Following Up: A Lippmann Gap Still Could be a Big Threat to Biden’s Foreign Policy

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allies, America First, Biden, China, defense budget, Donald Trump, Following Up, Lippmann Gap, Russia, Theodore Roosevelt

Late last month, I worried here that President Biden could open up a dangerous “Lippmann Gap” in U.S. foreign and national security policy by proposing a defense budget incapable of supporting his expansive ambitions. Yesterday, the administration came out with its first official budget request, and although it lacks the detail to justify firm conclusions, I’m still worried.

The nub of the problem is this: The President has repeatedly announced his intention to reverse course from his predecessor’s America First strategy and return U.S. foreign policy to its decades-long pre-Trump sweeping global activism and engagement. And since Mr. Biden’s “America is back” declarations clearly entail at the least a determination to fill an allegedly vital gap left by Donald Trump, and probably to pursue an even more expansive agenda, logic and common sense alone dictate that he request much more defense spending than at present.

It’s true that Pentagon budget and the military forces it supports are by no means the only tools available to the nation to carry out its international aims. It’s also true that defense spending can be made more effective without boosting overall spending levels by spending existing funds more efficiently and wisely. The latter’s potential won’t start to be revealed until the more detailed budget request is made later this year.

But for now, what is known is that Mr. Biden will ask for some 1.6 percent more for the Defense Department proper for the coming budget year (fiscal 2022) than the resources allotted to the Pentagon during the Trump administration’s final year (fiscal 2021). When adding in national security funds not provided to the Department itself (mainly for maintaining the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile – which is handled by the Energy Department), the Biden increase is also about two percent over the funding appropriated during the final Trump year.  (This figure is calculated from here and here.)

Knowledgeable observers of defense spending may note that these Biden fiscal 2022 requests are considerably bigger than the Trump fiscal 2021 requests. These sought just 0.1 percent more for the Pentagon itself than was spent in 2020, and 0.34 percent more for that larger national security budget including the non-Pentagon money. (These figures are found here and calculated from here and here.) 

But Mr. Biden charged that the Trump national security agenda was sorely inadequate. So it’s natural that he’d want more military spending than his predecessor. What’s noteworthy, however, is that the Biden request isn’t that much more. In fact, if inflation takes its expected course this year, this latest military spending proposal will leave the Defense Department and the other agencies responsible for national security with less money when adjusting for rising prices than they spent last year.

Moreover, even in terms of “top-line” spending figures, this Biden request is hardly the last word. The Democratic Congress is practically certain to make further cuts.

Again, wiser spending could fill some of this gap. But what the Biden administration has said about its priorities isn’t all that encouraging, either. Just one example (but a big one): The administration stated yesterday that its military spending request “prioritizes the need to counter the threat from China as the [Defense] Department’s top challenge. The Department would also seek to deter destabilizing behavior by Russia.”

It’s still possible, as suggested above, that moving funds into U.S. China- and Russia-related accounts from lower priority accounts could accomplish these aims even though overall outlays decline in real terms. But in the very next sentence, we learn that the administration isn’t confident that these moves would be the answer (assuming they’re even being contemplated). For it claims that

“Leveraging the Pacific Deterrence Initiative and working together with allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, DOD [the Defense Department] would ensure that the United States builds the concepts, capabilities, and posture necessary to meet these challenges.”

That is, help from allied countries supposedly will be crucial to countering the Chinese and Russian threats. But not only have these countries skimped on their own defense for decades. For the time being, the President has decided not to press them overly hard to share more of the defense burden (as documented in my original “Lippmann Gap” post).

To repeat: I’m not calling for more U.S. military spending. In fact, I’d like to see Pentagon budgets shrink. But this position reflects my judgment that the nation can be adequately safe and sound by doing less in the international sphere. As long as President Biden wants to do more – not only than me, but also than Donald Trump – the only responsible policy would be to boost military spending. Anything else amounts to inverting former President Theodore Roosevelt’s approach of speaking softly and carrying a big stick – which history teaches never, ever ends well.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Why Biden’s Trade Policies are Looking Trump-ier Than Ever

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America First, arbitrage, Biden, China, economic nationalism, environmental standards, global minimum tax, globalism, globalization, infrastructure, Jake Sullivan, Janet Yellen, labor rights, race to the bottom, subsidies, tariffs, tax policy, taxes, Trade, trade Deals, trade wars, {What's Left of) Our Economy

As the author of a book titled The Race to the Bottom, you can imagine how excited I was to learn that the main rationale of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s new proposal for a global minimum tax on corporations is to prevent, or bring to an end, a…race to the bottom.

