Our So-Called Foreign Policy: A Sleepy U.S. Intelligence Response to the CCP Virus?

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Blob, CCP Virus, Central Intelligence Agency, China, CIA, coronavirus, COVID 19, intelligence community, Mainstream Media, Mike Pompeo, MSM, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, The New York Times, Trump, U.S. intelligence, Wuhan labs, Wuhan virus

The head-shaking problems with yesterday’s New York Times article on the Trump administration, the intelligence agencies, and the CCP Virus, start with the headline. Instead of “Trump Officials Are Said to Press Spies to Link Virus and Wuhan Labs,” it obviously should have been “Spies Investigating Virus Origin Proceeding Slowly and Grudgingly.” Because those were by far the most important alleged revelations it contained.

I say “alleged,” of course, because nearly all the new information the Times reporter team spotlighted is based on unnamed sources – which means it shouldn’t yet even be considered “information.” That doesn’t mean it’s not newsworthy. It simply means that this material amounts to what some intelligence officials, or other individuals who convinced the authors that they know the real story, for some (undisclosed reasons), want the reporters to make public. Sometimes this material turns out to be true and important, and sometimes it doesn’t qualify for either description. So we’ll just have to wait and see.

But even if the Times‘ findings are judged to be credible, it’s mind-boggling that the authors missed the real significance of what they were told – or at least it’s mind-boggling if you still consider the Mainstream Media as a reliable watchdog of democracy, rather than an appendage of the bipartisan, cross-institutional “Blob” that even a top Obama administration official complained had dominated both American implementation and even discussion of foreign policy matters for way too long.

For the bulk of the piece clearly shows that the Times‘ sources have real problems with the idea of the intelligence agencies spending much time and effort probing China’s responsibility for releasing an historic pandemic on Americans and the rest of the world.

Skeptical? Recall that this is a disease that’s now killed hundreds of thousands worldwide and, as widely noted recently, caused more fatalities than the Vietnam War – or soon will, as even those wondering about counting methodologies have to acknowledge. The official reaction has thrown 30 million Americans out of work already and almost certainly plunged the economy into a genuine depression that will reduce its growth and wealth- and opportunity-creating capacity for years.

In other words, the virus has inflicted far more damage on Americans than Islamic terrorists, Vladimir Putin, or whatever other threats the intelligence community is supposed to be monitoring.

Yet here’s what the article reported:

>”Senior Trump administration officials have pushed American spy agencies to hunt for evidence to support an unsubstantiated theory that a government laboratory in Wuhan….”

>”NBC News reported earlier that administration officials had directed intelligence agencies to try to determine whether China and the World Health Organization hid information early on about the outbreak.”

>”Richard Grenell, the acting director of national intelligence, has told his agencies to make a priority of determining the virus’s origin.”

In other words, despite the human and economic devastation wrought by the virus, readers are being told that the intelligence agencies weren’t exactly foaming at the mouth to figure out why these disasters happened. That’s tantamount to learning in early 1942 that the intelligence agencies needed to be directed to determine why Pearl Harbor happened. This is a situation the reporters are OK with? And believe has no major news value?

And the Times‘ unintentional revelations about blasé intelligence attitudes don’t stop there. For example, the article claims that “Most intelligence agencies remain skeptical that conclusive evidence of a link to a lab can be found….” and that “The C.I.A.’s judgment was based in part on the fact that no signs had emerged that the Chinese government believed the outbreak came from a lab.”

In addition, “Intelligence officials have repeatedly pointed out to the White House that determining the origins of the outbreak is fundamentally a scientific question that cannot be solved easily by spycraft” and “the agency has told policymakers it lacks enough information to either affirm or refute it. Only getting access to the lab itself and the virus samples it contains could provide definitive proof, if it exists….”

But the authors don’t even note that China has denied outside analysts of any kind access to the two Wuhan labs in question. Indeed, they simply treat is as a claim by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is maybe not-so-coincidentally portrayed as “the administration’s most vocal hard-liner on China” who “in particular has tried to hammer China over the lab.” In other words, a zealot.

Perhaps more important, what these passages indicate is that the intelligence agencies have no access to the labs because the Chinese have placed them off limits and America’s spies are…shrugging their shoulders? Patiently waiting for Beijing to open the doors? It’s like none of the spies, or other sources on which the Times relied, knows the definition of “spycraft.” Or is especially interested in its practice.

