Our So-Called Foreign Policy: U.S. Ukraine Policy Dangerously Flunks the Logic Test

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alliances, deterrence, Nancy Pelosi, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine War, vital interests, Vladimir Putin

There must be some kind of psychic connection between my good buddy Ace (so nicknamed because he’s actually flown in U.S. Air Force fighters), and Nancy Pelosi.

Just the other day, he made what I thought was the genuine genius point that the most important question surrounding U.S. policy toward Ukraine is one that’s never, ever, been asked: If Ukraine has indeed become a vital interest of the United States (a category into which, as I’ve repeatedly stated, e.g. here, it was never placed even during the depths of the Cold War), why wasn’t it admitted into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) long ago? Even stranger, why the continuing NATO cold feet of so many U.S. leaders who are so fond of claiming the vital importance of ensuring Ukraine’s success?

And hot on the heels of Ace’s questions, the House Speaker on Friday declined to endorse Ukraine’s request not just for inclusion in the decades-old Atlantic alliance, but for “accelerated accession” that would speed up a process that’s normally pretty complicated in normal times.

Yes, that’s the same Speaker Pelosi who had previously sounded pretty adamant about the need to stand with Ukraine “until the fight is done” because its fight for freedom ”is a fight for everyone.”

But as pointed out in the same news report that quoted Pelosi’s more temperate later remarks, even though these are anything but normal times in Europe, there’s no shortage of reasonable-sounding reasons for continuing caution. Specifically:

“The West fears that Ukraine’s immediate entry into NATO — which requires the unanimous approval of all 30 member-nations — would put the U.S. and Russia at war due to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine as well as its forced annexations announced Friday.”

I wrote “reasonable-sounding, ”however, very deliberately. Because if you give the matter even a little serious thought (as Ace has), it becomes clear that such rationales make no sense at all.

In the first place, even though Ukraine remains outside NATO, the Western aid that’s helped Kyiv’s forces resist Russia so effectively has created a powder keg situation in Ukraine’s neighborhood (by stationing large numbers of U.S. troops right next door) that could all too easily ignite war between the two aforementioned nuclear superpowers anyway.

It’s true that the decision of the United States and Ukraine’s other allies to combine these deployments with hemming and hawing on NATO membership has so far produced a favorable outcome: Moscow’s been frustrated without nuclear weapons being used, much less a world-wide conflagration resulting.

At the same time, this needle-threading act could fail at any minute – which surely explains President Biden’s oft-stated declarations from the get-go that U.S. troops will not be sent into combat in Ukraine. He’s obviously determined minimize that dreadful possibility.

But all this prudence becomes completely inexplicable – at least if you value coherent thought – upon remembering what the word “vital” means in this instance. It’s describing an objective so important (Ukraine’s survival in its current form) that failure to achieve it would (at least at some point down the line) end America’s very existence, either as a physical entity or as an independent country. Even those who aren’t literalists presumably fear that failure to protect a vital interest will leave the United States only the most nightmarish shell of its present self.

To their credit, U.S. leaders who spearheaded the creation of the nation’s major alliances and supported their maintenance have put the country’s money where its mouth is. They have not only promised to use nuclear weapons against nuclear-armed adversaries to protect alliance members whose security is seen as vital. As I’ve often explained (e.g., here), they’ve deployed U.S. forces in “tripwire” configurations aimed at practically forcing Washington to push the fatal buttons and risk America’s nuclear destruction if non-nuclear defenses crumble.

Those policies have aimed above all to deter aggression, and despite the apocalyptic dangers they’ve raised, have been eminently sensible because a thoroughly respectable case ca be made, based on specific, concrete considerations, for the paramount importance of these allies.

For example, it is wholly plausible that the subjugation by hostile powers of places like Germany and Japan and Taiwan could produce intolerable consequences for the United States. In particular, each of those countries possesses technological and industrial prowess and assets that a country like China or Russia could harness to exercise control over the main dimensions of American life.

The point is not whether you or I personally agree or not. Rather, it’s that such fears are anything but crazy.

By contrast, there’s nothing specific and concrete that Ukraine boasts that I can think of – or, more revealingly, that any of its supposed champions have brought up – that Russia could use to achieve anything like the above results.

And this observation leads directly to the second logically loony flaw in America’s Ukraine policy – the one identified by Ace: If in the minds of U.S. leaders Ukraine actually was so all-fired important to begin with, or became so at some point before the Russian invasion (which the President has just declared must be resisted “unwaveringly”), why wasn’t it admitted to NATO right then and there, complete with the nuclear defense guarantee?

Not that any such move would have guaranteed that Russia would have kept hands off. But given that dictator Vladimir Putin hasn’t yet attacked any NATO members in Ukraine’s immediate vicinity or anywhere else, and that Mr. Biden’s vow throughout the entire crisis that the alliance will defend “every inch” of its members’ territory, surely is one reason why, wouldn’t admitting Ukraine before Moscow moved been a no-brainer?

Instead, the United States and the West have danced around this question for more than thirty years – and counting – practically from the moment Ukraine declared its independence from the collapsing Soviet Union in August, 1991. What’s been the problem during this entire period?

I mean, the place is supposed to be vital! In other such instances, that’s why the United States has even contemplated using nuclear weapons at all. And yet so far, Mr. Biden’s clear bottom line, even during the invasion’s early days, when his own administration assumed Zelensky’s government to be doomed, has been that U.S. forces will stay out as long as the combat stays inside Ukraine. In other words, he’s wavered. And almost inevitably, this position has sent Putin the message that Washington and the West ultimately don’t view that country as worth accepting the risk of national suicide.

So thanks to Ace, it must by now be evident that the United States has long believed that it could secure a vital interest with half measures (never a good habit to fall into) or that America should expose itself to an existential threat on behalf of an interest that’s short of vital.

And the folks who believe in either position are supposed to be the post-Trump adults in the room? And will be in charge of Ukraine strategy and the rest of American foreign policy for at least two more years?