But this idea also raises a question with profound implications for U.S. trade and broader globalization policies: Why stop at tax policy? And it’s made all the more intriguing because (a) the Biden administration for which Yellen surprisingly seems aware that there’s no good reason to do so even though (b) the trade policy approach that could consequently emerge looks awfully Trump-y.

After all, the minimum tax idea reflects a determination to prevent companies from engaging in what’s known as arbitrage in this area. It’s like arbitrage in any situation – pitting providers and producers that boast little leverage into competition with one another to sell their goods and services at the lowest possible price, and usually triggering a series of ever more cut-rate offers.

These kinds of interactions differ from ordinary price competition because, as mentioned above, the buyer usually holds much more power than the seller. So the results are too often determined by considerations of raw power, not the kinds of overall value considerations that explain why market forces have been so successful throughout history.

When the arbitrage concerns policy, the results can be much more disturbing. It’s true that the ability of large corporations to seek the most favorable operating environments available can incentivize countries to substitute smart policies for dumb in fields such as regulation and of course taxation. But it’s also true, as my book and so many other studies have documented, that policy arbitrage can force countries to seek business with promises and proposals that can turn out to be harmful by any reasonable definition.

Some of the most obvious examples are regulations so meaningless that they permit inhumane working conditions to flourish and pollution to mount, and encourage tax rates to fall below levels needed to pay for public services responsibly. Not coincidentally, Yellen made clear that the latter is a major concern of hers. And the Biden administration says it will intensify enforcement of provisions in recent U.S. trade deals aimed at protecting workers and the environment – and make sure that any new agreements contain the same. I’ve been skeptical that many of these provisions can be enforced adequately (see, e.g., here), but that’s a separate issue. For now, the important point is that such arbitrage, and the lopsided trade flows and huge deficits they’ve generated, harm U.S.-based producers and their employees, too.

But as my book and many other studies have also documented, safety and environmental arbitrage aren’t the only instances of such corporate practices by a long shot. Businesses also hop around the world seeking currency arbitrage (in order to move jobs and production to countries that keep the value of their currencies artificially low, thereby giving goods and services turned out in these countries equally artificial, non-market-related advantages over the competition). Ditto for government subsidies – which also influence location decisions for reasons having nothing to do with free markets, let alone free trade. The victims of these versions of policy arbitrage, moreover, have been overwhelmingly American.

The Biden administration is unmistakably alert to currency and subsidy arbitrage. Indeed a major element of its infrastructure plan is providing massive support for the U.S. industry in general, and to specific sectors like semiconductors to lure jobs and production back home and keep it there. Revealingly, though, it’s decided for the time being to keep in place former President Trump’s steep, sweeping tariffs on China, and on steel and aluminum.

So it looks like the President has resolved to level these playing fields by cutting off corporate policy arbitrage opportunities of all types with a wide range of tools. And here’s where the outcome could start looking quintessentially Trump-y and America First-y. For it logically implies that the United States shouldn’t trade much – and even at all – with countries whose systems and policy priorities can’t promote results favorable to Americans.

Still skeptical? Mr. Biden and his leading advisers have also taken to talking about making sure that “Every action we take in our conduct abroad, we must take with American working families in mind.” More specifically, the President’s White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, wrote pointedly during the campaign that U.S. leaders

“must move beyond the received wisdom that every trade deal is a good trade deal and that more trade is always the answer. The details matter. Whatever one thinks of the TPP [the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal], the national security community backed it unquestioningly without probing its actual contents. U.S. trade policy has suffered too many mistakes over the years to accept pro-deal arguments at face value.”

He even went so far as to note that “the idea that trade will necessarily make both parties better off so long as any losers could in principle be compensated is coming under well-deserved pressure within the field of economics.”

