Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Two German Tank Decision Mysteries

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Germany, Iron Cross, Leopard, Nazi Germany, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Panzer, Prussia, tanks, Ukraine, Ukraine War, World War II

Germany has finally decided to send advanced battle tanks to Ukraine (and to allow other countries whose militaries use the weapon to do te same). So ends a period of reluctance that was widely (and in my view, correctly) attributed in large measure to Berlin’s reluctance to suggest that historic German hyper-militarism is on the way back. Even so, I find two related aspects of Germany’s decision puzzling, to say the least.

At the outset, though, let me be perfectly clear: I’ve long advocated major German (and, for that matter) Japanese rearmanent. Believe me, I understand why the Germans (and Japanese) have long resisted such measures, and why Washington has tacitly supported the resulting defense free-riding.

After all, even nearly eight decades after these countries ignited World War II and committed such unspeakable atrocities before and during the conflict, who would support risking a repeat lightly? (At the same time, permitting Germany and Japan to remain military pygmies meant that American leaders would remain the national security and geopolitical kingpins of Western Europe and East Asia long after both countries had regained the economic power that ordinarily would have led to much more influence along these lines and likely greater diplomatic independence from Washington. Why? Because…well…countries with dramatically different historical experiences and geographic locations naturally often view the world differently.)

But because economic strength inevitably produces the ability and therefore the will to assert uniquely national interests, I always believed that this U.S. approach was simply delaying not only the inevitable, but the kind of orderly transition to the point at which these countries (in tandem with their neighbors, in the case of Germany but not so much Japan) would handle their own defense – and greatly reduce the nuclear war risk America was running because of its deterrence and coupling strategy.

And in a purely military sense, I always worried about the prospect of the United States plunging into a major war in Europe or Asia without allies it could count on one hundred percent – either because they stayed so weak or because they didn’t endorse American policy fully.  

Nor did I ever see any significant evidence that America’s determination to conduct these countries’ national securiy strategies for them (which I called “smothering”) generated any benefits for the U.S. economy. If anything, prioritizing alliance relationships typically convinced Washington to allow such allies to continue the protectionist policies that harmed domestic U.S. industry and its workers. (See this 1991 article for a wide-ranging discussion of both alliance-related security and economic issues.)

So again, I strongly support both the German, Japanese, and other allies’ stated intentions to get serious about their own security. But I have two related questions about Germany.

First, if Germany is so worried about even perception that it’s reverting back to its terrible old ways, why since the end of has it chosen the Iron Cross as the symbol of its military? Granted, it’s not the same Iron Cross the Nazis used. But it’s really close. Moreover, this version was used by the 19^th century Prussians, who were pioneers in developing modern militaries and whose leaders in those days had no compunctions about throwing its weight around first to unify Germany and then ensure that it could rival and even surpass the rest of Europe in terms of continental and global clout. (Not that these neighbors were angels themselves.)

And yet, in 1956, when the German army was reconstituted, West Germany’s president designated as its official emblem. Like no other choices were available then, or have been since? (For a brief history of Iron Cross, see here.) 

Second, why would a long-neutered Germany call any of its tanks a “Leopard”? How could such nomenclature fail to evoke the Nazi era in particular? After all, Hitler’s most famous tanks were the Panther (Panzer) and a late variation (the Tiger). Of course, weapons names should convey might and ferocity. But the world isn’t exactly shrt of other animal predators. And animal predator names aren’t the only words that can do the job.

Obviously, I’m not expecting any revival of worrisome German revanchism. But I still view these two military branding decisions as head-scratchers, and because even the weirdest choices rarely come completely out of the blue, I’ll continue to find them mystifying until I see a sensible explanation.    