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Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Ukraine War is Creating Entirely New Nuclear Strategy Risks

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Biden, biological weapons, chemical weapons, deterrence, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear war, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, red line, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine invasion, Ukraine-Russia war, Vladimir Putin

The increasingly blustery way leading American politicians and chattering class members (mainly conservatives) have been talking about nuclear weapons and the Ukraine war is getting scary enough for me, and should be for you. (See, e.g., here.) Unless it’s OK that a major American city (or ten) may wind up looking like besieged and decimated Mariupol because playing chicken more boldly (but so far mainly verbally) with Moscow pushes above zero the odds of them getting hit by Russian warheads?

But something that worries me even more about these cataclysmic possibilities: For two main sets of reasons, the war could well create possibilities for nuclear weapons use that differ markedly from the scenarios that have dominated American planning for decades – and all the evidence indicates still dominates it today.

The first entails both Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine itself and the Russian dictator’s apparent decision to react to Ukraine’s stunning success to date in fighting back by raining maximum destruction on that country’s population. The second entails expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) membership right up to Russia’s borders after the Cold War ended and the old Soviet Union’s satellites became truly independent states and sought to join.

Simply put, the longstanding and existing scenarios have gone something like this: The Soviet Union (and now Russia) thinks about invading a NATO member (almost always the former West Germany) with its vastly superior conventional forces, but is deterred paradoxically by the very weakness of NATO’s conventional forces. The likelihood of these NATO forces getting overwhelmed and destroyed (along with all the NATO civilian personnel located nearby), would supposedly leave an American President no choice but to try to repel the attackers with nuclear weapons. The prospect that this escalation would turn into an all-out, world-destroying conflagration would be enough to prevent Moscow from attacking in the first place.

Today, however, the situation and possible nuclear scenarios are vastly different. After all, Putin has invaded not a NATO member – that is, a country whose security has been guaranteed by the alliance – but a country that hasn’t been permitted to join NATO. On the one hand, that’s comforting (except for the Ukrainians) because President Biden and other NATO leaders have ruled out the idea of direct military intervention in the conflict – precisely for fear that Russia could respond by attacking NATO units in Ukraine with nukes, or by attacking NATO forces and bases in members bordering Ukraine, or elsewhere in NATO-Europe, or even by striking the United States.

On the other hand, the very fact of heavy fighting in a country right next door to NATO members raises the possibility of the conflict spreading into those countries. This spillover could occur either by accident, or because Putin decides to attack the alliance’s extensive efforts to supply Ukraine. In turn, either such Russian operations could kill or wound NATO personnel who might be accompanying the weapons and other aid shipments as they travel through Ukraine, or Putin could decide to take out the facilities in Poland and other NATO countries from which these supplies are being sent into the war zone.

And don’t forget the spillover possibilities even from Russian attacks on Ukrainian forces inside Ukraine. Because Ukrainian resistance has been so effective (an outcome that so far was not only totally unexpected to the U.S. national security apparatus, but that contrasts strikingly with the longstanding assumption of Russian conventional military superiority that still underlies the alliance’s deterrence strategy), Moscow might need chemical or biological or nuclear weapons to regain the initiative. If these threshholds are crossed, the effects could, as noted here, easily blow beyond Ukraine’s borders and into NATO territory. And if NATO territory is affected, wouldn’t that qualify as an attack on a NATO member, or members, that would activate the alliance’s Article Five obligation that members view such a development as “an attack on all” – the core of the NATO treaty and the ultimate key to whatever deterrence power it’s assumed to have created?

Much more than the violations of international agreements that would result from these Russian moves, that’s why Mr. Biden and other NATO leaders have been warning Putin about “red lines” that he mustn’t cross by using these weapons of mass destruction. Yet the vague terms NATO has used to describe its promised responses so far make clear that alliance leaders haven’t yet decided how they actually would respond, and how to convey that message convincingly to Moscow. And yes, a Russian cyber-attack on a NATO member would trigger the same kinds of questions, uncertainties, and outright dangers.

As I’ve written repeatedly (notably here), the U.S. military doctrine that resulted and still prevails never deserved high marks for prudence, common sense, or even the basic test of a healthy sense of self-preservation. So it’s not like there’s a compelling case that Washington’s strategists today will come up with anything more sensible to handle these radically different challenges. And that’s all the more reason to try to put much more energy into stopping the fighting ASAP by cutting a deal that will surely fail to satisfy either Ukraine or Russia, but that ends, at least for the time being, the kind of reckless nuclear weapons talk that could all too easily lead to catastrophic nuclear weapons use – even if neither the United States nor its allies are actually attacked.     

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: How the Last Seven Days Could Really Shake the World

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alliances, Baltics, Crimea, deterrence, Donbass, energy, European Union, free-riding, Georgia, Germany, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear deterrence, Olaf Scholz, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Poland, Russia, spheres of influence, Ukraine, Ukraine invasion, Ukraine-Russia war, Vladimir Putin

The situation in Ukraine as of this morning remains as fluid and full of uncertainties as it was when yesterday when caution persuaded me to pause and turn my attention to a sobering CCP Virus milestone.

But one feature of the conflict is becoming clear, and if it holds much longer, opens up the distinct possibility that the major assumptions that have animated U.S. policy toward European security merit major rethinking.

That feature: Ukraine is proving to be a much tougher military challenge for Russia than anyone, including me, expected. It’s still not entirely certain why. But even the explanations most favorable to Moscow and Russian military prowess – that Vladimir Putin decided to go gradual for fear of destroying the infrastructure of a country his regime will eventually need to run, or of needlessly enflaming the occupied population to the point of triggering an insurgency with staying power, or some combination of the two – lead (logically, anyway) to these potentially game-changing conclusions: that Russia is too weak to bend countries of any decent size to its will, and that there’s no reason to believe it will acquire the necessary power in the policy relevant future.

In other words, it’s one thing to take control over two tiny enclaves of a very small neighbor like Georgia (2008), or to seize a part of Ukraine with a sizable ethnic Russian population (Crimea in 2014), or to use local proxies to challenge on the cheap Ukrainian sovereignty over an eastern region also full of Russian speakers, or even to march into and annex two provinces of this Donbass region.

