Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Big Decisions Coming on Asia

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Asia, Asia-Pacific, Central America, China, containment, currency manipulation, deterrence, East Asia-Pacific, Japan, Mexico, New Journalism, Norman Mailer, nuclear deterrence, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, semiconductors, South Korea, Taiwan, tripwire, U.S. Army, Vietnam, Walker D. Mills, Western Europe

Whenever I think about what to blog about, I ask myself a question that I first heard one of my all-time writing idols raise many years ago when he faced similar decisions. The occasion came during a college writing seminar where the guest lecturer was none other than Norman Mailer.

The seminar probably took place sometime in 1974, and one of my fellow students asked Mailer why he hadn’t turned out anything about the Watergate scandal. I had been wondering this myself, since Mailer’s world renown by then stemmed both from his novels and from his forays into the “new journalism” that was emerging in that era, in which gifted writers tried to employ some key techniques from fiction (especially their keen insights into human nature and their considerable descriptive and narrative skills) ito shed light on the events of the day. On top of turning out numerous important non-fiction works, Mailer had also run (unsuccessfully) for Mayor of New York City in 1969. So he was by no means shy about sounding off on headline subjects, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one of his fans anxious to hear about the Nixon-centric drama.

But his answer was disarmingly simple. He decided to give Watergate a pass because he couldn’t think of anything distinctive and important to say.

And that’s an (admittedly roundabout) way of explaining why today’s post won’t be about any aspect of President Trump’s contraction of the CCP Virus. At the very least, events are moving so quickly that it’s hard to know the score. Instead, I’m focusing on foreign policy, and in particular two major, under-reported developments in U.S.-Asia relations that are underscoring the return of Cold War-like challenges across the Pacific, but that should be teaching American policymakers very different lessons.

I’ve already dealt to some extent with the first here on RealityChek: The U.S.’ loss of global leadership in the manufacture of cutting-edge semiconductors to companies in South Korea and especially Taiwan. In a journal article scheduled for publication this week, I’ll be laying out the key the technical details and some of the main policy implications. But in brief it amplifies my argument that the location of the world’s most advanced producers of the vital building blocks of modern economies and militaries right at China’s doorstep means that the defense of Taiwan in particular has now become a vital U.S. national security interest that requires the kinds of military forces and strategies (including a threat to use nuclear weapons) employed to protect major treaty allies like Japan and Western Europe both during the Cold War decades and since.

After all, those Cold War commitments – which exposed the United States to the risk of Soviet and to a lesser extent Chinese nuclear attack – were reasonably justified by the belief that Japan and Western Europe were centers of industrial and technogical power and potential that could create decisive advantages for the communist powers if they gained control or access to their assets. The importance of advanced semiconductors today means that Taiwan now belongs in the same category.

As I detail in the upcoming article, Washington has rightly been building closer diplomatic and military ties to Taiwan in response (though I also argue that it’s ultimately far more important for the United States to restore its semiconductor leadership ASAP). But this fall, an article in an official journal of the U.S. Army argued for taking a net step that, however logical, would be nothing less than momentous – and comparably sobering. In the words of Marine Corps Captain Walker D. Mills,

“The United States needs to recognize that its conventional deterrence against [Chinese military] action to reunify Taiwan may not continue to hold without a change in force posture. Deterrence should always be prioritized over open conflict between peer or near-peer states because of the exorbitant cost of a war between them. If the United States wants to maintain credible conventional deterrence against a [Chinese military] attack on Taiwan, it needs to consider basing troops in Taiwan.”

To his credit, Mills goes on to make explicit that such troops would in part be performing the kind of “tripwire” function that similar units in South Korea serve – ensuring that aggression against an ally ensures the start of a wider war involving all of America’s formidable military capabilities. The benefit, as always, would be to prevent such aggression in the first place by threatening consequences the attacker would (presumably) find prohibitive.

Where Mills (like U.S. strategists for decades) should have been much more explicit was in explaining that because the threatened major conflict could easily entail nuclear weapons use, and since China now in particular, has ample capability to strike the U.S. homeland, the deployment of tripwire forces can result in the nuclear destruction of any number of American cities.

So this course of action would greatly increase at least theoretical dangers to all Americans. But what’s the alternative? Letting Beijing acquire knowhow that could eventually prove just as dangerous? As my upcoming article demonstrates, the blame for this agonizing dilemma belongs squarely on generations of U.S. policymakers, who watched blithely as this dimension of the nation’s technological predominance slipped away. And hopefully, as I just stated, this predominance can be recreated – and dangerous new U.S. commitments to Taiwan’s security won’t become permanent.

But that superiority won’t come back for years. Therefore, it seems to me that, as nuclear deterrence provided for Western Europe and Japan succeeded in creating the best of both possible worlds for the United States, this strategy could well work for protecting Taiwan for essentially the same reasons.

I’ll just insist on one proviso: At some point before it becomes a fait accompli, this decision should be run by the American people – as has never been the case.