But no one should be confident that economic nationalism will ultimately triumph in Biden administration counsels. There’s no doubt that the U.S. allies that the President constantly touts as the keys to American foreign policy success find these views to be complete anathema. And since Yellen will surely turn out to be Mr. Biden’s most influential economic adviser, it’s crucial to mention that her recent speech several times repeated all the standard tropes mouthed for decades by globalization cheerleaders about U.S. prosperity depending totally on prosperity everywhere else in the world.

Whether she’s right or wrong (here I presented many reasons for concluding the latter), that’s clearly a recipe for returning trade policy back to its pre-Trump days – including the long-time willingness of Washington to accept what it described as short-term sacrifices (which of course fell most heavily on the nation’s working class) in order to build and maintain prosperity abroad that would benefit Americans eventually, but never seemed to pan out domestically.

Nor is Yellen the only potential powerful opponent of less doctrinaire, more populist Biden trade policies. Never, ever forget that Wall Street and Silicon Valley were major contributors to the President’s campaign coffers. Two greater American enthusiasts for pre-Trump trade policies you couldn’t possibly find.

And yet, here we are, more than two months into the Biden presidency, and key pieces of a Trump-y trade policy both in word and deed keep appearing.  No one’s more surprised than I am (see, e.g., here).  But as so often observed, it took a lifelong anti-communist hardliner like former President Richard M. Nixon to engineer America’s diplomatic opening to Mao-ist China. And it took super hard-line Zionist Menachem Begin, Israel’s former Prime Minister, to sign a piece treaty with long-time enemy Egypt. So maybe it’s not so outlandish to suppose that a died-in-the-wool globalist like Joe Biden will be the President establishing America First and economic nationalism as the nation’s new normals in trade and globalization policy.  

Following Up: Biden’s Cave-In on Ukraine, Russia, and Germany and Why It Matters

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Adam Schiff, alliances, allies, America First, Angela Merkel, Democrats, Donald Trump, energy, Eric Swalwell, Following Up, Germany, impeachment, NATO, natural gas, Nord Stream 2, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Russia, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

Earlier this month, I wrote about the weirdness of the Biden administration’s seemingly blasé attitude toward Ukraine’s security, given the President’s long record of support (including military aid) for its independence from an expansionist Russia, and especially given the determination of the entire Democratic party to impeach Donald Trump largely because his allegedly blasé attitude toward Ukraine security treasonously endangered America’s own security.

Today I can report that the situation has grown even weirder – and in the process, raised major questions about the administration’s view of smooth alliance relations as a top foreign policy priority, and about its adults-in-the-room reputation itself for foreign policy competence itself.

As explained in my March 17 post, the issue at hand is the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, That’s a natural gas transport project that the Trump administration opposed because it threatened to, among other problems, increase Europe’s energy dependence on Vladimir Putin’s Russia, provide this aggressive autocrat with a big new source of revenue and therefore of funds for his military, and ace Ukraine itself out of natural gas earnings, thereby weakening its economy and ultimately its ability to defend itself.

So why is Nord Stream 2 being built? Two main reasons. First, lots of big German (and other European) companies have been involved in its financing and nearly finished construction, and will profit from its operation. (See here and here for good summaries.) Further, the German government is obliged to cover the multi-billion dollar losses that would result from cancellation. Second, Chancellor Angela Merkel;s government views the project as a means of keeping Germany, and Europe in general, economically engaged, influential, and therefore at peace with Russia.

The Germans also say they need the new gas because of its plans to de-nuclearize and de-carbonize its economy. Berlin also has the option of filling the looming energy supply gap by purchasing more gas from the United States than at present.  But Germany seems more impressed by the fact that higher transport costs make the U.S. product more expensive than Moscow’s.

You’d think, therefore, that Germany would be facing heavy pressure to cancel the pipeline from the Biden administration and especially from the impeachment enthusiasts in the Democrats’ Congressional ranks – like California’s Adam Schiff, the lead House manager for the first Trump impeachment trial, who described Ukraine’s sovereignty and safety as nothing less than a vital interest of the United States.

Not a peep about Nord Stream has been heard from Schiff or from other Trump impeachment hard-liners, like California Democratic Congress Member Eric Swalwell – confirming suspicions that their main concerns all along during both the Trump-Russia collusion and impeachment dramas were somehow ousting Trump for purely partisan or possibly simply deranged reasons, not safeguarding America’s security or democracy.