But using force to turn the rest of Texas-sized Ukraine with its population of more than 40 million people into a Russian satellite? That’s obviously been a much taller order.

And even if superior Russian troop numbers and weaponry ultimately do achieve their apparent near-term goal of replacing Volodymyr Zelensky’s government with pro-Moscow puppets, and thereby the longer-term goal of keeping Ukraine out of NATO, these results will seriously challenge the views of folks like me (most recently, here), who had credited Russia with enough power to bring into a sphere of influence Ukraine – along with smaller neighbors, like the rest of Georgia plus Moldova (neither of which belongs to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – NATO), and even the three Baltic states that are NATO members.

After all, as mentioned above, keeping control over Ukraine alone may well seriously drain lots of Russian military power, and further strain an economy that’s not exactly a powerhouse to begin with. And if even the old Soviet leaders eventually found keeping Afghanistan not worth the candle, in part because public anger over casualties kept mounting, will Putin really be able to demonstrate greater staying power in Ukraine? Much less simultaneously keep the clamps on other small neighbors? Much less achieve the same objectives vis-a-vis larger Eastern European countries like Poland? Much less even credibly threaten anyone in Western Europe?

But if the more optimistic Ukraine scenario plays out, that would mean that the mainstream, globalist foreign policy leaders and thinkers who view keeping that country free of Russian control, and even bringing it into NATO, as essential for America’s security have been wrong as well – precisely because severe limits on Russian power are becoming increasingly obvious. Unless a Russia that can’t pose a military threat to Western Europe can pose one to the United States?

Russian failure or overly costly success in Ukraine even undercuts arguments that the militarily dominant, or any major, American role in NATO remains crucial. On the one hand, it’s true that, Russia has attacked non-NATO member Ukraine but not NATO allies like Poland and the Baltics. So Putin surely sees a big difference between countries to whose defense the alliance is committed (including with recent deployments of U.S. and other members’ military forces), and those outside the NATO umbrella.

But does that mean that the United States must still remain the kingpin, and contribute an outsized (and very expensive) share of the alliance’s military might? And continue to extend a nuclear shield over Europe – which of course creates a risk of nuclear war with Russia? Maybe not, especially upon considering the West European NATO members’ response to the Ukraine invasion.

Specifically, it’s been much stronger than I and most others expected, too. And the German response has been most revealing of all. After decades of being the alliance’s worst military free-rider, and skimping on its defense budget to the point that a top general just called his forces “more or less bare,” new Chancellor Olaf Scholz has now vowed a big increase in military spending and promised not only that Germany will hit the goal of members’ defense budgets representing two percent of their economies, but exceed it. Moreover, the entire European Union (EU), whose membership overlaps considerably with NATO’s, is now finally recognizing how dangerously moronic they’ve been in boosting their dependence on Russian fossil fuel supplies.

What this seems to demonstrate is that once the Europeans (many of whom have free-ridden militarily themselves) perceive a sharp enough threat to their own safety and independence and well-being, they change profoundly. They begin to act less like cunning and not-so-reliable protectorates determined to gain any benefits they can from Russia in full confidence that America will shield them from any dangers, and more like countries that recognize that their best bets for security and prosperity are their own considerable resources.

By the way, these resources include not only the wealth to field much larger conventional militaries, but French and British nuclear forces. So NATO’s European members should be able not only to deter Russia conventionally, but at the strategic nuclear level as well. And if they deem those nuclear forces inadequate to the task, they can build more

Just as important, this European awakening seems at least partly due to a dawning recognition that for a wide variety of reasons (e.g., America’s preoccupation with its internal problems, its supposedly unreliable recent political leadership, its higher prioritization of Asia, its resentment at being played), historic U.S. enabling can no longer be taken for granted.

All of which means that the American response should be not devoting more of its military strength to deterring or countering Russia in Europe, moving still more conventional forces to Eastern Europe, or unleashing a new round of rhetoric declaring its own vital, ironclad, and undying stakes in the continent’s security, but encouraging these trends – and especially appreciating the opportunity to let itself off the nuclear hook.

This doesn’t mean that the United States should make no contributions to Europe’s defense. But whatever assistance is proposed to the American political system should be clearly described to the public (and to the Europeans) as a policy of choice, not of necessity, and should be flexible enough to enable the nation to opt out of a conflict on the continent if it so decides, not trapped into one, as is potentially the case now. Indeed, as I’ve written, that danger could all too easily still result from the Ukraine war, because non-negligible U.S. forces are now deployed close to the actual fighting.

In 1919, American journalist John Reed came out with a book describing first-hand the Bolshevik Revolution of two years before called Ten Days that Shook the World.  I’m sure not yet certain that this first week of the Ukraine war will turn into seven days that shook the strategic and geopolitical worlds.  (And I certainly hope that the above scenarios turn out to be more accurate than Reed’s sunny expectations of Soviet communism.)  But American leaders focused on their own country’s genuinely vital interests shouldn’t overlook the possibility.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Ukraine Crisis Grows Curiouser and Curiouser

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Annaleena Baerbock, Biden adminisration, China, democracy, deterrence, Eastern Europe, energy, European Union, Germany, human rights, Italy, Mario Draghi, NATO, natural gas, Nordstream 2, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Olaf Scholz, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Phase One, Poland, Russia, sanctions, sovereignty, Taiwan, tariffs, The Wall Street Journal, Trade, trade war, Ukraine

The longer the Ukraine crisis lasts, the weirder it gets. Here are just the latest examples, keeping in mind that new developments keep appearing so quickly that this post might be overtaken by events before I finish!

>What’s with the Chinese? Toward the end of last year, (see, e.g., here) I’ve been worried that President Biden’s Ukraine policy would push Russia and China to work more closely to undermine U.S. interests around the world – a possibility that’s both especially worrisome given evident limits on American power (Google, e.g., “Afghanistan”), and completely unnecessary, since no remotely vital U.S. interests are at stake in Ukraine or anywhere in Eastern Europe.

In the last week, moreover, numerous other analysts have voiced similar concerns, too. (See, e.g., here and here.)

