Following Up: Why the U.S.-South Korea Summit Was Incredibly Weird I

Tags

Alan Beattie, alliances, allies, Biden, China, deterrence, extended deterrence, Financial Times, Following Up, Indo-Pacific, North Korea, nuclear weapons, realism, reciprocity, sanctions, semiconductors, South Korea, technology, Yoon Suk Yeol

Consistent with cutting-edge astro-physicis – and the last few decades of Marvel comics story-telling – I’m sure that among all the infinite number of universes in a “multi-verse” comprising creation, there’s one in which South Korea somehow genuinely has no reason to believe it has any obligation to comply with U.S. wishes in exchange for protection against complete destruction or enslavement by fanatically totalitarian North Korea.

I’m also sure that that universe isn’t the one we inhabit. Which is why it’s so whacko that Financial Times columnist Alan Beattie begs to differ, and that his editors evidently had absolutely no problem with this argument. And that’s only the lesser of two jaw-dropping new developments related to last week’s summit between President Biden and his South Korean counterpart Yoon Suk Yeol, which I analyzed in this post. Nonetheless, that’s the focus of today’s post. Tomorrow’s will deal with the second.

To be clear, I’m not contending that the South Koreans should be grateful to Washington for anything.

As a self-styled foreign policy realist, I’ve long held that countries can be counted on to act first and foremost in their own self-interest, and indeed should – in fact, unapologetically. I’ve taken many of my cues here from the Founding Fathers, who also considered the world to be far too dangerous to ground strategy in considerations of sentiment. So that puts me in pretty good company IMO. 

Moreover, South Korea is emphatically no exception, first because it lives in an exceptionally dangerous neighborhood; and second, because as I explained last week, its semiconductor manufacturing prowess gives it some clout vis-a-vis the United States.

Nor am I arguing that the U.S. commitment to defend the South has ever stemmed from anything other than a regard for its own security or independence or prosperity – even though I’ve disagreed until very recently (because of semiconductor manufacturing-related national security issues) with this characteristically globalist definition of national interest.

Instead, I’m arguing that, given the decision by Washington to protect the South even though its strategy of extended deterrence has recently exposed the United States to the risk of nuclear attack on the American homeland, it’s entirely reasonable for America to seek some South Korean help in meeting a different challenge. In this case, it’s helping Washington limit the technological progress that could enable China to attain military parity – and at some point even superiority – over the United States, and thereby undercut declared vital U.S. national interests throughout the Indo-Pacific region and even beyond.

But Alan Beattie? He writes that it’s “galling when Washington expects you to take economic hits for geopolitical gains when it’s not always willing to do the same itself.”

One fatal flaw in Beattie’s argument is the claim that the United States is asking South Korea to sacrifice some earnings (resulting from the major revenues it earns by supplying semiconductors and other high-value inputs to China’s huge electronics industry) without offering to pay any price for containing China itself.

What he ignores is how the Biden administration tough’s curbs on the investment and operations of America’s own semiconductor and chip-making equipment companies are costing them economically, too. Instead, he focuses on the electric vehicle manufacturing provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, which require South Korean auto companies to produce key components in the United States in order to qualify for subsidies.

Yet these provisions apply not only to all foreign auto-makers, but to America’s as well.  And even if they were being applied in a blatantly discriminatory manner, however, it’s not as if South Korea wouldn’t still be getting a heckuva deal from its alliance with the United States. Beattie blandly describes the benefits to the South as “maintaining relations with the US….” Of course, as I stated above, it’s really about its national freedom and very survival.

Again, as a realist, I respect South Korea’s right to define its own interests however it wishes, and to act accordingly. But should I – or anyone – agree with Beattie that Washington’s desire for some South Korean reciprocity is “galling,” or excessively steep? It sounds like Beattie’s actual position is that any U.S. effort to leverage its commitment to defend South Korea is unreasonable – especially if it might interfere with the decades of hyper-globalization that the author tends to lionize uncritically, even though they’ve unmistakably fueled the dangerous rise of Chinese power. Can that be a serious basis for conducting diplomacy?

But from Beattie’s scathing tone, it’s also apparent that he’s condemning this kind of transactional approach to foreign policy for deeply personal reasons as well – likely the transparently childish view that the United States, or maybe just the Anglo-phone countries, should be above this sort of crassness, and that even if international relations aren’t comparable to a sporting event, where the real world stakes are modest, they should act as if they are – whatever the risks.

Thankfully, the Biden administration is steadily (though not fast enough for my tastes) thinking in more adult terms and recognizing – like the Trump administration before it – that one-way-street alliances no longer make sense from America’s standpoint (if they ever did). In this instance, moreover, South Korea could easily conclude that containing the tech prowess of a gigantic totalitarian and increasingly aggressive neighbor serves its own interests quite handily, too.