On the one hand, it should go without saying that if the nation’s intelligence agencies are trying to penetrate the labs surreptitiously, no one connected with them, and especially no one who knows the inside story, would breathe a syllable about such efforts, even on background. On the other hand, the lips who spoke to the Times seem pretty loose. Moreover, it’s odd that these Times reporters, who  deal with these agencies and their practices all the time, didn’t themselves even mention a cover story as a possibility.

And regardless of what appears in the U.S. press, you need to assume that the Chinese are on the lookout for such espionage. Unless they’re feeling pretty confident in their ability to keep their secrets because, during the Obama administration, they “dismantled C.I.A. spying operations in the country starting in 2010, killing or imprisoning more than a dozen sources over two years and crippling intelligence gathering there for years afterward”?

Where did I read this contention, strongly indicating that U.S. intelligence agencies couldn’t penetrate the labs even if they wanted to? I read it in a 2017 story in The New York Times – written in part by two of the same reporters responsible for yesterday’s article. Yet somehow, this possibility never made it into yesterday’s piece.

Which raises the possibility that intelligence officials or their friends and well-wishers are pushing this tale of improper Trump administration pressure in order to hide their inability to reconstruct adequate China capabilities.

Yet there’s another possibility, and one that’s even more troubling: The Times‘ sources are really most concerned that, as the article conspicuously notes:

“Any American intelligence report blaming a Chinese institution and officials for the outbreak could significantly harm relations with China for years to come. And Trump administration officials could use it to try to prod other nations to publicly hold China accountable for coronavirus deaths even when the pandemic’s exact origins cannot be determined.”

In other words, these sources are first and foremost concerned with preserving what’s left of a pre-Trump China policy status quo with which virtually the entire American foreign policy establishment was entirely comfortable. And by the way – the Mainstream Media was entirely comfortable with that China policy, too.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Ukraine Mess that Really Counts

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Adam B. Schiff, America First, Barack Obama, Blob, George W. Bush, globalism, impeachment, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Senate impeachment trial, Trump, Ukraine

Ever since U.S.-Ukraine relations became front-page news as Russia began its military and paramilitary campaign against the former Soviet “republic” (and cradle of Russian civilization), and especially ever since American Presidents and lawmakers have sought to help Kyiv resist, I’ve been writing that whatever emotions this struggle stirs, U.S. leaders have never viewed Ukraine’s security as a remotely vital interest of the United States – and with good reason.

Located right on Russia’s doorstep, the country is impossible to defend without using nuclear weapons (and thus running the risk of nuclear war), and its multi-decade span under the Soviet thumb never had the slightest impact on America’s safety, independence, or well-being. Indeed, even a card-carrying globalist like former President Barack Obama has stated that precisely because Ukraine is a core interest of Russia’s but not of the United States, it’s “going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do.”

These observations have seemed especially important in recent months, as backers of impeaching President Trump have strenuously argued to the contrary. Indeed yesterday, in his formal presentation at Mr. Trump’s Senate trial, House Intelligence Committee and lead House Impeachment Manager Adam B. Schiff once more joined the chorus that has raised the stakes of protecting Ukraine considerably higher. The California Democrat endorsed a claim that Ukraine’s takeover by Russia would directly threaten America’s allies in the rest of Europe, and indeed, the U.S. homeland itself.

Quoting a previous impeachment witness (and eerily echoing a major argument for continuing to fight endless wars in the Middle East), Schiff declared, “The United States aids Ukraine and her people so that they can fight Russia over there, and we don’t have to fight Russia here.”

Not that Schiff nor any impeachment supporters my research has come across has ever called for the logical – indeed, the essential – follow-on to their Ukraine analyses (urging the permanent stationing of major American military units on Ukraine soil to deter the Russians.  And not that they’ve supported the Pentagon budget increases needed to deploy these forces without cannibalizing other missions). So it’s reasonable to conclude that their words amount to just so much bluster (and possibly Trump Derangement Syndrome).

At the same time, it’s important to note that there’s been no shortage of statements by Mr. Trump’s predecessors (including Obama) that draw connections between Ukraine’s fate and America’s.