Unfortunately, as I’ve also pointed out, Taiwan has become so important to the United States that even an America First-inclined U.S. President will have to look the other way at its longstanding trade protectionism and predation in order to maintain close ties – just as it winked at German, Japanese mercantilism in particular during the Cold War. But that kind of linkage needn’t apply to other countries in East Asia (and elsewhere in the world), who lack the kinds of assets Taiwan possesses, and in that vein, I hope the Trump administration (and a Biden presidency, if the former Vice President wins in November) won’t let strategic considerations prevent a thoroughgoing probe of Vietnam’s possible exchange rate manipulation and one other trade offense.

The former concern, of course, stems from the effects of countries’ sometime practice of keeping the value of their currencies artificially low. An under-valued currency just as artificially lowers the prices of a manipulator’s goods and services in markets all over the world vis-a-vis their U.S.-origin counterparts, and therefore makes the latter less competitive for reasons having nothing do with free markets.

The argument against the investigation (which I’ve so far seen only on Twitter, but by folks who are thoughtful and well-informed) is that in an economic conflict with China, the United States needs all the friends it can get. In addition, these critics point out, if tariffs are placed on Vietnamese goods, then companies thinking of leaving China because of the Trump levies on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of Beijing’s exports will face greater difficulties exiting, since Vietnam is such a promising alternative for so many products.

What these arguments overlook, however, is that, as a neighbor of increasingly aggressive China, and a country that’s struggled for centuries to prevent Chinese domination, Vietnam has plenty of powerful reasons of its own to help with any anti-China efforts initiated by the United States So it’s highly likely that Vietnam will keep cooperating with American diplomacy and other policies regardless of what the United States does on the trade front.

Moreover, Vietnam lacks Taiwan-style leverage over and value to the United States because it’s not a world-class producer of anything. So there’s no need for Washington to grin and bear Vietnamese trade abuses that may be harming the U.S. domestic economy.

And finally, although it’s great that Vietnam has been a prime option for companies thinking of moving factories and jobs out of China, it would be even better for Americans if those companies seeking low-cost production sites moved to Mexico or Central America, since greater economic opportunity for those Western Hemisphere countries will be so helpful to the United States on the immigration and drugs fronts.

Mark Twain is reputed (possibly incorrectly) to have said that “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.” That is, it holds important lessons, but discovering them can be challenging, and both American security and prosperity are about to depend heavily on U.S. leaders getting them right.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why America’s Stakes in East Asia’s Security are Looking Vital Again

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allies, America First, China, East Asia, East Asia-Pacific, extended deterrence, free-riding, globalism, Intel, Japan, Joe Biden, manufacturing, Michele Flournoy, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, protectionism, Samsung, semiconductors, South Korea, Taiwan, Trump, TSMC

News flash! This past week I read a newspaper column by George F. Will that didn’t prompt me to say “What an ignoramus!’ In fact, not only did I learn something. I learned something so important that, in conjunction with some other recent developments, is causing me to rethink some long and deeply held ideas I’ve had about America’s grand security strategy in the East Asia-Pacific region.

Specifically, although Will’s own focus in the September 8 piece was who Joe Biden would pick as Secretary of Defense, the piece itself described some ominous changes in the U.S.-China military balance in Asia that call into question my main concerns about America’s approach to region, and especially what I’ve depicted as an increasingly dangerous reliance on nuclear weapons to deter Chinese aggression. Meanwhile, as I’ll detail in a forthcoming freelance article, two U.S. Asian allies – Taiwan and South Korea – whose value to the United States I’ve long insisted doesn’t remotely justify running such risks, are looking for now like critical assets.

To review, since the Cold War began, the United States has resolved to defend its East Asian allies in large part by using the threat of nuclear weapons use to persuade potential attackers to lay off. Presidents from both parties agreed that the conventional military forces needed to fight off China and North Korea (and early on, the Soviet Union) were far too expensive for America to field. Moreover, the Korean War convinced the nation that fighting land wars in Asia was folly.

Before China and North Korea developed nuclear weapons able to reach the U.S. homeland, or approached the verge (the case, it seems, with the latter), this globalist policy of extended deterrence made sense whatever the importance to America of Asian allies. For the United States could threaten to respond to any aggression by literally destroying the aggressors, and they couldn’t respond in kind.

As I noted, however, once China and North Korea became capable of striking the continental United States with nuclear warheads, or seemed close to that capability, this U.S. policy not only made no sense. It was utterly perverse. For nothing about the independence of South Korea and Taiwan, in particular, made them worth the incineration of a major American city – or two, or three. The security of much larger and wealthier Japan didn’t seem to warrant paying this fearsome price, either.

Greatly fueling my opposition to U.S. policy and my support for a switch to an America First-type policy of military disengagement from the region was the refusal of any of these countries to spend adequately on their own defense (which, in combination with U.S. conventional forces, could deter and indeed defeat adversaries without forcing Washington to invoke the nuclear threat), and their long records of carrying out protectionist trade policies that harmed the American economy.