Tomorrow’s post will describe that aforementioned even more befuddling – and possibly more worrisome – consequence of the Biden-Yoon summit.

P.S. Full disclosure:  Beattie has blocked me on Twitter because he believed that my stances on immigration policy partly reflected anti-Muslim prejudices. So clearly he’s not my favorite journalist.  

Advertisement

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Beyond Blaming the Victim

Tags

CCP Virus, China, coronavirus, COVID 19, Edward G. Luce, Financial Times, George W. Bush, global terrorism, Iraq war, lab leak, Mario del Poro, Melvyn Leffler, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, September 11, The Washington Post, weapons of mass destruction, Wuhan lab, Wuhan virus

When a line of argument appears twice in Mainstream Media publications on consecutive days, it’s hard not to conclude that a trend might be forming – or has been well underway. And when it comes to the particular line of argument I’m posting about, that’s disturbing news, since it’s an especially repugnant form of blaming the victim that could become dangerously influential. For these views can all too easily become rationales for official paralysis in the face of major threats, or excessively feeble responses, because the media organizations spreading these views are still taken so seriously by so many U.S. policymakers.

The first example of such blaming the victim comes from Edward G. Luce, a columnist for the Financial Times. Now before you go objecting that both this pundit and his newspaper are British, keep in mind that the author is based in Washington, D.C. and that the Times has long published a U.S. edition that’s must reading in high level American policy circles that are by no means confined to business and economics.

In his March 1 offering on how some revised American intelligence assessments of the CCP Virus lab leak theory might impact U.S.-China relations, Luce worries that “America’s growing tendency to demonise China — and the fact that China keeps supplying it with material — poses a threat to global health” and could poison the entire spectrum of bilateral ties because “The world’s superpower and its rising great power are both now working from home and nourishing paranoia about each other.”

It’s the first half of this analysis that especially caught my eye. According to Luce, practically the entire U.S. political system is increasingly “demonising” China – phrasing that, along with the follow-on reference to “paranoia,” can only mean that U.S. positions on the entire range of Sino-American relations have become unjustifiably harsh.

But at the same time, he notes that “China keeps supplying [Americans] with material.” That sounds like a confession that China’s record actually does warrant more confrontational stances in Washington. Luce’s contention of mutual paranoia stoking, however, indicates that this isn’t what he believes at all.

Practically identical is Luce’s observation that “Beijing’s reluctance to play global citizen on pandemic warning systems — on top of climate change and other common threats — means we are hearing far less from Washington about co-operating with China and far more about confronting it.”

Yet how is Luce advising the United States to deal with a country that he himself believes isn’t buying the argument about the need for cooperation on issues of common concern? Simply, it seems, by talking as much as ever or even more about “co-operating with China” – which appears to reflect the hope that some particularly inspiring official U.S. verbiage can bring Beijing around and of course a clear triumph over experience.

The second example of such victim blaming came in a book review published the following day in the Washington Post. Writing about American historian Melvyn Leffler’s new study of the 2003 U.S. Iraq War, French political scientist Mario del Pero describes Leffler as arguing that President George W. Bush and his top advisors

“were imbued with a ‘sense of exceptional goodness and greatness’ and believed in the superiority of ‘America’s system of democratic capitalism.’ This hubris encouraged a strategy that favored deploying America’s overwhelming power to protect the country and its way of life. The terrorist attacks fed this arrogance and blinded the administration to the moral and strategic issues it confronted.”

Leave aside the suggestion that belief in the superiority of “America’s system of democratic capitalism” is ipso facto a sign of “hubris” and “arrogance” (which strikes me as weird) and the contention that the Bush administration underestimated “the moral and strategic issues it confronted” (more persuasive IMO, especially the strategic part).

Concentrate instead on the final sentence about the September 11 attacks “feeding” the administration’s “arrogance.” This sounds just like Luce’s portrayal of over-the-top U.S. responses to Chinese provocations that he concedes in the next breath have been awfully provocative. Unless American leaders post-September 11 should have viewed that day’s strikes as a one-off?

Yet del Pero makes clear that Leffler makes no such argument. The author (in del Pero’s words) maintains that

>U.S. leaders “believed that America’s way of life was under threat”;

>”The shared assumption — within the administration as well as among allies and arms-control experts — was that Iraq still had secret weapons-of-mass-destruction (WMD) programs. The new global landscape made the possibility of a WMD-armed Iraq all the more ominous”; and

>“No threat [Leffler’s words] worried Bush and his advisers more than the prospect of terrorists getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction.”