For example, George W. Bush was a strong supporter of bringing Ukraine into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This step would legally commit Washington to come to Ukraine’s defense against outside aggression just as strongly as the United States is committed to come to the defense of France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and other European allies whose security has long been deemed vital. And in 2008, the alliance officially endorsed this goal – though without any timetable or specific plan for achieving it.

In the context of endorsing greater efforts to help Ukraine strengthen its defenses, Obama himself in 2014 emphasized the importance of keeping NATO “open” to “countries that meet our standards and that can make meaningful contributions to allied security.” And in the same speech, he vowed, “we will not accept Russia’s occupation and illegal annexation of Crimea or any part of Ukraine.”

Further, although President Trump hasn’t been the biggest fan of Ukraine or NATO, his administration officially has kept the membership door open to Kyiv. Just as officially, and more diisturbingly, the United States still considers Ukraine a “strategic partner” and indeed actually calls “a strong, independent, and democratic Ukraine” a “vital interest.”

The big takeaway isn’t that my prior descriptions of U.S. policy toward Ukraine were flawed. (Although they were.) Instead, it’s that support for bringing Ukraine into NATO and saddling the United States with yet another security commitment it can’t meet without incurring the risk of nuclear attack is strong in both the Democratic and Republican wings of the intervention-happy, globalist foreign policy establishment. And unless the presidency continues to be held by leaders with powerful America First-type instincts, this Blob’s dangerous ambitions could well become reality.

Im-Politic: Impeachment and the Mind of a Diplomat I

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Blob, House of Representatives, Im-Politics, impeachment, Trump, Ukraine, Ukraine Scandal, William B. Taylor

When the House of Representatives’ public impeachment hearings open this week, one of the star witnesses for the prosecution – and perhaps the star witness – is expected to be William B. Taylor, former chief U.S. envoy to Ukraine. His appeal to President Trump’s opponents is easy to understand, since he was both deeply involved with Ukraine policy when the alleged actions that ostensibly triggered Mr. Trump’s latest round of troubles took place, and since he’s compiled such an impressive record of service to America, especially as a decorated military veteran.

I haven’t yet made up my mind as to whether Taylor’s remarks at his October 22 closed door appearance before House investigators will seal or significantly strengthen the case for impeachment. (So far I’m leaning “No,” for reasons I’ll detail soon.) What is clear to me is that Taylor’s opening statement, and answers to questions from the Democrats and Republicans involved, put on full display a syndrome long common among America’s diplomatic corps (and broader foreign policy establishment) whose pervasiveness should disturb anyone who believes that the nation’s approach to world affairs should prioritize American interests.

The syndrome is called “Client-itis”. As the name suggests, it’s applied to foreign policy officials who fall in love with the countries they’re focused on, and who act as if their chief responsibility is championing that country’s interests in U.S. corridors of power, not vice versa. And last month, Taylor both came off as a prime example, and strongly suggested that his real beef with the President (and the real beef of the foreign policy Blob in general) concerns Mr. Trump’s doubts about Ukraine as a vital U.S. interest worth antagonizing Russia over, not about any supposed Trump improprieties.

Taylor’s Ukraine-philia emerged right off the bat in his prepared statement before the investigators: “While I have served in many places and in different capacities, I have a particular interest in and respect for the importance of our country’s relationship with Ukraine. Our national security demands that this relationship remain strong.”

But Taylor also eventually made clear that far more than cold strategic calculations underlay this view. As he explained, also at work was an “emotional piece,” that “is based on my time in Ukraine in 2006, 2009, when traveling around the country, I got to know Ukrainians and their frustrations and difficulties and those kind of things. And then coming back and seeing it now where they have the opportunity, they’ve got a young President, a young Prime Minister, a young Parliament, the Prime Minister is 35 years old. This new government has appealed to young people who are so idealistic, pro-West, pro-United States, pro-Europe, that I feel an emotional attachment, bond, connection to this country and these people.”

Is it possible that Taylor nonetheless was able to distinguish American from Ukrainian interests anyway, despite these strong feelings? Sure – but the closing passage of his statement justifies such strong doubts that it’s worth quoting in full:

“There are two Ukraine stories today, Mr. Chairman. The first is the one we are discussing this morning and that you have been hearing for the past 2 weeks. It’s a rancorous story about whistleblowers, Mr. Gjuliani, side channels, quid pro quos, corruption, interference in elections. In this story Ukraine is an object.