But Mr. Biden’s stance is more puzzling and disturbing – the latter since Presidents matter so much more than individual legislators. As my earlier post noted, his administration has seemed more relaxed about Nord Stream even though it, too, has claimed to harbor major concerns about Ukraine’s fate.

In fact, as recently as a few days ago, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken declared that “President (Joe) Biden has been very clear, he believes the pipeline is a bad idea, bad for Europe, bad for the United States, ultimately it is in contradiction to the EU’s own security goals, It has the potential to undermine the interests of Ukraine, Poland and a number of close partners and allies.”

Yet just this morning, when asked whether Washington could (and by extension, actually would) do anything to stop Nord Stream 2, Blinken “Well, ultimately that is up to those who are trying to build the pipeline and complete it. We just wanted to make sure that our … opposition to the pipeline was well understood.”

In other words, “La de dah.”

Such quick and complete turnabouts by America’s top diplomat are disturbing in and of themselves, but the real problems with the Biden Nord Stream stance go far beyond the impotence claimed (and therefore advertised) by Blinken.

After all, avoiding a showdown with Germany on the pipeline would be understandable and even smart if Mr. Biden really didn’t view Ukraine’s security, and/or Russia’s aims and power, as terribly important in the first place, or if (as I offered as a possibility in my previous post), this decision reflected some broader administration conclusion that relations with Russia should be improved in order to outflank the stronger and more dangerous Chinese.

But not only is the President a strong believer in deterring Russian designs on Europe. He recently seemed to go out of his way to antagonize Putin by calling him a “killer.”

So the most reasonable conclusion to draw is that, at least for now, Mr. Biden is so determined to keep America’s wealthiest European ally happy that he’s given it a veto on a matter he himself has deemed a major U.S. interest. Worse, he seems indifferent to Trump’s (correct) complaint that Germany evidently has no problem with enriching Moscow while continuing to rely on the U.S. military to defend it from Russia. This doesn’t necessarily leave the President guilty of carrying out an “America Last” foreign policy. But it makes you wonder how far he’ll drift from from putting America First.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: It’s Official. Uncle Sucker is Back

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alliances, allies NATO, America First, Biden, deterrence, Donald Trump, Japan, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, South Korea

If you think this title is too harsh, and especially if you agree with his view that maintaining U.S. alliances must be central to American foreign policy-making, you need to ask yourself this: How can some of the major points President Biden made in his speech Friday to an audience containing heads of major allied governments accomplish anything but keep the United States needlessly paying outsized costs for these arrangements and even worse, running major risks that include nuclear attack, for no good reason whatever?

As known by RealityChek regulars, downsides of American security alliances both in Europe and Asia that arguably were acceptable during much of the Cold War period have become terrifying and – because stemming from stubbornly hidebound thinking and consequent policy inertia – downright inexcusable more recently. That’s because physically devastated allies literally helpless against aggression in the earliest post-World War II decades, but nonetheless retaining vital economic and therefore military potential, had fully recovered by the mid-1970s, and because their continued defense free-riding led Washington to station sizable military units (and their dependents) directly in harm’s way.

The idea was that this U.S. presence’s very vulnerability to superior conventional forces from the Soviet Union and North Korea would deter aggression to begin with. Forit would all but force a U.S. President to approve saving these American lives with nuclear weapons – whose use could trigger an all-out mutually devastating conflict.

This gamble could be defended when the United States enjoyed clearcut nuclear superiority over the Soviets, a nuclear monopoly and near-monopoly over the North Koreans and Chinese, respectively – and when allies and their potentially crucial assets were still down and out. But for many years, the nuclear gap has  closed in Europe and the the monopoly and near-monopoly in Asia vanished, and all allies in question have been amply wealthy enough to defend themselves. So Washington’s refusal to adjust means that the nation could well see nuclear warheads land on its soil because the Europeans, Japanese, and South Koreans have been permitted to be military deadbeats. Could any policy be more recklessly perverse, or determined to reward irresponsibility and cynicism?

Despite loudly griping about allied defense free-riding, raising the temperature in periodic defense burden-sharing negotiations, and rearranging some troop deployments in Europe, Donald Trump never frontally and comprehensively challenged the status quo, at least while President. Would a second term have been different? Who knows?