Finally, (back to the reviewer’s words) “Intelligence was inconclusive and some of it, it was later realized, simply fabricated. But no risks could be taken.”

In other words, even though this second Iraq War turned out terribly, the idea that the dangers of global terrorism “fed” a Bush administration “arrogance” and “hubris” that presumably was already bloated is far too dismissive. Instead, the grievous damage already done by such terrorism, the genuinely frightful and plausible prospect of more to come – and possibly sooner rather than later – and the frustrating uncertainties policymakers always face in crises, mean that the 2003 invasion is best seen as an understandable and entirely rational response.

In fact, reviewer del Pero winds up substantially agreeing, calling Bush’s approach “coherent in theory.” Also worth keeping in mind. At least rhetorically, Bush didn’t start out as a chest-thumping foreign policy President.

In his October 11, 2000 debate with Democratic rival Al Gore during his first campaign for President, Bush stated:

“If we’re an arrogant nation [other countries will] resent us. If we’re a humble nation, but strong, they’ll welcome us. And our nation stands — stands alone right now in the world in terms of power. And that’s why we’ve got to be humble and yet project strength in a way that promotes freedom.”

Obviously, September 11 produced a change. But how could it not have, to at least some extent?

A famous bit of French snark memorably “complains” “This animal is dangerous. When attacked, it defends itself.” That’s a good way to think about both these charges that there’s something as fundamentally diseased about the overall American body politic’s reactions to the burgeoning threats posed by China as there was about the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq.

Of course, although some policies will always be rooted in real paranoia, and although their more reasoned counterparts can always go awry for any number of reasons, the failure of Luce, del Pero, and apparently Leffler (along with their Financial Times and Washington Post editors) to recognize a healthy sense of national self-preservation that’s vital in a dangerous world when they see it, is pretty diseased itself. Here’s hoping it doesn’t become epidemic.

Im-Politic: The Regime Media’s Illegal Aliens Cover-Up Continues

Tags

Biden border crisis, child labor, Financial Times, illegal aliens, Im-Politic, Immigration, labor productivity, Mainstream Media, meatpacking, productivity, Regime Media, UniParty, Washington Post, workers

The evidence keeps mounting that the Uniparty’s Regime Media will stop at almost nothing to cover up the costs of illegal immigration to the U.S. economy and American society. Just yesterday, as I tweeted, the Financial Times published a report claiming that a labor shortage fueled in large measure by flows of legal and illegal immigrants allegedly so inadequate that resulting worker shortages are imperiling President Biden’s infrastructure and manufacturing revival plans.

Only one problem: The reporter and her editors completely failed to mention that the wages offered by U.S. construction firms have gone exactly nowhere at best lately – which is hard to square with the idea that they’re desperate to hire.

And this morning, I noticed a Washington Post report on the shameful reappearance of illegal child labor in the United States – including child employees exposed to dangerous working conditions – that buried unmistakable signs that continuing inflows of illegal aliens obviously enabled by President Biden’s lax border enforcement policies bear at least much of the blame.

In the fifth paragraph, the article states that

“Child labor violations have been on the rise in the United States since 2015. The number of minors found to be employed in violation of child labor laws shot up by 37 percent between 2021 and 2022. The number of children found to be illegally employed in hazardous occupations, such as meatpacking and construction, spiked by 93 percent over the past seven years.”

That’s certainly important to know. And in the following graph, readers learn that “Experts say a historically tight labor market could be fueling this rise in violations, with employers tapping into new labor pools to fill vacancies across a variety of industries.”

But it’s not until paragraph seventeen that the piece even obliquely mentions the illegal aliens angle:

“Many of the children [working at the meatpacking facilities focused on in the article] spoke only Spanish, and at least some Labor Department interviews with minors were conducted in Spanish, investigators [who were probing labor law violations for the federal government] said.”

Yet the article still never disclosed why these unilingual children are in the country to begin with – no doubt because their presence is surely unlawful, and a testament to the humanitarian impact of the Open Borders-friendly immigration policies pushed so avidly and for so long by major U.S. news organizations.

Also conspicuously overlooked in this Post report – the harmful economic impact of the long-time absence of sensible immigration policies. In this case, strong productivity growth is the casualty, which matters decisively because ever greater efficiency is a key – and probably the most important key – to America’s ability to generate high and rising living standards. And the evidence could not be clearer that the ready availability of illegal alien labor has enabled the nation’s meat-processing industry to remain profitable without automating or shaking up management or reconfiguring its production lines or taking any other major steps to modernize.