“But there’s another Ukraine story, a positive, bipartisan one. In this second story, Ukraine is the subject. This one is about young people in a young nation struggling to break free of its past, hopeful their new government will finally usher in a new Ukraine, proud of its independence from Russia, eager to join Western institutions and enjoy a more secure and prosperous life.

“This story describes a Nation developing an inclusive, democratic nationalism, not unlike what we in America, in our best moments, feel about our diverse country – less concerned about what language we speak; what religion, if any, we practice; where our parents and grandparents came from – more concerned about building a new country.”

Taylor returned to the strategic argument, but not for long, concluding his statement with “This second story, Mr. Chairman, is the one I would like to leave you with today.”

The problem is, however moving this description of the new Ukraine, none of these considerations mitigating for viewing that, or any, country as a “subject” – i.e., worth helping because of its alleged virtues – should be standing at the forefront of U.S. policymakers’ worldview. If such support can contribute to America’s freedom, security, and prosperity at costs and risks deemed acceptable by the American political system (meaning, ultimately, by voters), then their pursuit becomes entirely legitimate. But their intrinsic nature is secondary. That is, an “object” of U.S. interests is precisely what must remain first and foremost for the U.S. government and its officials when dealing with foreign countries and regions.

Taylor is absolutely correct in noting that aiding Ukraine has been a strongly supported bipartisan American policy goal. But as he and his Democratic questioners also made clear, Donald Trump wasn’t sure about Ukraine’s relation to America’s well-being at all. And Mr. Trump is not only the current Constitutionally elected President of the United States. He also ran – and won – on a platform that emphatically opposed a foreign policy made on Taylor-like bases.

That is, an “object” of U.S. interests is precisely how the President views Ukraine. And it’s a decision whose legitimacy Taylor has unquestionably overlooked. Let’s hope that in their impeachment proceedings, the House and Senate don’t.

In my next post:  Taylor’s testimony and the case for clearing Mr. Trump. 

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Globalist Blob Wants the U.S. to Keep Looking for Trouble

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alliances, Blob, China, Council on Foreign Relations, East Asia-Pacific, extended deterrence, globalism, Japan, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Project-Syndicate.org, Richard N. Haass, South Korea, Taiwan, Trump

I’d like to offer a deal to anyone in America’s bipartisan globalist foreign policy establishment: You come up with defenses of the pre-Trump strategies and approaches you support that aren’t transparently ridiculous, and I’ll start portraying them as something other than sick jokes.

Judging by Richard N. Haass’ latest column for the Project Syndicate website, it’s clear that even if these members of the Blob (a wonderful nickname for this crew of former officials, genuine scholars, think tank creatures, Mainstream Media journalists, and business and finance leaders) cared about what I think, they’d flunk this test.

Haass is an especially important Blob-er because he not only served as a top policymaker under three Republican presidents (and in a more junior position during Jimmy Carter’s administration). He’s the President of the Council on Foreign Relations – the Blob’s oldest and most prominent think tank. (Truth in advertising: He also preceded me by two years at our Long Island, N.Y high school, but we had no personal dealings.)

But we should all hope that the advice he dispensed in government was much better than that he seems to have offered in “Asia’s Scary Movie.” Because his arguably underlying message – that the United States should reinforce its commitment to militarily defending the East Asia-Pacific region even though the region shows signs of fracturing on the economic and security fronts – is nothing less than a recipe for increasing America’s exposures to perils it can’t possibly control.

Especially and dangerously nutty is Haass’ clear belief that the United States should maintain its security relationships with Japan and South Korea even though the two countries are engaged in a literal trade war that’s disrupting interactions between their two gigantic clusters of information technology hardware manufacturing – which are so big that global trade and production in these critical sectors could take a major hit if the feud escalates further.

After all, as noted in that post linked just above, American ties with these two countries are “vital to its aims of balancing China and addressing the threat from North Korea” – both of which threats Haass correctly describes as growing and as worrisome as ever, respectively. In other words, in the event of trouble that may require a military response, the United States is relying on help from Tokyo and Seoul – which, in turn, are going to need to be working together.

But military relations between these two Asian countries have long been threadbare at best. Worse, their latest dispute – amid the backdrop of the rising China challenge and the ongoing peril from North Korea, which endanger both – has broken out because of grievances and grudges dating from Japan’s long and brutal occupation of the entire Korean peninsula in the decades preceding the end of World War II.