As Will’s column indicated, though, the threat, much less the use, of nuclear weapons is becoming less central to American strategy. Excerpts he quotes from recent (separate) writings by a leading Republican and a leading Democratic defense authority both emphasize dealing with the Chinese threat to Taiwan in particular with conventional weapons. The nukes aren’t even mentioned. Especially interesting: The Democrat (Michele Flournoy) is his recommended choice to head a Biden Pentagon – and she’s amassed enough experience and is well regarded enough among military and national security types to be a front-runner. I also checked out the journal article of hers referenced by Will, and nuclear weapons don’t come up there, either.

Moreover, neither Flournoy nor her Republican counterpart (a former aide the late Senator John McCain) shies away from the obvious implication – accomplishing their aim will require a major U.S. buildup of conventional forces in East Asia (including the development of higher tech weapons). In fact, they enthusiastically support it.

Any direct conflict involving two major powers has the potential to escalate beyond the expectations of the belligerents. But certainly bigger and more capable American forces in East Asia would reduce the chances that war with China will go nuclear. So in theory, anyway, the nuclear dimensions of my concerns could be reduced.

Moreover, my willingness to run greater risks to safeguard Taiwan and South Korea in particular, and pay the needed economic price – even if they keep free-riding on defense spending – is growing, too. That’s because of the theme of that forthcoming article I mentioned: Intel, the only major U.S.-owned company left that both designs and manufactures the most advanced kinds of semiconductors, has run into major problems producing the last two generations of microchips. In fact, the problems have been so great that the company has lost the technological lead to South Korea’s Samsung and in particular to Taiwan’s TSMC, and their most advanced facilities are in South Korea and Taiwan, right on China’s rim.

Given the importance of cutting edge semiconductors to developing cutting edge tech products in general, and ultimately cutting-edge weapons (including advanced non-weapons electronic gear and cyber warfare capabilities), acquiring the knowhow to produce these microchips by whatever means – outright conquest, or various forms of pressure – would make China an even more formidable, and even unbeatable challenge for the U.S. military, at least over time.

So until Intel, whose most advanced factories remain in the United States, figures out how to regain its manufacturing chops, or some other U.S.-owned entrant rides to the rescue, there will be a strong argument on behalf of protecting South Korea and Taiwan against Chinese designs at very high risk and cost. And as noted above, Americans may even have to tolerate some more military free-riding along with, in the case of South Korea, fence-sitting in the overall U.S.-China competition for influence in East Asia.

At the same time, because of the military (including nuclear) risks still involved, seizing back control of the semiconductor manufacturing heights ultimately is the best way out of this bind for Americans. So shame on generations of U.S. leaders for helping this vulnerability develop by swallowing the kool-aid about even advanced manufacturing’s obsolescence and replacement by services. But this grave mistake can’t be wished away, or overcome instantly, either – though efforts to regain this lost tech superiority need to be stepped up dramatically. So shame on current leaders, their advisers, and wannabe advisers – whatever their favored foreign policy strategy – if they fail to acknowledge that dangerous new circumstances may be upon the nation, and the sharp imperatives they logically create. And that includes yours truly.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Trusting Asian Allies to Help Contain China is Risky Business

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alliances, allies, Asia-Pacific, Aspen Institute, Cato Institute, China, East Asia-Pacific, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Jim Risch, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Republicans, South Korea, Taiwan, Ted Galen Carpenter, Trade, Trump

Some leading Republican Senators are slated to introduce legislation today intending to fill what they see as a big and dangerous gap in U.S. globalization and national security policy: the alleged lack of a comprehensive strategy to push China to conform with international norms on trade and related business policies and practices, and to make sure that the People’s Republic doesn’t replace the United States as the kingpin of the East Asia-Pacific region.

I haven’t seen the bill yet, but this Financial Times report gives what looks like a pretty complete summary – which comes from the horse’s mouth (Idaho Republican Senator Jim Risch, the lead sponsor and the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee). Some of the economic proposals seem promising – although their focus seems to be China’s appalling human rights violations (about which the United States sadly can do little) as opposed to China’s economic predation (which Washington has considerable power to fight effectively).

As for the national security stuff – I really wish that Risch and his colleagues had consulted with Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute, one of America’s most trenchant foreign policy critics (and, full disclosure, a valued friend).

For in a new survey just posted by the Aspen Institute, Carpenter has made depressingly clear that one of the conditions most vitally needed nowadays for containing China’s growing military power and political influence in its back yard – reliable allies – simply doesn’t exist and isn’t likely to anytime soon.