I last looked at that sector’s lagging performance in labor productivity (where the data is most up to date) in May, 2020, and here’s where the situation stands now: In the non-durable manufacturing sector, where meat processing is found, from the first quarter of 1987 through the fourth quarter of last year improved by 71.62 percent. But between 1987 and 2021, it rose in “animal slaughtering and processing” by just 13.98 percent.

And for those doubting the illegal immigrant connection, this 2021 Fact Sheet, issued by an organization bent on highlighting “the many different ways that undocumented immigrants contribute to the food supply chain in the United States,” puts the number of illegal alien workers in slaughtering and processing companies at 82,700 in 2019. If that’s accurate, then according to the official employment data for that sector, that came to nearly one in every five employees at year!

The bottom line:  The resumed illegal immigration tide fostered by the Biden administration has helpd bring about resumed economic woes and exploitation. If I was shilling for the Cheap Labor Lobby, or ideologically wed to Open Borders, I guess I’d want to cover that up, too.   

Making News: Back on National Radio Tonight to Talk Bringing Back Manufacturing…& More!

Tags

CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor, China, Financial Times, Gordon G. Chang, inflation, John Batchelor, Making News, manufacturing, reshoring, supply chains, tariffs, Trade, trade deficit

I’m pleased to announce that tonight I’m scheduled to be back on the nationally syndicated “CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor.” The segment is slated to begin at 11:15 PM EST, but every night’s entire program is well worth your while, and starts each week night at 9 PM.

Tonight, John, co-host Gordon G. Chang, and I will focus on recent remarks by a Wall Street big-wig claiming that manufacturing supply chains can’t be brought back to the United States from China for many years – suggesting of course that the attempt shouldn’t even be made.

You can listen live on-line here and, as usual, if you can’t tune in, the podcast will be posted as soon as it’s on-line.

In addition, RealityChek‘s work on the real deal with trade, tariffs, and inflation was cited in this Financial Times column on Sunday.

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

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Encouraging Brexit Lessons for the United States

Tags

Brexit, China, decoupling, European Union, Eurozone, Financial Times, France, Germany, IMF, International Monetary Fund, United Kingdom, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Some awfully interesting evidence supporting my view (see, e.g., here) that the United States is uniquely positioned in the world to prosper quite nicely from seeking to maximize its already high degree of economic self-sufficiency has just emerged — and from some awfully unlikely sources.

It’s indirect evidence, to be sure, and concerns the United Kingdom’s (UK) economic perfomance since the Brexit referendum of 2016 that mandated its pull-out from the European Union. But it’s relevant to the United States’ situation because the U.S. economy is far more actually and potentially self-sufficient.

The evidence – from the ardently globalist International Monetary Fund (IMF) and from the just-as-ardently anti-Brexit Financial Times – makes clear that since the UK finally left the EU at the end of January, 2020, it’s gross domestic product (GDP – the standard measure of a national economy’s size), has not only risen about as fast as those of the major members of the EU, but that it’s closed the gap that existed pre-withdrawal. And all the while, the UK has reaped a crucial benefit – much more control over its future.

The IMF evidence came in today’s release of its World Economic Outlook – a twice yearly Fund publication that surveys the state of the globe and includes growth forecasts for major countries, geographic regions, and formal groupings of countries like the eurozone (which overlaps pretty thoroughly with the EU).

According to the Fund, last year, the UK economy expanded by 7.4 percent in inflation-adjusted terms (the most closely monitored gauge of growth). The figure for the countries using the euro as their currency? A mere 5.4 percent. And it’s not like the lagging eurozone performance was dragged down by its long-time economic laggards. Germany’s real 2021 growth was a measly 2.8 percent, and France’s much better seven percent still trailed the UK’s.

In other words, a single country that’s cut itself off from all the alleged benefits of economic integration with a much larger market had out-grown the collective members of that market that presumably were enjoying all the economic advantages of such integration.

Moreover, the IMF’s latest projection for this year crowns the UK as a growth winner, too. Its 2022 price-adjusted GDP is forecast to improve by 3.7 percent, versus 2.8 percent for the euro area. The French after-inflation growth rate is expected to top the UK’s slightly (2.9 percent), but Germany’s will be stuck at a lowly 2.1 percent.

The only solace Brexit-haters can take from the IMF analysis is that the UK supposedly will fall way behind growth-wise next year. Its real GDP performance is pegged at a mere 1.2 percent – slower than that of the euro area (2.3 percent), France (a not-so-impressive 1.4 percent), and Germany (a respectable 2.7 percent, but a performance coming off an unusually low baseline). Yet needless to say, it’s much more reasonable to put more stock in near-term predictions and longer-term predictions.