Given the history, it’s easy to understand why there’s no love lost between these two peoples. But alliances make sense only when the participants can count on each other for effective assistance if and when the shooting starts. Can anyone seriously believe that Japan and South Korea are going to get their act together suddenly if North Korean forces barrel across the Demilitarized Zone, or if Beijing moves against Taiwan? Or that responsible American defense planning should assume this rosy scenario?

Even worse, if trouble does break out on the Korean peninsula, nearly 30,000 American troops will be right in the middle. As I’ve written repeatedly, their vulnerability to superior North Korean conventional forces means that a U.S. President might need to use nuclear weapons to save them. For many years, North Korea’s inability to hit the American homeland with its own nukes made this threat (known as “extended deterrence”) credible and helped keep the peace. Given the North’s major progress toward precisely this capability, the current U.S. strategy could soon amount to risking the complete destruction of a big American city – or two. That may even be the case now.

In other words, given all these major, worsening Asia problems, the logical U.S. response is not stubbornly staying seated atop a powder keg. It’s to disengage ASAP. But any disengagement is such anathema to Haass and the rest of the Blob that he’s actually portrayed President Trump’s various statements criticizing the wisdom of America’s alliances as major contributors to East Asia’s stability.

Ironically, though, despite the Blob’s complaints, Mr. Trump’s biggest mistake along these lines clearly has been to continue his predecessors’ alliance policies, and even to double down in Eastern Europe – a region that could be as dangerous as East Asia.

That is, Haass and the rest of the Blob should be resting a lot easier. What a tragedy that there’s no reason to say that for the rest of us.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Trump’s Acting Like Uncle Sucker on Alliance Burden-Sharing

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alliances, allies, America First, Blob, Bloomberg.com, burden sharing, Europe, globalism, Japan, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, South Korea, Trump

While much of the world is on pins and needles wondering whether President Trump will reach a big trade deal with China and how it will impact the U.S. economy and global commerce, Mr. Trump’s negotiating reputation has also been on the line on another major international front – America’s relations with its top security allies. And the latest reported developments add to the evidence that he’s going to fail miserably.

According to a March 8 Bloomberg.com article, the Trump administration is planning to insist that countries hosting American troops pay the full cost of these deployments, along with an extra 50 percent of that full cost for what’s described as the “privilege” of enjoying American protection.

Predictably, the allies, along with Washington, D.C.’s bipartisan globalist foreign policy establishment are sputtering with outrage – accusing the President of viewing these security relationships as lowly “transactional” relationships focused on enhancing purely American interests rather than as vital pillars of a global liberal, democratic order that since the end of World War II has benefited the United States more indirectly by promoting worldwide peace, prosperity, and democracy. In a journal article last year, I described at length why this quintessentially globalist approach to foreign policy and national security has long been creating many more big problems than it solves for a country as fundamentally secure and prosperous as the United States.

As a result, I strongly sympathize with any efforts to overhaul America’s alliances, however many specific criticisms I may have with the President’s tactics. But the most immediate problem with the Trump strategy is that the President keeps shooting himself in the foot. Specifically, he has repeatedly undercut U.S. leverage by proclaiming that he, too, views these arrangements as crucial for America to maintain.

For example, just two months ago, Mr. Trump insisted that “We’re gonna be with NATO [the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which binds the United States militarily to Europe] 100 percent ….” Last July, he declared “…I believe in NATO. I think NATO is a very important — probably the greatest ever done.” And the previous year, he explicitly endorsed the alliance’s Article V, which legally commits the United States to come to the defense of any member under outside attack.

Regarding the American alliance with South Korea, Mr. Trump told that country’s National Assembly in November, 2017 that U.S. commitment to that country’s defense represented a line “between peace and war, between decency and depravity, between law and tyranny, between hope and total despair. It is a line that has been drawn many times, in many places, throughout history. To hold that line is a choice free nations have always had to make. We have learned together the high cost of weakness and the high stakes of its defense.” 

And that June he vowed at a Washington, D.C. press conference with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, “the United States will defend itself, always will defend itself, always, and we will always defend our allies.”