Risch and Carpenter certainly agree on the importance of reliable allies, and apparently on their absence – although the former evidently and bizarrely believes that President Trump deserves at least part of the blame for the current unsatisfactory state of America’s regional security relationships. That take on the U.S. approach is bizarre because America (a) keeps running a growing risk of nuclear attack on the American homeland by stationing “tripwire” forces in South Korea largely because that wealthy country continues to skimp on its own defense; and (b) last I checked, America’s immense (and expensive) naval, air, and land deployments in the region were still fully intact.

And don’t just take my word for it: Carpenter lays out in painstaking detail how under President Trump the United States has actually clarified its rhetorical opposition to China’s territorial ambitions, stepped up its military operations in the Asia-Pacific region, and boosted military aid to Taiwan – which of course China views as nothing but a renegade province that it has every right to take back by force.

Regardless of what the United States is or isn’t doing, though, if U.S. alliances are going to be strengthened and oriented more explicitly against China, the allies themselves need to be at least as concerned about Beijing’s aims as Americans. That’s mainly, as Risch and his Senate colleagues note (along with yours truly over the years, as in the above linked 2014 RealityChek post), because China’s military buildup and modernization drive have eroded U.S. military superiority, and because if there’s anything worse than going to war without needed allies, it’s going to war with allies unlikely to help out once the shooting starts. And Carpenter revealed exactly how real that latter danger is by detailing just the latest instance of allied timidity:

“Washington is seeking backing from both its European and East Asian allies for a more hardline policy regarding China. The Trump administration exerted pressure for a strong, united response to Beijing’s imposition of a new national security law on Hong Kong. US officials wanted a joint statement condemning that measure and an agreement from the allies to impose some economic sanctions. However, the European Union collectively, and its leading members individually, flatly refused Washington’s request. With the exception of Australia, the reaction of the East Asian allies was no better. Japan declined to join the United States, Britain, Australia, and Canada in issuing a statement condemning the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China’s] actions in Hong Kong. South Korea seemed even more determined than Japan to avoid taking sides on the Hong Kong issue.”

And as the author rightly emphasizes, “Given the dearth of even diplomatic support from the allies for Washington’s Hong Kong proposal, there is even less chance that those countries will back a military containment policy against the PRC.”

A principal reason is money. Since the 1990s, America’s Asian allies (in particular, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan) have profited hugely from setting up electronics assembly operations in China and selling the final products (made largely of their own parts, components, and materials, and put together with their production equipment) to the United States. Why on earth would they want to break up this highly lucrative marriage of their technology on the one hand, and China’s low labor costs and lavish subsidies on the other?

To be sure, as noted repeatedly on RealityChek, China has been moving up the technology ladder, and replacing Made-Elsewhere-in-Asia inputs with its own manufactures. But it’s a long way from totally supplanting its neighbors’ products.

It’s true that American multinational companies also are guilty of feeding and profiting handsomely from the Chinese beast. And it’s equally true that pre-Trump U.S. Presidents have helped create the problem by coddling allied fence-sitting. But at least the Trump administration’s trade policies are striving to disrupt these U.S. corporate supply chains, and its tariffs are threatening the profitability of foreign-owned multinationals’ export-focused China operations.  Japan has followed suit on decoupling to a limited extent, and India – which has moved closer to the United States lately for fear of China – is increasingly wary of its own, much less profitable, entanglement with the People’s Republic. But even Taiwan keeps eagerly investing in China and thereby increasing both its wealth and its military power.

Neither Carpenter nor I support the goal of beefing up U.S. military China containment efforts in the Asia-Pacific region (though not for the exactly the same reasons). In fact, we both favor major pullbacks. But we both agree that if containment is to be pursued, Washington needs to do a much better job of lining up its local ducks. Otherwise, it could find itself either losing another war in Asia, or winning a victory that’s pyrrhic at best.

P.S. One of Risch’s co-sponsors, Utah Republican Mitt Romney, has just revealed that he’s especially clueless on the potential of rallying the allies. 

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Closer U.S. Taiwan Ties Must Become a Two-Way Street

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alliances, allies, CCP Virus, China, coronavirus, COVID 19, decoupling, East Asia-Pacific, foreign investment, Hong Kong, Huawei, national security, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, South Korea, Taiwan, tech, Trade, Trump, TSMC, Wuhan virus

As if its CCP Virus coverup and planned crackdown on what’s left of Hong Kong’s freedoms weren’t bad enough, China has been escalating its aggressive words and deeds throughout its East Asia/Pacific neighborhood, and one major sign has been new pressure exerted on Taiwan – which Beijing views as a breakaway province that needs to end its rebellion immediately and join the Communist People’s Republic.

This more worrisome Chinese posture understandably has sparked calls for the United States to retaliate by demonstrating stronger support for Taiwan in various ways. This impulse also seems reasonable to me. But if the Trump administration speeds up its march down this road, it handles a closer relationship with Taiwan a lot better than its predecessors for decades had handled security alliance relationships with Japan and South Korea. Specifically, it’s crucial that Taiwan share much more of the burden of resisting China’s ambitions than has long been the case.