In addition, even with this possible slowdown, the Financial Times graph below (taken from this article) shows that, despite its glass-half-empty title, if the IMF is right about 2022, the UK will have turned itself from a growth laggard in 2019 compared with France and Germany to a growth equal. And although the 2023 projections are tough to see in this graphic, they show near parity among the three.

Two qualifications to these findings need to be made. First, as I’ve repeatedly noted, all economic data for the last few years has been dramatically affected and surely distorted by the CCP Virus pandemic. Second, although the UK left the EU, it still does business with the bloc and its economic ties with the rest of the world stayed the same organizationally.

At the same time, for years after the referendum vote, businesses in the UK had been dealing with major uncertainties and the inevitable short-term costs of the negotiations over Brexit’s precise withdrawal procedures and terms. And the growth figures make obvious that, on the whole, they and the entire economy have managed to navigate them successfully.

And if the UK has so far emerged successfully from its Brexit-style decoupling from the EU, it’s hard to imagine that the much more economically diverse United States can’t emerge from a much more determined decoupling from China – which will promote vital and intertwined economic and national security interests – at least as well.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Progress!

Tags

American Affairs, antitrust, Barack Obama, competition, Financial Times, free trade, Jobs, John Maynard Keynes, Martin Wolf, production, Project Syndicate, Robert Skidelsky, stimulus, stimulus package, tariffs, The New York Times, Trade, trade deficit, {What's Left of) Our Economy

I hope you’ll all forgive me for an exercise in self back-patting that (I hope) you’ll read through the end. But the two instances described here of leading economics commentators expressing support for highly unconventional trade policy positions I’ve taken for years are simply too striking to pass up. Even more eye-opening: They appeared within a week of each other!

In chronological order, the first came courtesy of Martin Wolf, the Financial Times columnist who’s more-than-the-average pundit because he boasts both considerable policymaking experience and serious academic chops. As those two bios make clear, he’s also been a strong (though not completely uncritical) supporter of the standard free trade and globalization policies that decisively shaped the entire world economy, including America’s positions, for decades until the CCP Virus’ breakout. (Or did the turning point come with the financial crisis of 2007-08? Oh, well – no need to settle that question right now.)

That’s why I was so amazed to see in his column this past Tuesday the observation that the United States “gains many of the benefits of trade through internal specialisation” essentially because it’s “a large country with a sophisticated economy and diverse resources….”

Wolf’s point may not sound like much. But it not only contradicts the long-standing conventional wisdom – and rationale for supporting the freest possible global trade flows – that emphasizes (1) the centrality of international specialization for maximizing the prosperity of all individual countries and indeed the entire world, and (2) the imperative of exposing national economic activity to global competition in order to force domestic industries continually to improve quality and lower costs.

Wolf has also echoed (unwittingly, no doubt) my own argument that, whatever the validity of these ideas for most countries, there’s no reason for Americans to place any special value on them.

The reason? As I explained in an article in the Summer, 2019 issue of the journal American Affairs, the greatest possible degree of international specialization is advantageous and even crucial for the prosperity of most individual countries because they lack the ability to provide for a critical mass of their essential needs at affordable cost, let alone generate progress.

Any number of reasons or combination of reasons could be responsible. They might lack vital raw materials. Even if they’re wealthy and/or technologically advanced, their domestic market alone might be too small for most forms of economic activity aside from subsistence farming to achieve the scale needed for efficient and therefore relatively low-cost production. Alternatively, this domestic market could be inadequate because most of their people are too poor to be satisfactory customers.

In addition, because they’re so small, inadequate domestic markets have been considered incapable of generating enough competitive pressure needed to force their own producers to keep improving quality, innovating, and to maintain reasonable prices.

Conventional trade thinking has held that these problems could be overcome by individual countries (1) focusing on turning out the goods and services they could provide most efficiently (interestingly, whether in world-leading fashion or not), and (2) selling them where they were in greatest demand (because of other countries’ shortcomings) in exchange for what they themselves required.

Even better, such free trade would continually maximize the efficiency, and therefore the wealth, of all countries, as well as create the conditions for sustainable progress by requiring efforts to enter new, more promising industries to meet global competitive standards.

My own article, however, emphasized that the United States isn’t like most other countries. In fact, it’s uniquely blessed with both the size, the variety of resources, and the economic and social dynamism to supply nearly all its needs and wants from within. In the words of that 1980s inspirational song, in economic term, the United States “is the world.’