But just yesterday, The Wall Street Journal published this piece reporting on Chinese words and deeds indicating that Beijing opposed any Russian invasion of Ukraine. You’d think that China would welcome the prospect of significant numbers of American military forces tied down trying to deter an attack by Moscow on Ukraine, or on nearby members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), or getting caught up in any fighting that does break out. The result of any of these situations would be an America less able to resist Chinese designs on Taiwan forcibly.

It’s unimaginable that Chinese leaders have forgotten about these benefits of war or a continuing state of high tensions in Ukraine’s neighborhood. But according to the Journal, Beijing has decided for the time being that it’s more important to avoid further antagonizing the United States on the trade and broader economic fronts – specifically by helping Russia cushion the blows of any western sanctions. China is also supposedly uncomfortable with the idea of countries successfully intervening in the internal affairs of other countries – because of its own vulnerability on the human rights front, and because it regards foreign (including U.S.) support for Taiwan as unacceptable interference in its internal affairs, too (since it views Taiwan as a renegade province).

Not that China isn’t already acting to prop up Russia’s economy – specifically agreeing earlier this month to buy huge amounts of Russian oil and gas. But if Beijing has indeed decided to go no further, or not much further, the potential effectiveness of western sanctions on Moscow would be that much greater. It would also signal that the Biden adminisration has much greater leverage than it apparently realizes to use tariffs to punish China for various economic transgressions – e.g., failing to keep its promises under former President Trump’s Phase One trade deal to meet targets for ramping up its imports from the United States.

>Speaking of sanctions, the Biden administration view of these measures keeps getting stranger, too. The President and his aides have repeatedly insisted that the best time for imposing them is after a Russian invasion of Ukraine, because acting beforehand would “lose the deterrent effect.”

But this reasoning makes no sense because it – logically, anyway – assumes that the sanctions that would be slapped on would achieve little or nothing in the way of inflicting economic pain powerful enough either to induce a Russian pullback or convince the Kremlin that further aggression along these lines wouldn’t be worth the costs.

After all, pre-invasion sanctions would be taking their toll while the Russians were fighting in Ukraine, and until they pulled out or made some other meaningful concession. The Biden position, however, seems to be that in fact, during this post-invasion period, they’d be taking scarcely any toll at all – or at least not one significant enough to achieve any of their declared aims. If that’s the case, though, why place any stock in them at all at any time?

>One reason for these evidently low Biden sanctions expectations is surely that, at least for now, the administration isn’t willing to promise that the potentially most effective punishments will be used. Nor are key U.S. allies.

Principally, last Friday, Deputy National Security Adviser Daleep Singh told reporters that banning Russia from the global banking system would “probably not” be part of an initial sanctions package. And Germany keeps hemming and hawing about ending the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline project even if Russia does invade.

The Germans – and the rest of Europe – are now acting like they’re taking seriously the need to reduce their reliance on Russian natural gas (which currently supplies some forty percent of their supplies of this fossil fuel. But Berlin has still not committed to cancelling its plans to buy even more gas from Russia via the recently completed Nordstream channel. (The pipeline isn’t yet in use because the Germans are in fact dragging their feet on final regulatory approval.) Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has declared that Nordstream is “on the table” for her if the Russians move militarily. But nothing even like this non-promise has been made by Prime Minister Olaf Scholz. And last Friday, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said he opposes including energy in anti-Russia sanctions.

>The final puzzle: Although Poland is a linchpin of NATO’s strategy for preventing any Putin aggression beyond Ukraine, the European Union has just moved a major step closer to cutting the country off from the massive economic aid it receives from the grouping, and indeed has already frozen $41 billion in CCP Virus recovery funds it had previously allotted to Warsaw.

The decisions stem from Poland’s alleged backsliding on commitments it made to protect human rights in order to join the EU, but blocking these resources isn’t exactly likely to strengthen Poland’s ability to aid in the effort to contain Russia, and Ukraine itself is hardly a model democracy (see, e.g., here and here) – all of which can’t help but scramble the politics of the crisis in Eastern Europe yet further. And all of which should be added to the already impressive list of paradoxes, ironies, mysteries, and curiosities that everyone should keep in mind whenever they hear about the future of Europe, the global liberal order, world peace, and human freedom itself being at stake in Ukraine.    

Im-Politic: The Best Way Forward in Ukraine

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Afghanistan, Baltic states, Biden, China, Cold War, deterrence, Eastern Europe, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Poland, Russia, Taiwan, tripwire, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

This is by no means what I want to happen – in fact, I find the prospect pretty troubling (as should you), But I can’t help but wonder if the current Ukraine crisis will end peacefully with the United States putting tripwire forces permanently in many of the relatively new Eastern European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), in order to protect them against possible Russian designs, along with throwing Russian leader Vladimir Putin some kind of a rhetorical bone concerning his opposition to Ukraine joining NATO.

As known by RealityChek readers, tripwire forces are relatively small numbers of U.S. troops stationed on the soil of a vulnerable ally whose purpose is to deter attack by an aggressive, heavily armed neighbor. The idea isn’t that these U.S. forces will be enough to defeat the enemy – Washington has never been willing to pay for the manpower and weaponry to accomplish that goal. The idea is that the fear of killing American soldiers will greatly reduce the odds of an attack in the first place. That’s because it would greatly increase the pressure on a U.S. President to respond with the only measure that could prevent their imminent, total defeat (and possibly many more U.S. casualties) – using nuclear weapons.

I don’t like the idea because, especially today, it exposes the American homeland to the risk of nuclear attack (by far the worst national security disaster that could befall it, and likely the most destructive event in the nation’s history) in order to protect countries less than vital to the United States, and which could easily defend themselves if they weren’t such defense skinflints and free-riders. (South Korea has been a prime example, although, as I’ve written, its semiconductor manufacturing prowess has made it more important lately.)

At the same time, the tripwire strategy arguably played some role in keeping the Soviet military on its side of the Iron Curtain for decades during the Cold War, and it’s certainly conceivable that the kinds of deployments that President Biden seems to be thinking about could produce the same results in places like the Baltic states (which used to be Soviet republics) and Poland.