The latest alarm bells about China’s Taiwan policies have been set off by China’s words – or, more accurately, a missing word. Although the PRC (People’s Republic of China) has never renounced using force to achieve its longstanding aim “reunifying” China (as it defines the issue), its rhetorical positions toward the island have long fluctuated between the conciliatory and the blustery. But for 40 years, when Beijing mentioned of reunification, the word “peaceful” has always preceded it.

Last Friday, though, China’s second most important leader dropped the “peaceful” – and did it at a major forum: the annual meeting of the country’s rubberstamp parliament.

So it seems clear that the China cloud over Taiwan has darkened. But U.S. steps to bolster Taiwan’s security will greatly underperform – and may actually increase the dangers posed to America by China itself – unless Washington starts demanding in return that Taiwan stop its longstanding practice of investing massively in manufacturing in China, including in high tech sectors.

Indeed, as of 2018, according to this report, the total value of Taiwanese investment in China hit $180 billion – ten times the value of Taiwan’s investment in the United States. The annual amounts have been going down, but mainly because of the Trump administration’s tariffs on China, which have made it much more difficult for any factories in China – Chinese or foreign-owned – to earn fat profits by exporting major shares of their output to the United States. Even so, such investment had reached massive proportions. Indeed, in 2017. China still attracted nearly 45 percent of all Taiwan’s outbound foreign direct investment. Moreover, so much of this investment has come in technology sectors that fears have emerged of the island hollowing out its own innovation sector – which has been so vital to Taiwan’s spectacular economic development. And of course, Taiwanese companies like contract semiconductor manufacturing giant TSMC have been major suppliers of microchips and other high tech products to Chinese tech companies like Huawei, the global leader in advanced telecommunications.

It’s important to recognize that Taiwan is hardly the only U.S. ally that’s promoted China’s economic – and therefore technological and military – development. It’s not even the biggest. (That dubious honor goes to Hong Kong, but most of this Chinese “Special Administrative Region’s” direct investment flows to China seem to be concentrated in lower-tech, labor-intensive sectors without significant national security implications.) Moreover, the United States remains complicit itself.

But even though his administration doesn’t use the word, decoupling from China does appear to be a major goal of President Trump’s. There’s certainly been a lot of it. I’m not big at all on the United States embarking on a full-fledged campaign to mobilize East Asia/Pacific countries to out-compete China for influence in the  region. Indeed, I’ve argued that disentangling the United States from China economically is vital to ensure American security and prosperity on its own merits. But if President Trump does want to go the full-court anti-China press route, what’s the point if supposed American allies aren’t all-in on decoupling asd  as well?

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: 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?

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Did Obama Embolden Beijing in the South China Sea?

Tags

Barack Obama, China, East Asia-Pacific, Jonathan W. Greenert, National Bureau of Asian Research, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, pivot to Asia, PLA Navy, South China Sea, The National Bureau of Asian Research, Trump, U.S. Navy, Wu Shengli

Here’s a shorty but a goody that I read about recently but haven’t been able to post on due to the rush of Kavanaugh-related news. And I can’t write about it tomorrow because both the new monthly U.S. jobs and trade figures come out. So without further ado here’s the gist: China’s aggressive efforts lately to expand its control over the South China Sea – whose waters and key shipping lanes the rest of the world consider to be international – may have been encouraged by the Obama administration’s feeble responses to its initial moves in the area.

Where’s the evidence? An August report written for the well-regarded National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) by no less than a recently retired U.S. Chief of Naval Operations – the Navy’s senior-most officer – Jonathan W. Greenert.

Greenert never explicitly blamed the former President for coddling China in the region – which also boasts abundant energy resources. But he did write that at the start of the latest phase in China’s campaign to interfere with freedom of navigation in the South China Sea – turning a series of reefs and other geological features into small-scale but full-fledged islands that could host military facilities – other regional countries:

“perceived the United States’ slow and politicized response to Chinese activities as having been insufficient to address the challenge. Indeed, there is evidence that Chinese leaders were prepared for a more robust reaction from the United States and might have recalibrated their activities as a consequence. When there was no such response, the island-building campaign continued apace.”

And his evidence was first-hand:

“In my interactions as U.S. chief of naval operations with the PLA Navy commander, Admiral Wu Shengli, Admiral Wu made clear that he thought the United States would have a more forceful reaction when China began its island-building.”

Since Greenert served as CNO from 2011 to 2015, these interactions obviously took place during the Obama years.

As RealityChek readers should know, I favor a change in U.S. strategy in the East Asia-Pacific region that would feature a military pull-back (mainly because of the increasingly dangerous nuclear threats from China and North Korea), and a reliance instead on America’s economic power to defend and advance the United States’ essential interests in the region – which are economic. Here’s a recent, comprehensive statement of this position.