As a result, Americans have no inherent need to keep their home markets open, or open them wider, in order to secure adequate supplies of goods and services. And if they’re unhappy with the levels of competition their companies face, because of the country’s gargantuan scale, their best bet for maximizing such competition is resuming the vigorous enforcement of antitrust laws – which, as I documented, had long been largely neglected.

Wolf didn’t accept the policy implications I drew concerning these insights about America’s economic distinctiveness. But since he evidently accepts the basic proposition, it’s legitimate to ask why not.

The second example of a leading economic authority making one of my central points came yesterday on the Project Syndicate website. That in itself is pretty remarkable because, as I’ve previously suggested, Project Syndicate is best described as a digital op-ed page for globalist elites. Just as remarkable, and gratifying, the author of the post in question is Robert Skidelsky, a veteran British politician and venerable academic who’s best known for a highly acclaimed three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes, the most influential economist of the 20^th century and a scholar whose work still shapes much global economic thought and policy.

According to Skidelsky, one of two major gaps in President Biden’s economic proposals – and especially his stated desire to rebuild manufacturing in America – is its failure to impose tight curbs on imports. Without a plan that Skidelsky (and its originator) calls “compensated free trade,” the author writes that domestic industry won’t be “built back better.”

That’s already nearly identical to arguments I make all the time. But what I found most intriguing was Skidelsky’s principal rationale: America’s still towering trade deficits are bound to permit too many of the job- and production-creating benefits of Mr. Biden’s stimulus spending to drain overseas.

That’s virtually identical to the case that I and a colleague made early during the recovery from the previous U.S. recession. Unfortunately, then President Barack Obama apparently didn’t see our New York Times article, because he ignored the continuing growth of the deficit, and partly as a result, the rebound he presided over was the weakest in American history.

I’m hardly above wishing to have gotten some credit for these ideas.  But progress on the economics of trade (as opposed to the ongoing U.S. policy departures from free trade absolutism bemoaned by Wolf) has been so slow to develop that I’ll take it in whatever form it comes – and of course be keeping an eye out for more.           

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

Tags

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Glad I Didn’t Say That! International Cooperation Doubletalk from Germany

Tags

Angela Merkel, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Davos, European Union, export controls, Financial Times, Germany, Glad I Didn't Say That!, globalism, multilateralism, nationalism, vaccines, Wuhan virus

“Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said the coronavirus

pandemic has been the ‘hour of multilateralism’, as she used her

speech to plead for more international collaboration to defeat the

virus.”

– Financial Times, January 26, 2020

“Germany is pressing the European Commission to give member

states the power to block the export of coronavirus vaccines

produced in the EU as tensions mounted over shortfalls in supply.”

– Financial Times, January 26, 2020

 

(Sources: “Davos highlights: European leaders urge Biden to extend efforts to reignite international co-operation,” by Guy Chazan et al, Financial Times, January 26, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/02465195-1957-490d-a3c8-4c54d45469a9 and “Germany presses Brussels for powers to block vaccine exports,” by Guy Chazan et al, Financial Times, January 26, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/ed0059c9-1ea5-4ba9-a1ff-88004b59e71d)

 

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Trumply Deranged Coverage of a Trump Security Policy Win

Tags

alliances, allies, America First, burden sharing, deterrence, Financial Times, globalism, James White, Joe Biden, military spending, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, South Korea, tripwire, Trump

I know that there’s lots more to say about last week’s outrageous Capitol Hill riot and its political and even broader fallout, but sometimes a news development comes along that’s so underappreciated and at the same time so poorly reported that I just couldn’t resist weighing in right away.

I’m talking about decisions being made in South Korea to become more militarily self-reliant, and the way they were reported in the Financial Times a week ago. The article, by Edward White, had it all as far as my Trump-y, America First-type worldview is concerned: an (apparently unwitting account) of signs of a clearly emerging potential triumph for this approach to U.S. foreign policy; a comparably stinging (and unwitting) rebuke of its globalist counterpart; a complete failure to mention the benefits for the United States (as opposed to the impact elsewhere) coupled with  attempts by globalist supposed experts focusinf singlemindedly on the downsides and ignoring the consequences for Americans; and just plain sloppy journalism.

As known by RealityChek regulars, the news that long-time military ally (or protectorate, depending on your point of view) South Korea is revving up its defense spending is an unalloyed good for Americans. For decades, Seoul’s skimpy military budgets, which remained modest despite the country’s phenomenal economic progress, required the United States to supply the conventional forces needed to defend it against a North Korean attack.

