, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, semiconductors, South Korea, Taiwan, United Kingdom, Winter Olympics

One of President Biden’s main foreign policy aims has been to create an international coalition to resist continually mounting belligerence by China, and to curb the massive, decades-long flows of foreign capital and technological knowhow that have done so much to strengthen and enrich the People’s Republic. And whatever promise is held by this anti-China strategy has become vitally important lately because of Beijing’s intensifying intimidation campaign against Taiwan, whose autonomy has become a vital U.S. interest due to its world leadership in semiconductor manufacturing processes.

That’s why it’s so discouraging to report that, as of this morning, so few of the allies on which Mr. Biden is counting have been willing even to take so limited a step as joining the U.S. diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics scheduled to be held in China’s capital Beijing in February.

Australia and the United Kingdom signed on this morning. And a bit later, so did Canada. But so far, that’s it. According to this Reuters article, Japan is considering not sending cabinet members to the Games but South Korea isn’t even thinking about this step. The New York Times reports that New Zealand had previously decided not to send any officials to China but cited CCP Virus-related health concerns as the reason; that the European Union’s (EU) European Parliament has passed a resolution backing a boycott barring “verifiable improvement” in China’s human rights situation, but one that’s non-binding; that the EU’s separate policymaking arm has declined to support the U.S. action; EU member France is hiding behind this EU skirt so far; fellow EU member Italy has said it’s not on board; and Olaf Scholz, the new leader of another EU member, Germany, clearly doesn’t want to be.

It’s not that joining the American initiative will produce any meaningful changes in China’s behavior. Indeed, official foreign participation in and attendance at Olympics isn’t exactly the norm.

It’s true, moreover, as The Times mentioned, that many of these countries and the EU collectively have imposed human rights sanctions on China; that some have begun thinking about how to shield their economies from Beijing’s power and influence (see, e.g., here and here); and that some have begun to increase their own defense spending in response to China’s own buildup and provocations (see, e.g., here and here), or become more active militarily in the Indo-Pacific region (see, e.g., here).

At the same time, boosting military budgets and even sending warships on port calls and other East Asian missions is a far cry from credibly pledging to come to the U.S.’ and Taiwan’s aid if China moves against the island. (It’s also important to note that an American military response, or at least a prompt one, is far from certain, either, since the United States is not yet obliged by treaty to come to Taiwan’s defense.)

And if countries are reluctant to take even a symbolic step like diplomatically boycotting the Beijing Olympics, which doesn’t even entail further sanctions, can they really be counted on to enter hostilities against China?

President Biden is fond of saying that “America is back” in its role as free world leader following an alleged Trump administration abdication. But leaders by definition need followers, and when it comes to confronting China meaningfully, it’s not clear right now that he has many that are reliable.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Biden’s Dangerously Loose Lips on Nuclear Weapons Policy

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alliances, allies, Baltics, Biden, Biden administration, China, deterrence, globalism, no first use, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, semiconductors, South Korea, Soviet Union, Taiwan, Trump, Ukraine

As usual, headline news is coming so fast and furiously from so many different direections that lots of major developments get neglected (including by me). One of the most important pretty stunningly shows once again that those American leaders who most loudly proclaim themselves to be champions of the globalist approach to foreign policy, and of the U.S. security alliances they view as one of its greatest achievements (both for the United States and the globe at large) have once more been flirting seriously with ideas certain to destroy those alliances.

Specifically, I’m referring to recent reports (e.g., here) that the President Biden is considering endorsing a “no first use” (NFU) policy for America’s nuclear weapons arsenal.

The shift hasn’t yet been approved. A rethink hasn’t even been officially announced. And some of the anonymous sources who leaked this news to reporters (no doubt from inside the Biden administration, and no doubt as a trial balloon) claim that what’s being contemplated is changing to something similar to NFU but not identical to it.

But of course, trial balloons are floated precisely to evoke reactions to something that someone awfully high up in government (or whatever organization is doing the floating) thinks is a swell idea, and who’s confident that his or her boss thinks or would think so, too. Moreover, the difference between NFU and the variant being considered seems pretty academic at best.

Most important about this possible new Biden approach to national security is that it reveals this administration to be every bit as cynical and therefore unserious about the globalism and alliances it pretends to prioritize – and about its indignant and sanctimonious portrayals of the more skeptical views of critics like former President Trump as proof of their dangerous ignorance – as the Obama administration.

For as I explained five years ago when Obama entertained NFU right after slamming Trump literally as a foreign policy and specifically nuclear weapons know-nothing, even mulling such a new nuclear doctrine could undermine the very alliances that globalists like him exalted.

And the reason is simple: First use of nuclear weapons is the policy that for decades has enabled the United States to deter attacks on the allies credibly in the first place – and that has held these arrangements together. For long ago, Washington dismissed as impractical trying to match adversaries like the old Soviet Union, China, and North Korea in conventional forces. The first two could draw on populations that would always exceed America’s, and even when it came to relatively small antagonists like the latter, fielding such forces was considered too expensive to be sustained financially and politically.

Nuclear weapons, however, were relatively cheap, and American leaders judged that declaring their intent to respond to purely conventional attacks on allies by these countries by launching the nukes if non-nuclear forces proved inadequate would put the fear of God even in a nuclear superpower like the Soviet Union. And first use would even more effectively deter countries with tiny or non-existen nuclear forces of their own, like China and North Korea for decades.

Even when Beijing and Pyongyang built nuclear forces big and capable enough to call this U.S. bluff successfully at least in theory (because they could now wreak impressive nuclear destruction on the American homeland, too), American leaders put their trust in NFU. And if indeed protecting allies was the overriding priority of U.S. foreign policy, this judgement was at least defensible.

A NFU policy, though, or even trial balloons, could bring disastrous consequences. Either would risk emboldening the enemies of the United States and its allies by signaling that Washington would at the least hesitate to play its most formidable military card. Just as important, it’s hard to imagine a worst recent time than the present for indulging in such speculation. After all, not only does the United States no longer enjoy overwhelming nuclear edges over China and North Korea. But China and Russia have displayed ever greater interest in establishing or reestablishing effective control over small neighbors like Ukraine and the Baltic states and of course Taiwan.

In addition, a NFU policy or talk thereof could frighten allies into bailing on the United States and cutting the best deals they could with Moscow or Pyongyang or Beijing while they still had the chance. Alternatively, because sizable American forces remain right at or near the front lines at all three of these flashpoints, the absence of a first use policy could result in them getting caught up in unwinnable battles even if a U.S. President wanted to stay on the sidelines.

Finally, when we’re talking about Taiwan, of course, we’re talking about the place that now makes the world’s most advanced semiconductors – products that are central to both future American prosperity and national security. So as is not the case with Russia’s neighbors or even South Korea (an impressive semiconductor manufacturer in its own right), adopting NFU could result in the loss of a genuinely vital U.S. interest.

I’ve long favored fundamental changes in U.S. alliance and overall foreign policy and national security strategy. But that’s not the point here. If you like alliances, it’s really pretty simple: At a minimum, you either keep first use, or you greatly beef up U.S. conventional forces, or you convince the allies to fill whatever non-nuclear military force gaps you face, or you do all three or some combination of them. If you adopt NFU and fail to take offsetting steps on the conventional force front, be ready to kiss these arrangements goodbye.

From all accounts (see, e.g., here) the allies themselves recognize this. So does China. What’s scary is that even if the supposed adults-in-the-room and master strategists in the Biden administration eventually realize the stakes involved (as their Obama predecessors eventually did), they may have greatly undermined the nation’s safety – along with boosting the risks of conflict the world over.