But of course, I’m not in charge of America’s Asia policy! And since President Obama stated his determination to keep U.S. Asia strategy on course – even announcing a “pivot” of American military forces and broader strategic focus to the region from the Middle East that turned out to be far more bark than bite – that strategy’s viability demanded that China’s adventurism meet a much stronger U.S. rebuff. Indeed, the results of the “talk loudly but carry a small stick” Obama strategy are becoming alarmingly clear – increasingly brazen challenges by China to the American position in East Asia that could easily trigger a conflict.

President Trump has (rightly) complained that Mr. Obama’s neglect of the North Korea nuclear threat wound up dumping that mounting crisis into his lap. Before too long, he may be making equally justified complaints about his predecessor’s record in the South China Sea.

Following Up: A Big China-Related National Security Hole May Get Plugged, and Trade Derangement Syndrome Keeps Spreading

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CFIUS, China, Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, consumers, East Asia-Pacific, Following Up, foreign direct investment, LG Electronics, manufacturing, Samsung, South Carolina, tariffs, technology, Tennessee, Trade, washing machines

Yesterday alone produced a news item that provides important grounds for hope that America’s policy toward China might finally be getting coherent, and one that shows that Mainstream Media coverage of international trade issues remains almost determinedly brain-dead. And conveniently, both items concern developments recently reported on by RealityChek.

The first came in The Wall Street Journal, and describes some important new provisions in legislation proceeding through Congress that would update the federal government’s standards for approving or blocking prospective foreign proposals to take over U.S. businesses with defense-related implications. The current process for screening such investment enables Washington to nix (and this is just an obvious hypothetical example) a Russian or Chinese proposal to buy a company that makes jet fighter craft.

Most cases examined by the inter-agency group that makes recommendations to the President for final action (the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS) aren’t such easy calls, which is precisely why lawmakers seem determined to expand the grounds for blocking potentially dangerous takeovers. That’s an idea I’ve long favored.

But at least as important is a provision in the bill that addresses a problem I’ve written on, but that Washington has been slow to recognize – even under the Trump administration. That’s the growing tendency of American technology companies to share their best knowhow with partners in places like China. In some cases, the U.S. firms voluntarily hand over the keys to these kingdoms. In others, they invest capital in Chinese start-ups and other ventures.

It’s true that the United States maintains a system for controlling exports of national security-related technology to problematic countries like China. But the proliferation of these corporate transfers and investments makes clear it’s too sieve-like. And plugging holes is particularly important now because China has so aggressively challenged America’s position as the lead power in the economically vibrant East Asia-Pacific region.

I’ve long opposed the U.S. strategy of maintaining major military forces in this far-off area decades after the Cold War’s end in order to fend off the Chinese and North Koreans. But if American leaders stay determined to ignore my advice (!), it’s nonsensical to keep pushing for bigger and bigger military budgets and stronger forces (in part to buttress its East Asia strategy) while allowing American companies in effect to help China strengthen the military against which Americans may fight. So let’s hope Congress sends a CFIUS reform bill to President Trump’s desk tout de suite.

The second, more dispiriting news item came from Reuters, and dealt with those tariffs Mr. Trump last week imposed on certain imported washing machines from South Korea. As I wrote on January 24, these actions seemed to infect officials in South Carolina with a case of Trade Derangement Syndrome – the utter mindlessness produced by announcements or fears of even small-scale restrictions on trade flows. In this case, South Carolina officials were criticizing the tariff decision even though it undoubtedly led one South Korean manufacturer – Samsung – to announce that it would begin producing washing machines in the Palmetto State, thereby avoiding the tariffs and creating hundreds of jobs for South Carolinians.

Yesterday, Reuters reported similarly looney reactions on the part of the other South Korean company fingered – LG Electronics. LG, too, clearly has been convinced by the prospect of tariffs to manufacture some of its products in the United States – in this case, in Tennessee. But the company clearly is not thrilled with the prospect. It’s grousing that, because of the tariffs, it will need to raise the prices it charges American consumers.

That’s pretty par for the course – though has anyone who’s bought a major appliance lately seen many producers or retailers that are full of confidence that they can charge more? But what was completely doofy was what the company spokesperson quoted by Reuters reporter David Lawder (with a figurative straight face) said next. He fretted that the price increase could cost the company market share, therefore reducing the demand for the new Tennessee factory’s products and for local workers. And then he noted that the costs could be long-lasting: “If you lose floor space at retail, it can take years to get it back.”

I don’t blame the LG spokesperson for trying to drum up American opposition to the tariffs any way possible. But maybe Lawder could have asked him why on earth the company would take actions that it’s admitting would lose it money – for “years”? Or pointed out that these adverse consequences do a great job of explaining why LG is not remotely likely to raise prices? Instead, Lawder simply permitted the LG flack to get away with arrant nonsense – and reinforced my claim that nothing, but nothing, is as badly, and as tendentiously covered by the media as anything having to do with international trade.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why Kissinger Comes Up Short on North Korea

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alliances, China, East Asia-Pacific, foreign policy establishment, Henry Kissinger, Japan, missiles, North Korea, nuclear war, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, realism, South Korea, The Wall Street Journal

Henry Kissinger’s plan – or at least outline of a plan – to resolve the North Korea crisis is out. And even though the 94 (94!)-year old former Secretary of State and presidential national security adviser has not held public office in decades, you should pay attention because you can bet American leaders in the Executive Branch and Congress are. So are foreign governments (many of which, including China, Kissinger has made millions – at least – “consulting”for).