The large American troop contingent stationed right at the Demilitarized Zone, directly in the North Koreans’ invasion path, might have made sense when Washington had no reason to fear any conflict going nuclear, and indeed viewed its possession of these arms as a pillar of its strategy of protecting South Korea by deterring aggression (because North Korea had no nukes of its own that could hit the U.S. homeland in retalition). But since North Korea is at the least so close to possessing this capability, the American units have turned into a tripwire all too likely to expose Americans to these risks, thereby rendering the U.S. nuclear guarantee a prime example of policy masochism. (This post described the changing Korean peninsula and overall Asian security environment, and its implications for U.S. strategy, back in 2014.) 

As also known by RealityChek regulars, President Trump has displayed some awareness of this situation, and, as White has reported, has pressed the South Koreans to get their self-defense act together – though in his often typically incoherent way, focusing almost entirely during his term on securing more South Korean financing of the expenses of deploying the U.S. forces on the peninsula than on planning to withdraw, and thereby eliminate the nuclear risk to America that their presence creates.

But White’s article cites evidence that Seoul has interpreted Mr. Trump’s harangues about rip off-obsessed allies as a clear sign that the United States is no longer a reliable ally, and that South Korea needs to build the manpower and especially weaponry it will need if the United States flies the coop. Especially interesting is the apparent South Korean conviction that these preparations must be made even though alliance fetishizer Joe Biden will become President on January 20.

Clearly, nothing could be better for the United States, and just as clearly, Trumpian impatience – following decades of coddling free-riding by globalist American leaders – deserves most of the credit. Even if Biden has no intention of withdrawing the American troops and bolstering his own country’s security, at least one major argument against such a step would be eliminated if South Korea became self-reliant.

But none of this side of the equation will be found in the article. Instead, South Korea’s stated new strategy is depicted as an regrettably inevitable result of “Mr Trump’s treatment of long-term allies.” And of course, grave risks abound, including the chance that “The build-up could send unintended signals of aggression or weakness, inviting miscalculations or adventurism from countries including North Korea, China and Russia.”

Typically, however, these experts ignore the screamingly obvious: If the U.S. troops leave, any miscalculations or adventurism would be problems for South Korea and its neighbors, not for the United States.

As for the sloppy journalism, that comes in when White tries to show that South Korea has already been an impressive military spender:

“South Korea’s annual defence bill is already high compared with those of many countries of a similar size and wealth. Military spending as a percentage of government expenditure was 12.7 last year, according to Stockholm Peace Research Institute data, ahead of 9.2 per cent in the US and the UK’s 4.5 per cent.”

To which the only serious response is, “Seriously?” Because why should anyone except an apologist care how Seoul’s defense spending compares with similarly sized or wealthy countries, much less with the United States’? After all, almost none of these countries lives in what’s probably the world’s most dangerous neighborhood, with an utterly deranged, nuclear-armed regime right next door for starters? Given South Korea’s (great) wealth, and North Korea’s impoverishment, the only important gauge of the adequacy of Seoul’s military budget is whether it can meet South Korea’s needs. And obviously, there’s a long way to go in this respect.

Moreover, even anyone who puts any stock in the numbers mentioned by White needs to ask themselves why the emphasis is on percentages of government spending? What actually counts is percentage of gross domestic product (GDP, or the entire economy). Because it’s the share of total national resources devoted to defense that genuinely makes clear the priority it enjoys. And with 2.7 percent the figure for highly insecure South Korea, according to the latest available data, and 3.4 percent that for the highly secure US of A, the only accurate way to describe defense as a South Korean priority is “not real high.”

Don’t get me wrong: As a sovereign country, Seoul has every right to skimp on defense spending. It also has every right to try to make another country bear an outsized measure of cost and risk for this decision. But the equally sovereign United States has every right to refuse to keep playing Uncle Sucker, especially when North Korea’s nuclear weapons make the stakes so potentially catastrophic. America’s outgoing President understood this, however imperfectly. Anyone believing that America’s security (especially from nuclear attack) needs to come first for Americans should be hoping that the nation’s incoming President quickly gets on this wavelength.

Im-Politic: An Overlooked Reason to Rethink the Four-Year College Model

Tags

adolescence, college, education, Financial Times, higher education, Im-Politic, Oren Cass, students

I feel hesitant to write about what is or isn’t going on on college campuses these days because it’s been quite a while since my own student days; my visits in recent decades have been limited to short trips either to give guest talks or lectures or to drop off and pick up my son when he was an undergrad or to take in an occasional basketball game at George Washington U.; and although I have some friends and acquaintances in academe, we don’t often seem to discuss campus life and how it has or hasn’t changed over time.