Not that this course of action would be risk-free. Sending lots of troops and heavy weapons like tanks would amount to stuffing lots more soldiers and lethal hardware into a relatively small area, and very close to major Russian military forces. As I’ve written, the odds of an accidental conflict would inevitably rise.

That’s why it would be much better for the United States to come to an agreement with Putin recognizing the need for limits on Western military deployments on Russia’s borders, and on future NATO expansion.

But Mr. Biden doesn’t seem interested in serious negotiations. Maybe that’s because he honestly believes that geography shouldn’t matter in world affairs and that countries should be free to make any security arrangements they like regardless of what powerful neighbors think. Maybe that’s because he’s afraid of further charges of weakness from domestic critics and voters in the wake of his botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. Maybe it’s both. But at this point the reasons for his position matter much less than his position itself..

Boosting the U.S. military footprint in Eastern Europe, especially in a steady, methodical way, would project an image of strength that he so desperately seeks now, and in theory enough to offset the effects of his decision (for now) not to use force to save Ukraine (which in my view will at the very least increase Moscow’s dominance of the country, either through a military occupation, attacks that enable Putin to peel off regions of Ukraine’s east, or a coup or other machinations that install a puppet government in Kyiv).

And although Moscow will huff and puff, the presence of Americans in places like the Baltics in particular are likely to keep the Russians out – and in ways that the presence of, say, Danes and Spaniards won’t.

Some big questions would remain. For example, what if Putin tried to destabilize the Baltics by stirring unrest among their sizable Russian populations? And will Germany, which is actually blocking the efforts of NATO countries to strengthen Ukraine’s armed forces apparently and in part for fear of antagonizing Russia further, be OK with using the American bases on its soil to help maintain U.S. forces stationed on NATO’s easternmost front lines?

I don’t have the answers here. But worrisome as the tripwire strategy is, unless Washington is ready for some significant give-and-take on Eastern Europe’s future, it’s much better than some of the alternatives I can imagine:

>like a Russian takeover of Ukraine without any offsetting steps that really could create big doubts about American reliability in places unmistakably vital to the U.S. future – especially global semiconductor manufacturing leader Taiwan – and tempt more aggression by China (mainly against Taiwan);

>like so many foreign weapons flooding into Ukraine that they could either trigger a Russian preemptive attack on their own, or give Kyiv enough confidence to mount the kind of full-scale resistance that following an invasion that would produce fierce enough fighting to spill over into neighboring countries. Alternatively, such a conflict could push President Biden into more active U.S. military involvement that might become particularly dangerous because of its very haste.

After his summit with Putin in Geneva, Siwtzerland last June, the President said “I think that the last thing he wants now is a Cold War.“ Unfortunately, largely because he’s painted himself into such a tight diplomatic corner, for now, that may be the best of a series of bad outcomes for Americans. And for Europe East and West, it’s certainly better than the other kind of conflict.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Will the U.S. Finally Get Real on Ukraine?

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Baltic states, Biden, China, Cold War, deterrence, Jens Stoltenbeg, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, spheres of influence, Ukraine, vital interests, Vladimir Putin

With President Biden scheduled to speak tomorrow on a Zoom-like call with Russian leader Vladimir Putin over the intensifying crisis in Ukraine, I’m worried that the President, along with his counterpart at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), could stumble into a genuinely scary situation with only two bad ways out. The first is a wholly unnecessary conflict that could all too easily go nuclear. The second (and, thankfully, far likelier) is a humiliating climb-down by the United States and the rest of the NATO. For good measure, chances that Russia and China would be driven much closer together would go way up in either case.

The specific causes of these concerns are Mr. Biden’s warning to Russian leader Vladimir Putin that he won’t “accept anybody’s red lines” and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s declaration that “Russia has no veto. Russia has no say. And Russia has no right to establish a sphere of influence, trying to control their neighbours.”

And they’re worrisome because Russia’s red line – Putin’s insistence that NATO agree not to expand eastward by granting membership to Ukraine and other countries on Russia’s borders, or to deploy “weapons systems that threaten us in close vicinity to the Russian territory” – is supremely credible due both to geography and to Moscow’s big nuclear arsenal, and because these assets are precisely what give the west absolutely no choice but to accept Russia’s domination of its neighbors.

In an ideal world, countries could conduct whatever (peaceful) foreign policies they wanted, including entering into whatever alliances or other international arrangements they pleased, no matter what their neighbors – however powerful – thought. But in this world, Ukraine is located right next door to Russia. As a result, its external relationships will inevitably and understandably concern Moscow – just as the external relationships of Western Hemisphere countries have always concerned the United States and resulted in the Monroe Doctrine.

As I’ve written repeatedly, (see, e.g., here), Ukraine is completely indefensible with conventional weapons and boasts no geopolitical or economic assets of significant interest to America or the rest of Europe. (The country sits on huge natural gas reserves of value to Europe, but as the Nordstream 2 pipeline controversy makes clear, Germany and much of the rest of western Europe are happy to increase its gas dependence on, of all countries, Russia.)

In principle, America’s own nuclear strength could enable it to deter Russian aggression against Ukraine. But due to its combination of acute military vulnerability and economic insignificance, Ukraine was never viewed as a vital interest by the United States even during the Cold War, when changing its then status as a Soviet republic arguably could have created some benefits to the West in a global East-West struggle with an ideological dimension. So Washington never even considered trying to use nuclear threats to influence Moscow’s policies toward the region – or, for similar reasons, anywhere else in the Soviet bloc.

Because Ukraine’s independence and well-being are even less important to the West these days, but the former is just as important to Russia, any Western talk of responding militarily to a Russian invasion or incursion or continuation of the hybrid war against Ukraine (and other countries) Moscow is apparently waging, will ring completely hollow.

Yet it’s anything but difficult to imagine how major power conflict could still break out, especially if NATO decides to beef up its military forces in Ukraine’s vicinity still further, and if any fighting that breaks out in Ukraine spills over its borders. Chances are the West would have little choice to back off (the humiliating climb-down). But what if U.S. or European units were somehow quickly engulfed in combat? Is the possibility that American leaders would use nuclear weapons to save them zero? In my view, it’s practically zero because of Russia’s retaliatory capabilities. But I find the fact that the possibility is anywhere above zero completely terrifying and just as completely unacceptable – the more so because of Ukraine’s irrelevance to American security.