Kissinger’s approach, laid out in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last Friday, is definitely a cut above the usual (often dangerously misleading) drivel that most commentators have been issuing since North Korea recently demonstrated dramatic and unexpected progress toward being able to hit the U.S. homeland with a nuclear-armed missile. But since Kissinger is a creature of the foreign policy establishment that keeps clinging to an obsolete Korea strategy that is now needlessly exposing the United States to nuclear attack, his proposals ultimately fail to promote and defend America’s interests first, or even to acknowledge the deep splits that must no longer be papered over between U.S. needs and South Korean needs.

The strongest argument Kissinger makes, as I see it, is the suggestion that there’s only one way of persuading China to exert enough pressure on North Korea to achieve Pyongyang’s de-nuclearization, or to start its regime down that road. It’s emphasizing to Beijing that an increasingly powerful nuclear North Korea will inevitably lead other countries to follow suit, and place China in the middle of a ring of nuclear-armed neighbors – many of which are hardly friendly. In other words, Kissinger is identifying an especially compelling reason for China to conclude (finally) that its Korea bottom line must include defanging the North – and quickly, not one of these days.

A public statement of this reasoning also matters because it signals Kissinger’s agreement that preventing nuclear proliferation in Asia may need to take a back seat in U.S. Korea policy to the status quo/establishment position that the United States must bear the main costs and risks (including nuclear risks) of handling North Korea. Not that I doubt the dangers of a regional nuclear arms race. But if that’s the price to be paid for minimizing and possibly eliminating a nuclear to the United States itself, it’s a price that’s a clear bargain. So it’s gratifying to read that Kissinger looks to be in agreement. 

But Kissinger never explains why North Korea would relent absent the kinds of truly comprehensive and strictly enforced economic sanctions whose importance he appears to belittle or dismiss altogether. Instead, he appears to believe that a joint Sino-American statement conveying strong bilateral agreement on the peninsula’s future “would bring home to Pyongyang its isolation and provide a basis for the international guarantee essential to safeguard its outcome.” Unfortunately, nothing publicly known about the North Korean regime indicates that it’s prepared to substitute paper guarantees of its survival for the protection provided by a nuclear arsenal.

Similarly, Kissinger signals support for a solution that would leave Korea divided as at present, but that would trade off de-nuclearization in the North for a permanent ban on reintroducing American nuclear weapons to South Korea (which were removed by former President George H.W. Bush in 1991) and an international agreement prohibiting Seoul from developing its own nuclear arms. But in addition to the “paper promises” problem, Kissinger’s proposal appears to forget that nuclear weapons from anywhere have been included in strategies to defend South Korea in the first place stem from the need to offset the belligerent North’s conventional superiority – which it presumably would still enjoy. So a dangerous military imbalance would be left on the peninsula.

But my biggest complaint about Kissinger’s ideas is the apparent refusal to consider my own favored option – a U.S. military pullout from South Korea (and possibly Japan) that would deny the North any plausible reason to attack the American homeland, and that would force the powerful and wealthy countries of Northeast Asia, which have the greatest stakes by far in a viable North Korea strategy, to take on this responsibility themselves.

The risk? An entire East Asia-Pacific region that’s profoundly destabilized, and even plunged into conflict. The benefit? A dramatic reduction in the odds that a North Korean nuclear weapon would decimate an American city. Or two. Or three. This is even a close call?

Moreover, a U.S. pullout seems to be taboo to Kissinger because he, along with most of the rest of the foreign policy establishment, perversely appears to view protecting allies as being just as important as protecting the United States. What else could be mean when he warns that certain American policies “may be perceived as concentrating on protecting its own territory, while leaving the rest of Asia exposed to nuclear blackmail….”?

Not to put to fine a point on it, but when the stakes involve preventing nuclear warheads from killing possibly tens of millions of Americans, why on earth shouldn’t the United States be “perceived as concentrating on protecting its own territory”? In fact, any American leader with different priorities should be immediately removed from office and banned for life.

So I continue to admire the force of Henry Kissinger’s intellect, his mastery of a wide range of international issues (except economics), and his command of history. Yet I also continue to view him as a paragon of a peculiarly American species: a so-called diplomatic realist who is anything but.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: South Korea’s Elections are Likely to Make America’s Asia Strategy Even Loonier

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allies, Asia, deterrence, East Asia-Pacific, free-riding, Kim Jong Un, Moon Jae-in, North Korea, Northeast Asia, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, South Korea, Tim Shorrock

This coming Tuesday will not only see a new presidential election in South Korea. It may also mark the day when a second big wheel flies off of America’s grand strategy in the Asia-Pacific region, and in particular off its approach to addressing the North Korea nuclear weapons threat.