What is clear, especially from this latest speech by Mr. Biden, is that the United States will now be doubling down on this entire literal Americans Last strategy.

For not only did the President repeated the pre-Trump standard Washington endorsement of the core principle of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that “An attack on one is an attack on all. That is our unshakable vow” – which inevitably tells the allies that they can continue free-riding militarily to their heart’s content and count on American protection no matter how potentially disastrous the consequences for the American people.

He actually praised “Europe’s growing investment in the military capabilities that enable our shared defense” even though these expenditure will be definition be utterly inadequate as long as their level leaves a military gap that American conventional and nuclear forces still need to fill.

Further, in declaring that he would not view U.S. alliances as “transactional” he assured America’s so-called partners that their relationships with Washington need involve no give and take whatever, thereby guaranteeing that these opportunistic governments would raise their chronic free-riding to much loftier levels, and that Americans would bear more of the costs and risks of these arrangements than ever.

And most foolishly of all, Mr. Biden explicitly told the Europeans (and consequently the Asians) that, after the stormy Trump years, it was up to the United States “to earn back our position of trusted leadership.” That is, the kinds (long overdue) burden- and therefore risk-sharing criticisms made by the former President were completely illegitimate, and that whatever ailed the alliances resulted from Trump’s America First words and (much more modest) deeds, not from decades of allied risk- and burden-shirking.

Of course, Mr. Biden’s words were actual U.S. policy for decades before the Trump years. That’s why these arrangements became so dysfunctional from any sensible American standpoint in the first place. But by making this approach explicit, and giving the Europeans and Asians official license for their longstanding “heads we win, tails America loses” priorities, the President has not only gravely weakened his own country’s safety and prosperity. He’s destroyed whatever legitimate hopes ever existed that multilateralism and collective security could ever adequately serve any reasonable definition of American interests.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Globalists Keep Rejecting Key Tenets of Globalism

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America First, Biden, Council on Foreign Relations, Donald Trump, foreign policy establishment, globalism, international institutions, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Richard N. Haass

As well known by RealityChek regulars, there’s not much I enjoy more professionally speaking than finding figures with whom I normally strongly disagree on key economic and foreign policy issues unwittingly agreeing with me on the concepts at the heart of these disagreements. (See, e.g., here and here.)

So imagine how pleased I was to see this paragraph in a recent opinion column by Richard N. Haass – a foreign policy establishmentarian if ever there was one, and therefore a leading advocate of the globalist approach to world affairs that I and Donald Trump (in his typically ragged way) believe has been needlessly and indeed recklessly risky and costly for Americans:

“The US will…encounter difficulty in realizing its goal of organizing the world to meet global challenges, from infectious disease and climate change to nuclear proliferation and conduct in cyberspace. There is no consensus and no international community, and the US can neither compel others to act as it wants nor succeed on its own.”

It’s a statement that’s noteworthy not only because it recognizes the fatal flaw of one of globalism’s central pillars – fetishizing international cooperation and therefore striving to systematize and formalize such multilateralism by building strong global institutions. For the point being made by Haass – a former official in the pre-Trump Republican presidencies and now President of the Council on Foreign Relations, often described as the foreign policy establishment’s epicenter – is that creating organizations can’t be equated with solving even problems shared by the entire world because – across the board – so many different countries disagree on the best solutions.

It’s also statement that’s noteworthy because Haass had previously called the rejection of multilateralism and its constituent institutions a defining and especially wrongheaded feature of Trump’s America First-ism. Withdrawal from such arrangements, Haass wrote just last May, has been

“central to the Trump presidency. He has pulled the country out of every manner of multilateral agreement and institution overseas in the name of going it alone. Going it alone, though, makes little sense in a world increasingly defined by global challenges that can best be met through collective, not individual, action.”

But Haass’ new about-face is consequential as welI because it’s essence’ is identical with my own previously stated (anti-globalist) view that

“Precisely because…domestic [political] systems are characterized by a common acceptance of legitimate authority, and by a broader sense of mutual obligation, a true [foreign policy] realist would never disagree that their possibilities for ‘trust, cooperation and growth’ are often encouraging. It is precisely because the international system possesses none of these features that realists’ expectations of achieving such advances abroad are so low.”

P.S. I wrote the above in 2002.