And this is where those “red lines” and “spheres of influence” come in. It’s high time that Mr. Biden and his NATO counterparts recognize that the Russian version of the former can’t responsibly be ignored, and that the latter offers far and away the best guarantee of preserving peace in Europe on terms eminently satisfactory to the greatest number of parties and populations involved.

In a 2014 article following that year’s conflict between Russia and Ukraine (it’s off-line now, but you’ll find a reference to it at this link), I actually urged the United States to go farther – to offer Russia neutralization of the three Baltic countries that also used to be former Soviet republics in return for Moscow’s pledge to respect their sovereignty fully. I know it sounds craven, but these states have much the same kinds of Russian minority populations that have given Putin one of his main pretexts for interfering in Ukraine’s affairs, and they’re just as militarily indefensible without threatening to go nuclear.

The Russian leader hasn’t put the Baltics on the table yet, so for now this step might not be necessary (although his aim of preventing “deployment of weapons systems that threaten us in close vicinity to the Russian territory” could easily turn out to cover the Baltics). But Washington shouldn’t consider it off the table, either, since outside-the-box diplomacy like this might also help defuse an actual threat to U.S. interests – a new Sino-Russia quasi- or even formal alliance that would emerge just as China continues threatening Taiwan, whose semiconductor manufacturing prowess is indeed vital to American security. Indeed, such a gambit could set the stage for turning the tables on Beijing – which clearly poses a much greater danger to America now and for the foreseeable future.

President Biden ran for the White House in part on his reputation for reaching across the aisle while in Congress and as Vice President, and finding compromise solutions to thorny and often emotionally charged problems. Those kinds of instincts, rather than reckless bluffing with a transparently weak hand, would serve him and the country best when dealing with Putin on Ukraine – and beyond.

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.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Grave Doubts Still Justified About Japan’s Reliability Against China

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alliances, allies, Asia-Pacific, Biden, burden sharing, China, deterrence, globalism, Indo-Pacific, Japan, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, semiconductors, South Korea, Taiwan, Yoshihide Suga

The more I read about last week’s summit in Washington, D.C. between President Biden and Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, the more I’m reminded of that expression ”putting lipstick on a pig.” For far from the unalloyed success described by the Biden administration and so many of the press accounts (see, e.g., here and here) the results of the meeting can easily be seen as just the latest sign that, from the U.S. standpoint, the so-called alliance between the two countries still can’t be counted on to pass what must be the acid test of such relationships – and at a time when Tokyo’s support looks more important than ever.

The reason Japan’s contribution counts can be summed up in one word: Taiwan. As known by RealityChek readers and many others, the island has emerged in recent years as the world’s leader in the knowhow needed to produce the world’s most advanced semiconductors. These devices of course are not only the electronic brains of all those wonderful high tech devices we all enjoy using – and need. Microchips also control most of the highest tech weapons in America’s military arsenal, and the ever more capable versions that will be turned out by factories (or “fabs”) on Taiwan and, to a lesser extent, in South Korea, will power the cutting edge weapons that will determine victory and defeat on the increasingly electronic battlefields of the future.

If Taiwan was located, say, in the Caribbean, its semiconductor manufacturing leadership mightn’t be such an urgent problem. But it’s sitting in the South China Sea a scant 100 miles from China, which has not only become a powerful rival to U.S. interests in Asia and all over the world, but keeps sounding increasingly determined to take control of the island – which it regards as an outlaw province.

Once upon a time (when Taiwan wasn’t nearly so important), the United States could be sure of deterring a Chinese invasion or military operations aimed at resting major concessions from Taiwan’s government, or of actually defeating such Chinese actions. Now, though, as RealityChek reported years ago, the U.S. nuclear edge needed for high confidence deterrence is gone, and it’s widely agreed that the non-nuclear military gap has narrowed considerably as well – especially for a conflict in China’s backyard.

Which is where Japan (and other U.S. allies in the Asia-Pacific – now more often called the Indo-Pacific region) come in. It would greatly increase the odds of both U.S. deterrence, and victory if need be, if Washington could count on Tokyo to fight alongside America’s military if a war over Taiwan heaven forbid broke out. This is the acid test I was talking about up top. Any military planning for war needs to know for sure what assets it can absolutely rely on when the shooting starts and what assets are only “maybes.” And the results of the Biden-Suga summit left way too many maybes.

It’s true that Japan has added significantly to its military strength in recent years – though such a wealthy country can afford to spend much more. It’s also true that Japan has agreed to take on more responsibilities for preserving security in that Indo-Pacific region. Moreover, the joint declaration issued by the two governments after the summit specifically mentioned “the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and [encouraging] the peaceful resolution of cross-Strait issues.” Similar recent statements by Japanese officials during Mr. Biden’s term are widely considered breakthroughs in terms of Tokyo’s recognition of the situation’s gravity.

Suga actually added in remarks to reporters following the summit that “We agreed to oppose any attempts to change the status quo by force or coercion in the East and South China Seas [where Taiwan is located], and intimidation of others in the region.” So that sounds like a somewhat more assertive description of Japanese intentions on Taiwan.

But “oppose” could mean all sorts of things – a stern diplomatic note, a few sanctions. Maybe a very stern note. Or lots of sanctions. Neither Suga nor any other Japanese leader has said “If China attacks Taiwan, we’re sending in our troops, too.” In other words, uncertainty over Japan still leaves American war planners with a big problem.

And much more is involved here than my own personal skepticism. As noted here, even if Japan ultimately agrees only to provide logistical and other forms of non-combat support to U.S. forces fighting over Taiwan, itse home islands would run major risks. For due to China’s “ability to launch missiles to virtually anywhere in Japan,” Beijing could target “bases that the U.S. military would rely on for executing operations” and inflict major casualties on Japan.