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Glad I Didn’t Say That! Energy Security One Tanker at a Time

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energy, energy crisis, energy prices, Germany, Glad I Didn't Say That!, inflation, natural gas, Olaf Scholz, Persian Gulf, Ukraine, Ukraine War

”Germany secures more gas shipments as [Chancellor Olaf] Scholz visits [Persian] Gulf”

 —Associated Press, September 25, 2022

Number of gas shipments Scholz has secured during his visit to the Persian Gulf: 1

–Bloomberg.com, September 25, 2022

 

(Sources: “Germany secures more gas shipments as Scholz visits Gulf,” by Frank Jordan, Associated Press, September 25, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-boris-johnson-united-arab-emirates-germany-b2ff121c9b7e3931ab3c89acdf76beaa and “Germany Secures Just One Tanker of Gas During Scholz’s Gulf Tour,” by Birgit Jennen and Omar Tamo,” Bloomberg.com, September 25, 2022, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-25/germany-nabs-uae-gas-deal-as-energy-squeeze-tightens?srnd=premium&leadSource=uverify%20wall)

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

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Following Up: Podcast Now On-Line of National Radio Interview on Ukraine, China Trade, & Manufacturing

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China, energy, Following Up, Germany, manufacturing, Market Wrap with Moe Ansari, NATO, natural gas, Nord Stream 2, North Atlantic treaty Organization, reshoring, Russia, sanctions, tariffs, Trade, trade war, Ukraine

I’m pleased to announce that the podcast is now on-line of my interview yesterday today with Moe Ansari on his nationally syndicated “Market Wrap” radio program.

Press the “play” button under “Current Market Wrap” at this link for a timely discussion of America’s approach to the Ukraine crisis, where President Biden’s China policy is heading, and whether the Trump (and now Biden administration) tariffs and supply chain knots have spurred much manufacturing to come back home to the United States.

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

Making News: Back on National Radio Talking China, Russia, and the Economy

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Biden, Biden administration, China, energy, Germany, Making News, Market Wrap with Moe Ansari, NATO, natural gas, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Putin, Russia, sanctions, tariffs, Trade, trade war, Ukraine

I’m pleased to announce that tomorrow night I’m scheduled to be back on the nationally syndicated “ “Market Wrap with Moe Ansari” radio program to discuss awhole grab bag of economic and foreign policy topics, ranging from U.S.-China relations to what, if anything, Washington should do to keep Russia from pushing deeper militarily in Ukraine.

“Market Wrap” is broadcast nightly between 8 and 9 PM EST, the guest segments typically come in the second half-hour, and you can tune in by visiting Moe’s website and clicking on the “Listen Live” link on the right-hand side.

As usual, moreover, if you can’t tune in, the podcast will be posted as soon as it’s on-line.

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

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Biden’s Foreign Policy Pillar is Looking Hollow at Best

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alliances, allies, Beijing Olympics, Biden, China, Emmanuel Macron, European Union, France, Fumio Kishida, Germany, Japan, multilateralism, NATO, Nordstream 2, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Olympic boycott, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Putin, Russia, sanctions, Southeast Asia, Taiwan, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Winter Olympics

What’s worse than “terrible”? It’s an important question because if that’s a term that accurately describes President Biden’s last week or so in office, then something even stronger is clearly needed for the setbacks suffered recently by multilateralism – the foundation of his foreign policy. And most troublingly, the idea that U.S. foreign policy success requires the cooperation of major allies has been failing most conspicuously when it comes to dealing with America’s two biggest global rivals – Russia and China.

Let’s deal with Russia first, but not because I view it as the biggest threat to the United States – or even much of a threat at all. In fact, I’ve long and repeatedly written that the fate of Ukraine has no importance for America’s national security, and that Washington should accept some form of the kind of spheres of influence-type deal in Eastern Europe that Russian leader Vladimir Putin has proposed.

But the Ukraine crisis is making the most headlines right now, the subject dominated his long press conference last Wednesday, and Mr. Biden is nowhere near taking my advice. Indeed, that presser added powerfully to the evidence that the United States and its allies are deeply divided over how to respond to actual and possible Russian moves against Ukraine.

As the President made clear, “[I]t’s very important that we keep everyone in NATO on the same page.  And that’s what I’m spending a lot of time doing.  And there are differences.  There are differences in NATO as to what countries are willing to do depending on what happens — the degree to which they’re able to go.”

Indeed, that very day, France’s President Emmanuel Macron proposed that the European Union seek separate from U.S. efforts a new security agreement with Russia. Macron did state that “It is good that Europeans and the United States coordinate” but added “it is necessary that Europeans conduct their own dialogue, We must put together a joint proposal, a joint vision, a new security and stability order for Europe.”

Since Europe is a lot closer to Russia and Ukraine that the United States, and will be much more dramatically affected by events in that region, this French position seems entirely legitimate to me. At the same time, it’s tough to believe that Macron would place such importance on a Europe-only effort if he was completely happy with what he knows of American diplomacy so far.