Unfortunately, Haass’ latest makes painfully clear that he has no useful policy advice for President Biden – another multilateralism and international institution fan boy – in a world in which their foreign policy lodestars have become so useless (and in my view have never been essential). I’ve written that recognizing the shortcomings and limitations of international institutions doesn’t require simply abandoning them.

Instead, because cooperation inevitably sometimes be worth seeking, it means recognizing the hard-ball politicking typically needed to prevail; and amassing the power (in all dimensions) needed both to succeed, and to survive and prosper through America’s own devices if others prove recalcitrant. 

In fact, the virtues of this foreign policy strategy seem so obvious that I’ve got the sneaking suspicion that a big reason they became controversial was because they were championed by Trump.  Which raises the intriguing possibility that the Biden administration could wind up adopting an America First-type foreign policy, but in the worst conceivable manner – unwittingly, and even kicking and screaming all the way.      

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Biden’s Just Been Fooled Twice by Europe

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alliances, allies, America First, AstraZeneca, Belgium, Biden, CCP Virus, China, coronavirus, COVID 19, EU, European Union, Financial Times, globalism, health security, Northern Ireland, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, supply chains, The New York Times, Trump, United Kingdom, vaccines, Wuhan virus

It’s beginning to look like a pattern: President Biden keeps making clear that he’s determined to repair the vital U.S. alliance relationships he believes Donald Trump disastrously weakened, and the Europeans, anyway, keep flipping him the bird either explicitly or implicitly. And as the old saying goes, shame on anyone who’s been fooled more than once.

The explicit example came before Inauguration Day. The European Union (EU) – whose members were touted by candidate Biden as eager potential partners in a multilateral coalition against a common Chinese economic and national security threat – were on the verge of finalizing an investment treaty with Beijing. A top Biden aide publicly asked the EU to think twice and consult with the United States before proceeding. In response, the Europeans…proceeded. (See here for the details.) 

The implicit example came last week. During the campaign Mr. Biden, as noted here, made clear (except to every American journalist who covered the matter) that his plan to strengthen U.S. supply chains and make sure that the nation would never again be reliant on adversaries like China for crucial medical equipment and other vital products was by no means an “America Only” or even an “America First” proposal. Instead, one of its planks pledged to

“engage with our closest partners so that together we can build stronger, more resilient supply chains and economies in the face of 21st century risks. Just like the United States itself, no U.S. ally should be dependent on critical supplies from countries like China and Russia. That means developing new approaches on supply chain security — both individually and collectively — and updating trade rules to ensure we have strong understandings with our allies on how to best ensure supply chain security for all of us.” (Here’s the full document.)

In principle, this characteristically multilateral Biden approach made sense. Yet the blueprint came out scant months after (as reported here) many of these allies reacted to the outbreak of the CCP Virus by blocking exports of key medical equipment to ensure they could supply themselves.

You’d think that Mr. Biden, therefore, would have learned this lesson and recognized that the United States simply can’t afford to define “Made in America” as “Made in Lots of Other Countries, Too.” But you’d be wrong.

The day after his inauguration, the new President issued an executive order to create “a Sustainable Public Health Supply Chain.” And one of it directives charged various Cabinet and other agencies and senior advisers to study “America’s role in the international public health supply chain, and options for strengthening and better coordinating global supply chain systems in future pandemics….”

Again, therefore, Mr. Biden specified that this “sustainable public health supply chain” would stretch far beyond America’s shores, and that he believed various kinds of these “global supply chain systems” could ensure the nation’s health security in “future pandemics.”

How did the Europeans react? Little more than a week later, the European Union moved to restrict exports of the CCP Virus vaccine made by pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca because its own supplies were so short. As a top EU official explained, “The protection and safety of our citizens is a priority and the challenges we now face have left us with no choice other than to act.”

The EU almost immediately reversed its decision – but only in part. It agreed to maintain shipments to the United Kingdom (which has recently left the union under a complicated agreement negotiated after the “Brexit” referendu vote of 2015) and to Northern Ireland (which is a part of the UK, but which remains part of the Union’s single market for goods). But the Europeans, according to The New York Times, still intend “to introduce export controls that could prevent any vaccines made in the European Union from being sent to non-E.U. countries, but without involving Northern Ireland….”