Further, Tokyo’s distinct reluctance to voice full-throated condemnations of Chinese human rights violations and even atrocities for fear of disrupting lucrative economic ties raises even stronger doubts as to Japan’s willingness to participate in a full-fledged war with its leading trade partner. Indeed, in a post-summit event, Suga repeated another recent mainstay of Japanese diplomatic rhetoric:  “[W]e must work to establish a stable and constructive relationship with China.”

Given these considerations, it should be apparent that words alone simply can’t resolve legitimate doubts about Japan’s real intentions or likely responses to outright Chinse aggression anywhere in the region except for its own territory. 

I’m a foreign policy realist – someone who emphasizes the inevitably central role played by unsentimental, frankly selfish, judgments about concrete interests in all countries’ formulation of their foreign and defense policies. So I’m the last person to complain about Japan’s continuing caution and hedging as such. I can think of many compelling reasons for Japan to become more gung ho – e.g., does Tokyo really want to see China’s thug totalitarian government as the kingpin of its own neighborhood?. But this is a judgement for the Japanese people and their leaders to make.

Japan’s fence-sitting obviously also represents a challenge for American diplomacy, and President Biden has made improving cooperation with allies a centerpiece of his foreign policy. But major skepticism is justified as to whether he and his aides can turn Japan into a military ally worthy of the name, since their globalist emphases on alliances can too easily turn into prizing smooth ties for their own sake, as opposed to firm insistence on greater burden- and cost-sharing that’s bound to ruffle feathers at least in the short term. In fact, signs of such alliance fetishizing have already appeared in administration agreement to ease pressures on both Japan and South Korea for paying the costs of hosting U.S. forces clearly essential to these own countries’ defense.

And in this vein, this foot-dragging by Japan (and most other ostensibly staunch U.S. allies, too) raises a crucial question for Americans. Should they keep allowing their leaders to keep prodding and cajoling these countries in the hope that someday they might demonstrate plausible reliability?  Or should they conclude that the meager results of literally decades of prodding and cajoling mean that the success that’s so desperately needed should be written off as a pipe dream? As shown by rising tensions over Taiwan in particular, the clock is ticking – and quickly.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: An America Last Troop Agreement with South Korea

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alliances, allies, Biden, China, Cold War, deterrence, Donald Trump, Japan, North Korea, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, South Korea, Soviet Union, tripwire

The United States and South Korea have negotiated an agreement on sharing the cost of basing U.S. troops on the peninsula, and the outcome raises the question of why the Biden administration bothered to negotiate in the first place. For the agreement simply endorsed the offer made by the Koreans under the Trump administration. In fact, it clearly signaled to America’s other security allies that under Mr. Biden, the United States will revert to its pre-Trump policies of permitting them to skimp on outlays for their own defense, thereby needlessly exposing the American homeland to the risk of nuclear attack by the adversaries these alliances are supposed to resist.

Let’s begin by remembering why the link between these decades-old alliances and nuclear risk exist in the first place. As I’ve written repeatedly (and most comprehensively here), it resulted from an early-Cold War period American decision to give up on the hugely expensive idea of using U.S. conventional military forces to deter threats posed by the old Soviet Union, China, and North Korea, and rely instead on intimidating these foes by brandishing nuclear swords.

Non-nuclear U.S. forces, however, still played a vital role in this strategy. Their purpose was serving as “tripwires.” It was the prospect of their being destroyed by their superior enemies that was deemed likely to spur U.S. Presidents to use the nukes to save them, and creating the prospect of escalation to full-scale, intercontinental nuclear exchanges that would prevent the initial aggression to begin with.

Of course, if such deterrence failed, and a full-scale nuclear war broke out, the U.S. homeland would probabl become a casualty. But in those days, the gambit wasn’t completely crazy. In the first place, the security of the allies being protected (mainly Western Europe and Japan) was arguably vital to America’s own security. In the second place, for most of the Cold War, the United States possessed either a nuclear monopoly over the potential adversaries, a meaningful edge, or parity. And even the latter was considered adequate to keep the nuclear retaliation threat credible. In the third place, during the early Cold War decades, the allies – all of which were devastated by World War II – simply couldn’t mount serious defenses of their own.

These days, though, the alliances situation has changed dramatically. Most of the allies can still be considered vital assets for the United States. And all of them are now wealthy enough to build militaries capable of self-defense. But they choose not to, preferring instead to rely on those American military tripwires to deter attack and use their national resources elsewhere, thereby ensuring the continuing nuclear threat to the United States.

Significantly, the major ally that always and still has the least significance to America’s safety and well-being has been South Korea. In addition, the ally-adversary wealth gap is clearly widest between South Korea and its economically impoverished, Stalinist northern neighbor. But because of Seoul’s defense free-riding, because North Korea now has built an impressive nuclear arsenal and is nearing the capability of reaching the continental United States with its missiles, and because not even the alliance-skeptical Trump administration elected to remove the tripwire and thus eliminate any reason for North Korea to threaten, much less actually strike, U.S. targets, the alliance-related nuclear danger to America remains and (given North Korea’s unpredictability, could well be greatest) where running this risk is least justifiable.

Not that the Trumpers ignored the situation completely. Before his administration began, the former President did reveal some awareness of alliance-related nuclear security problems – especially in Asia. And although this theme quickly vanished from the list of stated Trump alliance concerns, he did vigorously press all the major allies, including South Korea, to boost their military budgets and pay more of the costs of hosting U.S. forces. In fact, during his term, the former President continued his pre-inauguration threats to remove some of the American forces from South Korea in order to turn up the heat on Seoul. (He actually ordered a troop drawdown from Germany for the same reasons).

The allies – including South Korea – and their enthusiasts in the bipartisan globalist U.S. foreign policy establishment predictably cried “foul,” contending that Trump had turned American alliance policy into a base exercise in “transactionalism” and “shakedowns,” and none more loudly than candidate Joe Biden last year. In an October op-ed for a South Korean new agency he made clear his determination to return to pre-Trump coddling regardless of the nuclear risk to his own country.

“As President,” he promised, “I’ll stand with South Korea, strengthening our alliance to safeguard peace in East Asia and beyond, rather than extorting Seoul with reckless threats to remove our troops.”