So sure – I’ve covered subjects like the dangerous direct and indirect Chinese government presence in American colleges and universities, and about some of the conflicts that have broken out over how to deal with historical figures with racially charged records. (See, e.g., here.)  But I can only recall one instance of even briefly mentioning the crucial matter of how well these institutions are or aren’t educating students and otherwise preparing them to be successful adults and informed citizens.

I’m focused on this matter today, however, because of two recent developments that seem amply to justify the deepest skepticism about the model of undergraduate education that’s become dominant in recent decades. The first entails the much remarked on force with which the CCP Virus has driven so much instruction on-line, and all the questions that this shift have intensified about the constantly surging costs and therefore value of a four-year degree – which of course includes the cost of campus physical plants that provide so many services that have little to do with education.

The second was the appearance last week of a Financial Times column that’s brilliantly alluded to a strong resulting suspicion of mine that keeps growing, and that surely is widely shared, if still rarely voiced explicitly. As author Oren Cass wrote in a piece covering many of higher education’s woes:

“It’s easy enough to disprove the economic claim that attending college promises them success, but much harder to refute the cultural message equating ‘not college material’ with ‘loser’. Worse, we advertise the college experience as an amusement park entitlement — a rite of passage filled with sports and parties, sex and alcohol, activities calendars overseen by cruise-ship directors called ‘campus life co-ordinators’, and, oh, classes that you should try to attend, all paid for by someone else or at some other time. Try convincing a teenager it would really be smarter to forgo that experience for a few years of hard work, an industry credential and some savings in the bank.”

And he further derides colleges today as “four-year summer camps” and “private playgrounds” for the children of the wealthy.

That second swipe unintentionally reminds us that major distinctions need to be made between private and public universities, and that therefore a latter day version of “Animal House” probably isn’t what most undergrads whatever their school are living.

But beyond the exaggeration and oversimplification, Cass points the way to a possibility that deserves full consideration, and it seems best expressed as a question. Let’s leave aside all the controversies raging today about political correctness and safe spaces and snowflakes and academic propagandizing. Let’s also table for now the serious and necessary discussion concerning whether higher education’s emphasis should be more vocational and professional and technical, or more purely academic.

The question remains – and it’s actually a series of questions: If a society wanted to transmit most effectively to its college-age youth the widest range of the knowledge and skills and experiences considered essential for later life both public and private, would it really be placing these late teens and early twenty-somethings in environments that are largely isolated physically? Where the basics of life are literally served up to them on a platter? Where none of the chores and responsibilities of independent adulthood need to be carried out or met? Where all of the adults present are products of the same cloistered set ups? Whose ideal of the community of scholars – however typically honored in the breach – is barely one step removed, at least in the West, from the medieval monastery? And would that society structure this system so as to ensure that so many of these coddled youth would be those whose talent or birth or some combination of these and other advantages tended to push them into lives of outsized power and influence?

Following on: Could such a cloistered situation reasonably be expected to engender anything deserving the term “personal growth,” or reinforce any desirable form of maturation? Isn’t it far likelier that it’s fostered the kind of entitled sensibilities that never fail to harm any human community, and in fact the kind of narcissism and extended adolescence that seems so widespread among my own Baby Boomers – the first generation during which a system once reserved for the upper classes was extended to the broad middle – and succeeding cohorts?

Of course no society in its right mind would knowingly engage in practices so described, or expect anything but counterproductive, and even perverse, results. Just as obvious, this portrait of campus life is too broadbrush and shouldn’t tar the reputations of all those students who work their way diligently through four-year colleges needing to balance the requirements of classroom and jobs, of generations before them faced with the same challenges and strapped with the often inevitable debts, and of students who have donated big chunks of time and continue to volunteer for all manner of worthy community service projects.

Yet can anyone seriously deny that a nation-wide gap dividing town and gown is exactly what’s been created and cultivated in higher education for decades now? Or that its excessive width – indeed the imperative of rethinking the very goal of immersing near-adults in an environment defining itself, however undeservedly, as higher brow than its surroundings – is becoming ever clearer from the abundant evidence that many of even the less completely pampered undergrads leave academe lacking everything from critical thinking skills to the ability to function in the workplace without time-consuming supervision? (See, e.g., here.)

I am far from knowing what model should or will replace it, though I sense that the very breadth of higher education’s failure is a glaring sign that more than one alternative is in the offing. I’d also be surprised if lots of time and trial and error weren’t needed to devise them, and if some version of the current four-year community of scholars model didn’t survive as the best match for some students – as it is now.

But for most – and even for many of the most academically inclined – higher education seems certain ultimately to much more closely integrate the classroom world and the broader world that graduates will enter. And I’m equally certain that, once this transition is well underway, most will look back and wonder why anyone thought they should have been kept so far apart to begin with.