Meanwhile, shortly after his inauguration, Mr. Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe issued a statement affirming that “The unshakable U.S.-Japan Alliance is the cornerstone of peace, prosperity, and freedom in the Asia-Pacific region. The U.S. commitment to defend Japan through the full range of U.S. military capabilities, both nuclear and conventional, is unwavering.”

It’s true that the President has spoken repeatedly, both as a candidate for the White House and as a chief executive, of his desire to withdraw American troops from these countries at some unspecified point. (This archive contains an indispensable, useful comprehensive collection.) But it’s also true that Mr. Trump has endorsed the defining globalist precept that U.S. “security and prosperity [have] depended” on “pushing back” versus threats to the allies.

During his successful White House run, candidate Trump faulted Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton – a Secretary of State under President Obama – for dooming any prospects for reforming American alliances by continually touting their paramount virtues. One of these critiques (cited in the aforementioned archive) is worth quoting at length:

“Now, Hillary Clinton said: ‘I will never leave Japan. I will never leave Japan. Will never leave any of our–‘ Well now, once you say that, guess what happens? What happens? You can’t negotiate. In a deal, you always have to be prepared to walk. Hillary Clinton has said, ‘We will never, ever walk.’ That’s a wonderful phrase, but unfortunately, if I were on Saudi Arabia’s side, Germany, Japan, South Korea and others, I would say, ‘Oh, they’re never leaving, so what do we have to pay them for?’ You always have to be prepared to walk. It doesn’t mean I want to walk. And I would prefer not to walk. You have to be prepared and our country cannot afford to do what we’re doing.”

In other words, Mr. Trump was making one of his characteristic charges that his opponent – and the establishment foreign policy “Blob” to which she’s belonged — had turned the United States into an “Uncle Sucker” who’d forgotten that Washington’s top priority is looking after the American people, not foreign populations. If he doesn’t get his alliance diplomacy act together soon, this self-described master deal-maker will start deserving the same label.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: America’s Foreign Policy Blob Challenged from Within

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alliances, allies, America First, Asia, Blob, burden sharing, Chas W. Freeman, East Asia, East Asia-Pacific, establishment, globalism, Japan, North Korea, nuclear deterrence, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, South Korea, Trade, Trump

Chas [that’s not a typo] W. Freeman isn’t exactly a household name. He’s even far from the most prominent member of the U.S. foreign policy “Blob” – the bipartisan establishment of current government bureaucrats, former officials, think tank-ers, academics, and journalists whose members for decades have both constantly changed exchanged jobs as their particular political patrons have rotated in and out of elected office, and helped keep the nation’s approach to international affairs on a strongly activist, interventionist (i.e., globalist) course for decades.

That is, they’ve succeeded in this mission until Donald Trump’s election as president, and even he hasn’t managed to throw off their grip completely. (See this 2018 article of mine for an explanation of how globalism and the “America First” approach touted by Mr. Trump differ, and examples of how his foreign policy decisions have reflected both strategies so far.)

But Freeman is a card-carrying member of the Blob – as one look at his bio should make clear. And that’s what makes this recent speech of his so interesting and important.

The address, delivered to a world affairs conference in Florida, has attracted the most attention (especially on Twitter) for its critique of President Trump’s China policy. And that makes perfect sense given the Freeman literally was present at the creation of the Nixon-era outreach to the People’s Republic that ended decades of Cold War hostility and set the framework for bilateral relations from the early 1970s until the Trump Era began.

But in my view, the China portions are eminently forgettable – amounting to a standard (but less oft-stated these days) Blob-y claim that the PRC is being scapegoated for chronic failures of U.S. domestic economic and social policy.

What really stands out is this passage – which clashes violently with the Blob’s defining worship of America’s security alliances and dovetails intriguingly, albeit only partially, with my own views of how America’s economic and security strategy toward China and the rest of East Asia should evolve.

According to Freeman (and he’s worth quoting in full):

“President Trump has raised the very pertinent question: Should states with the formidable capabilities longstanding American “allies” now have still be partial wards of the U.S. taxpayer? In terms of our own security, are they assets or liabilities? Another way of putting this is to ask: Do our Cold War allies and their neighbors now face credible threats that they cannot handle by themselves? Do these threats also menace vital U.S. interests? And do they therefore justify U.S. military presences and security guarantees that put American lives at risk? These are questions that discomfit our military-industrial complex and invite severe ankle-biting by what some have called ‘the Blob’ – the partisans of the warfare state now entrenched in Washington. They are serious questions that deserve serious debate. We Americans are not considering them.