And unfortunately for anyone who would put America’s security first, he’s been true to his word. The latest agreement specifying South Korea’s payment level for the 28,500 American troops stationed in harm’s way right up against the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula had run out in 2019. Deadlocking the talks since then had been Trump’s insistience that Seoul roughly quintuple its last agreed-on figure of about $920 million annually to about $5 billion, and consent to renegotiating the amounts each year rather than every five years. (One news account reported that this demand didn’t come from Trump himself, and that the administration eventually decided to call for a 50 percent first-year hike.)

Biden’s solution? Secure a marginal increase from 13 percent to 13.9 percent in the last annual payments offer reportedly made by South Korea. Thereafter, Seoul will boost its yearly contributions at the same rate as it increases its defense budget – which of course by definition remains woefully inadequate, since despite some recent military spending progress clearly spurred by America First-fueled anxieties, it would still require South Korea to depend on American support. (Incidentally, different accounts of the exact terms have been reported here and here.)

The result? The South Koreans are happy that the Biden administration is dealing with them in “ mutually beneficial and rational manner” and not in “a transactional fashion.” A State Department spokesperson was tickled that the deal has kept the “Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to reinvigorating and modernizing our democratic alliances around the word to advance our shared security and prosperity.” The Mainstream Media’s globalism cheerleaders are impressed that Mr Biden is farsightedly willing to “cut allies a break to build unity in competition against China and Russia.”

And Americans are still one temper tantrum by Kim Jong Un away from either sitting by and watching nearly 30,000 of their soldiers overrun in an invasion, or trying to save them from total destruction and South Korea from armed conquest with nuclear attacks that could bring a North Korean warhead down on a major American city…or two…or three.

P.S. All indications are that the Biden administration is going to stage a rerun with Japan – though as indicated above, this ally is at least more important than South Korea.

Following Up: A New Warning on U.S. Allies’ Reliability

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alliances, allies, Asia, Asia-Pacific, Biden, China, deterrence, Following Up, Indo-Pacific, infotech, multilateralism, national security, Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, semiconductors, Sheena Greitens, Taiwan, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, tech, TSMC, Xi JInPing, Zack Cooper

Well isn’t this a kick in the pants for the Biden administration – and by extension for all Americans?. No sooner did the President give a major speech to U.S. allies on his plans to return them to the center of American foreign policy-making because they’ll be such crucial assets in vital efforts to achieve essential goals like coping with China’s rise, than a new study comes out reporting that these hopes could be in vain. 

Specifically, the United States’ allies in Asia could well stay on the sidelines in what’s arguably become the most important potential showdown with China of all: ensuring Taiwan’s independence.

As known by RealityChek regulars, keeping Taiwan free of Beijing’s control has become so pressing for two reasons. First, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping is sounding and acting more determined than ever to “reunify” what he and his predecessors have regarded as a breakaway province by whatever means necessary – including using force. And second, a Taiwanese firm, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC), has recently grabbed the global lead in actually producing (as opposed to designing) the world’s most advanced semiconductors. If China manages to control TSMC’s capabilities, it could use them to build the electronic devices and defense systems that would secure substantial technological and military superiority over the United States.

President Biden is of course correct in arguing that the more allies the United States can mobilize, the easier it will be to handle China’s increased aggression and economic predation. But that claim inevitably assumes that these allies will actually join with America to push back against China, and especially that Washington can count on their assistance if heaven forbid the missiles and bullets start flying.

And this assumption is exactly what’s questioned in a paper recently published by the Washington, D.C.-based Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. According to authors Zack Cooper and Sheena Greitens, there’s not a single country in the Asia-Pacific (or, as it’s now officially called by the U.S. government, the Indo-Pacific) region that’s sure to stand shoulder to shoulder with American forces as they seek to actually repel either a Chinese attack on Taiwan, or an effort by Beijing to turn the island into a satellite through coercive means short of full invasion, like limited military strikes, cyber-attacks, or an embargo.

In fact, write Cooper and Greitens, these allies not only would likely balk at sending their own ships, plans, and troops to buttress American forces. To varying degrees, they’d be reluctant to allow the United States the kind of access to their military bases needed to prevail over China in any of the above contingencies.

The authors believe that sufficient allied cooperation can be generated if the United States begins (ASAP!) “a series of detailed discussions with key allies about their roles in different contingency scenarios involving China and Taiwan (and for some, the South China Sea).” That advice sounds fine as far as it goes.

But the need in the first place for “detailed discussions” on such dangerous and perhaps rapidly growing threats – which would leave all countries in the region far less prosperous and prosperous if not deterred or beaten back – makes appallingly clear just how dysfunctional these alliance relationships have become. Moreover, you can be sure that the longer and more detailed these discussions become, the more allied doubts they’ll reflect, and the less likely they’ll be to produce the kind of certainty when push comes to shove that the United States or Taiwan will need.

I don’t view Cooper and Greitens analysis as gospel. But in my experience, the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center has done serious work on Asian security issues in the past, and the larger project of which this essay is a part has had support from sponsors across the political spectrum. So its warning is worth taking seriously, and if its arguments are on target, the problem they describe will resist easy solution – and not just because truly worthwhile agreements with the allies could take years to negotiate, but because the U.S.-based semiconductor production capacity needed to reduce Taiwan’s importance will take just as long to create.

Luckily, as indicated in the piece linked just above, both Congress and the new administration claim to recognize the need – at least rhetorically – to restore cutting-edge U.S. competitiveness in this and other information technology manufacturing. In the meantime, the Biden administration should of course try maintaining enough of a semblance of allied unity vis-a-vis China to give Beijing pause over Taiwan. Hopefully, Washington  can even inspire some genuine support for preserving the island’s independence.

But as I’ve written previously (in the afore-linked National Interest piece), the greater the emphasis placed on resolving the semiconductor challenge via the homegrown solution of reviving the domestic industry, instead of relying mainly on protecting Taiwan’s security militarily, the better the odds of maintaining American security and prosperity. And in any necessary negotiations with the allies, the sooner President Biden abandons his globalist faith in apologetics and gauzy preaching, and acknowledges the need for at least some of the hard-bargaining Trump-ian “transactionalism” he’s decried, the better.