For now on top of the United States’ loss of escalation dominance on the Korean peninsula – which I’ve written about for more than two years and which has needlessly exposed the American homeland to the risk of nuclear attack – the U.S. ally supposedly facing the greatest threat from Kim Jong Un’s heavily armed dictatorship could wind up defecting from the anti-Pyongyang coalition. It would be hard to concoct a scenario that would be less defensible strategically and politically, and more utterly absurd.

Of course, the results of the South Korea election haven’t yet come in. The front-runner, veteran left-of-center politician Moon Jae-in, is by no means anti-American. And as with so many politicians, he may govern very differently from how he’s campaigned. But as made clear by coverage of South Korean politics by my good friend Tim Shorrock – who has written on the country for decades – Moon believes that the United States and North Korea’s neighbors need to start putting much more emphasis on reopening negotiations with the North and much less on threats of military action or more effective economic sanctions. At least as important, many of his compatriots clearly agree.

Moon and his supporters could well be right – if only because they’ve been so close to the situation on the peninsula for so long. (Tim strongly believes this to be the case.) Nevertheless, they could be wrong as well. After all, their very proximity to the North might be denying them valuable perspective. Their views may be influenced too strongly by shared ethnicity. And they may, like classic free-riders, be assuming that the American nuclear umbrella will ultimately bail out the South if they’re wrong.

But although the merits of the Moon case are uncertain, the implications for the United States are anything but. If South Korea’s “doves” are right, a more durable peace could indeed be created in Korea (meaning, specifically, that the Korean War would finally come to an official end more than 60 years after an armistice halted the fighting in 1953). As a result, Northeast Asia, one of the world’s major economic dynamos, would be stabilized. And the prospect of the United States being drawn into a nuclear war with North Korea would be greatly diminished.

But it can’t be forgotten that the (mounting) nuclear risks posed by North Korea to the United States stem entirely from the American commitment to defend South Korea – and more specifically, it stems from the longstanding U.S. decision to try to deter a North Korean invasion of the South by stationing nearly 30,000 troops right at the Demilitarized Zone. They couldn’t possibly halt the North’s conventional forces, but their deaths would almost surely provoke an American nuclear strike on the North. This prospect that has certainly helped keep Pyongyang at bay – which was arguably an acceptable risk to run when Pyongyang lacked any means to hit back at American territory. But soon, pursuing this strategy could result in the North successfully launching a nuclear missile at an American city – or two or three.

Even worse from an American standpoint, a prime reason that the South relies on the U.S. nuclear umbrella for its defense is its failure to field adequate conventional forces itself. Despite living right next door to one of the world’s most heavily armed and unpredictable countries, South Korea only spends 2.7 percent of its entire economy on its armed forces. By comparison, the United States – which has no neighbors that are either powerful or hostile, let alone both – spends 4.3 percent.

All of which means that if the South Korea doves are wrong, the American people could pay a fearful price largely because one of the world’s leading economic powers has chosen to skimp on its military, and because its (new) leaders insisted on a diplomacy-first policy that gave Pyongyang yet more time to strengthen its nuclear forces. That’s a heckuva downside. And let’s not forget the chaos that would result from the United States and South Korea splitting in public and pursuing two dramatically different policies toward the North.

Supporters of the strategic status quo in East Asia are right – America’s longstanding policies have brought impressive benefits. But they’re wrong in insisting that the benefits for the United States have even remotely approached those for the East Asians themselves, including South Korea. And the emergence of a credible North Korean nuclear threat to the American homeland has skewed the relationship of costs and benefits much further against the United States.

I can’t think of a more unacceptable situation from America’s vantage point. Even before these South Korean political trends had become so prominent, it was clear to me that the best strategy for the American people was to recognize the North Korean challenge as the responsibility of North Korea’s (very wealthy and powerful) neighbors, and to withdraw the U.S. forces whose presence is bound increasingly to endanger the security of the United States itself.

The election of a South Korean dove would turn current U.S. strategy positively looney and even more dangerous to Americans – clashing strongly with the stated views of the presumed chief beneficiary’s new leader, and less able than ever to turn up the screws on the North.

I hope instead it causes America’s ossified bipartisan foreign policy establishment to realize finally that Washington can’t be placed in a position ostensibly of caring about South Korea’s security more than the South Koreans, and that if their new leaders disagree with U.S. priorities, that’s their sovereign right. By the same token, this ally can’t expect to have its cake and eat it, too. Bottom line? President Trump should let President-to-be Moon and his backers know that if they want to engage with North Korea, they feel free to give it a whirl – and that in the true spirit of an America First diplomacy, the United States will be wishing them the very best from safely on the sidelines.