For good measure, great potential remains for a big vaccine-related dispute between the United Kingdom and the EU due to differences over which party is contractually entitled to the highest priority when it comes to vaccine shipments.

And the Financial Times reported that “Belgium, a key location for vaccine production in the EU, has notified the Commission of a draft health law that would give it new powers to curb medicines exports. The proposed legislation would allow Belgian authorities to restrict or ban the shipment of critical medicinal products and active ingredients, in case of shortages or potential shortages.”

Vaccines apparently are not included, but how could any responsible leader inside the EU or outside count on Belgium keeping its word during emergencies?  The same goes, incidentally, for the word of a United States led by an adult thinker, as opposed to a globalist determined to return to the pre-Trump days of Uncle Sucker.   

President Biden clearly needs to learn that lesson, too – and also needs to start asking himself whether the Europeans are holding his administration and his allies uber alles globalism up for ransom, and if the price for securing their cooperation on any number of issues is turning out to be dangerously unaffordable.

Making News: Podcast Now On-Line of U.S. China Strategy National Radio Interview

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alliances, allies, America First, China, globalism, Joe Biden, Making News, Market Wrap with Moe Ansari, multilateralism, national security, Trade, trade war, Trump

I’m pleased to announce that the podcast is now available of my interview yesterday with Moe Ansari on his nationally syndicated “Market Wrap” radio program. This was a real corker of a segment, turning into an awfully intense (but always civil!) debate about the best way for the United States to deal with the Chinese economic and national security threat – by relying on its own devices (a la, more or less, President Trump) or by building international coalitions (the preferred approach of President-elect Biden). Click here to listen and go to the “Current Market Wrap: link. My segment begins at about the 27-minute mark.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

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.

Im-Politic: Clearcut China Coddling by The Times

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America First, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Andy Purdy, Dealbook D.C. Policy Project, Dina Powell, Eric Swalwell, globalists, Huawei, Im-Politic, Mainstream Media, MSM, The New York Times, Trump, Wall Street, Winston Ma

If the Mainstream Media really aren’t deeply in the tank when it comes to the challenge China poses to America’s security and prosperity, they often do an awfully good job of imitating panda huggers. Just check out the latest installment of The New York Times‘ “Dealbook D.C. Policy Project” on “How to Reset the Relationship Between the U.S. and China.”

The Dealbook initiative says it seeks to bring together “Leaders from the public and private sectors [to] debate solutions to the world’s biggest policy challenges” which is a perfectly fine objective although its structure is unmistakably weird. It’s a product of “Andrew Ross Sorkin and team,” meaning it’s run by a Times-er whose overwhelming focus has been the financial world.

And it’s that financial world that dominates the roster of supposed leaders that Sorkin has convened to provide suggestions for the apparently incoming Biden administration on a subject that entails so much more than financial considerations.

In fact, Wall Street’s dominance is so thorough that the group features only one member with any recent public sector experience – Dina Powell. And although she served briefly in the Trump administration, she was clearly one of the traditional globalist Republicans who saw their top priority as undermining the President’s America First agenda, including its determination to recognize the full scope of the China threat and take it seriously.

Worse, the result not only is the complete absence of anyone representing a Trump-ian perspective on China – especially when it comes to policy responses. It’s also a roster that includes one current servant of the Chinese regime – Andy Purdy, a senior executive at Huawei, the Chinese (and therefore regime-controlled) telecommunications giant that, not so incidentally, has been labeled by major national security threat by the Trump administration; and one recent servant (who could still be on Beijing’s payroll for all any outsider knows): Winston Ma, who worked for ten years as a Managing Director of China’s (of course state-run) global investment fund.

In recent weeks, as I and others have reported, The Times has completely ignored the news that a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (and prominent peddler of the Trump Russia hoax) had established a significant relationship with a woman he himself acknowledges was a Chinese spy. Now the paper has organized a policy forum heavily weighted toward longtime China coddling interests and containing two longtime representatives of Chinese interests themselves.

The paper does continue to publish material critical of China’s regime – see, for example, today’s piece on its initial response to the CCP Virus. But just as its neglect of the aforementioned Swalwell spy scandal has clashed with its “All the News That’s Fit to Print” motto, this decidedly skewed – and decidedly pro-Beijing-skewed – China policy panel clashes with what should be a corollary: All the Opinions Fit to Print.