“Instead, we have finessed debate by designating both Russia and China as adversaries that must be countered at every turn. This has many political and economic advantages. It is a cure for enemy deprivation syndrome – that queasy feeling our military-industrial complex gets when our enemies disorient us by irresponsibly defaulting on their contest with us and disappearing, as the Soviet Union did three decades ago. China and Russia are also technologically formidable foes that can justify American R&D and procurement of the expensive, high-tech weapons systems. Sadly, low intensity conflict with scruffy ‘terrorist’ guerrillas can’t quite do this.”

If you ignore what I view as the not-very-informative shots against the “warfare state,” you can see that Freeman comes close to exposing some of the main weaknesses and even internal contradictions of both main factions in the national China policy debate, and (unintentionally, but unmistakably) provides some support for the America First set of priorities I’ve proposed.

Specifically, supporters of pre-Trump China trade policies generally have insisted that China and the rest of East Asia are crucial to America’s economic future because of their huge and fast-growing markets and overall dynamism. But although they staunchly back maintaining the U.S. alliances in the East Asia-Pacific region that has long aimed to secure the political independence of its non-communist countries and thereby keep their economies open to American exports and investment, they keep ignoring three major problems created by this approach.

>First, the trade and broader China economic policies they’ve stood for have greatly enriched and strengthened the country posing the greatest threat to East Asian security. (See, e.g., this column.) 

>Second, because of the growth and increasing sophistication of Chinese and North Korean nuclear forces, America’s alliances in the region have brought the U.S. homeland under unprecedented threat of nuclear attack from both of these rivals.

>Third, despite the alliances, countries like Japan and South Korea have remained highly protectionist economies whose trade predation has damaged America’s overall economy and particularly its manufacturing base. In fact, there’s every reason to believe that U.S. security objectives have enabled this allied trade predation, by preventing Washington from retaliating effectively for fear of antagonizing Tokyo and Seoul.

The Trump policy mix strikes me as being much more internally consistent. In large measure because of fears of growing Chinese military might, it’s trying to use both trade and investment policy to curb Beijing’s use of intellectual property theft and technology extortion in particular to gain regional parity with U.S. forces and thus make America’s alliance commitments much more dangerous and costly to fulfill. The administration also deserves credit for recognizing the purely economic damage Asian trade predation has caused America.

But for all the president’s complaints about defense burden-sharing, he, too, appears determined to keep the alliances intact. Hence his recent insistence that South Korea pay more of the costs of the U.S. troop deployments on its soil despite his repeated claims about the alliance’s necessity. Just as important, although the Trump Asia policies have sought more balanced trade flows with regional allies, these very efforts make clear how unsatisfactory these economic relationships have been. As a result, they sandbag the case that the United States must run major military risks to preserve them.

Freeman’s speech suggests support for a different set of priorities. In one sense, they’re logical: If, as he suggests, its security alliances in East Asia are no longer good deals for the United States, then it’s indeed not such a big deal from a security perspective if America’s economic policies toward China are helping Beijing increase its military power – and boost the odds that it will someday control the region to America’s economic detriment.

Yet Freeman’s apparent priorities fail on the purely economic front, as they seem to propose doing nothing whatever to combat the Chinese policies that have harmed America’s economy.

And that’s why the America First recipe I’ve proposed makes the most sense:

>First, disengaging from an increasingly hostile and economically dangerous China (largely because no trade deal can be adequately verified).

>Second, recognizing that trade with the entire East Asian region has been a loser for the United States and certainly not worth the growing military risks to the American homeland – and thereby concluding that the U.S.’ still-overwhelming economic leverage is likeliest to secure whatever improvements in trade and commercial relations are needed.

>Third, wherever possible, using this economic leverage to shift jobs offshored to Asia but not likely to return to the United States (because they’re too labor-intensive and therefore “low tech”) to Mexico and Central America. The resulting new economic opportunities could go far toward solving the Western Hemisphere’s immigration problems.

Unfortunately, because the Trump administration has its Asia priorities so confused, optimism regarding major changes is tough to justify. But Freeman’s willingness to challenge from within the Blob’s fetishization of U.S. alliances, however flawed, is a ray of hope. And who was it who said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step?