Germany’s views seem even farther from Washington’s. Its new government has not only refused to join some other European countries (notably, the United Kingdom) in supplying defensive weapons to Ukraine. It’s blocked at least one NATO country – Estonia – from sending its own Made in Germany arms to bolster Kiev’s military.

Moreover, trade-dependent Germany, whose trade with Russia in energy and other goods is substantial, doesn’t even seem very keen on deterring or punishing Moscow for invading Ukraine with the kinds of sanctions that are widely viewed as the strongest – cutting Russia off from the global network used by almost all the world’s financial institutions to send money across borders for all the reasons that money is sent across borders. At least Berlin is sounding more open to halting final approval of the Nordstream 2 natural gas pipeline if Ukraine is invaded.    

Asian countries seem more prepared to resist aggression from China, especially the military kind (as opposed to Beijing’s economic efforts at intimidation). Since this post last September reporting on steps they’ve taken to transition from U.S. protectorates to countries more closely resembling genuine allies, some have made even more encouraging moves.

For example, Indonesia reportedly “is preparing itself militarily” to deal with Chinese moves against islands located in its territorial waters and major straits through which much of its (and the world’s commercial shipping) travels. The Philippines – another Southeast Asian country embroiled in maritimes disputes with China, has just bought cruise missiles from India, and reportedly some of its neighbors are interested in these devices, too.

At the same time, despite a virtual summit between President Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Japan’s policy on using its forces to help any U.S. attempt to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack remains ambivalent at best. South Korea looks more hesistant still.

Nor is Japan backing the United States to the hilt on sanctioning Russia economically following a Ukraine attack, or even close. After the Biden-Kishida session, an anonymous U.S. official said (in a briefing posted on the White House website) that although the Japanese leader “made it clear his country would be ‘fully behind’” Washington on the issue, his response concerning economic responses Tokyo would support was “We did not get into the specifics about possible steps that would be taken in the event that we see these [potential Russian] actions transpire.”

The refusal of so many U.S. allies and others to join the Biden administration’s diplomatic boycott versus the upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing also casts major doubts on the President’s emphasis on multilateralism. Can any countries declining even to keep their officials alone out of China for the games (as opposed to their athletes) be counted on to push back more concretely and powerfully against future provocations from China?

Athletes and sports fans know well the expression “Change a losing game.”  For all you others, it means that if a strategy or approach is failing, switch to an alternative.  But for the future of American foreign policy, the most important part of it remains unspoken, and the one that the President needs most urgently to heed:  “Change it before you’ve lost.”   

 

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Ukraine Crisis Update

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allies, Antony Blinken, Biden, China, Germany, international law, NATO, natural gas, Nord Stream 2, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, sanctions, spheres of influence, Taiwan, Ukraine

The Russia-Ukraine crisis at this point looks like a good news/bad news story – except as was the case when I posted last on the subject, the bad news still looks more important.

The good news: It’s now clear that President Biden knows how dangerously loony it would be to oppose a Russian invasion of Ukraine or intensification of hybrid war against the former Soviet republic with U.S. military forces.

Last Wednesday, he told reporters that putting “U.S. troops on the ground…in or around Ukraine to stop an invasion” was “not on the table” – at least “right now.” And despite that qualifier, he said three days later that this idea was never “on the table.”

That’s good news because, as I explained a week ago, geography makes Ukraine completely indefensible against Russia with conventional weapons, and largely as a result, it’s all too easy to imagine scenarios in which a President would face heavy pressure to rescue endangered American units with nuclear weapons use, which would almost certainly prompt a similar response by Moscow that could also easily escalate to a full-scale nuclear conflict. Worse, this risk would be run on behalf of a country that was never deemed anywhere remotely resembling a U.S. vital interest even during the Cold War.

Potentially better news: At least according to this Associated Press (AP) report, Mr. Biden is considering accommodating Russia’s stated security concerns about Ukraine and its relationship to the West – to the point of pressing “Ukraine to formally cede a measure of autonomy within its eastern Donbas region, which is now under de facto control by Russia-backed separatists who rose up against Kyiv in 2014” and reportedly telling Ukraine that “NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] membership is unlikely to be approved in the next decade….”

It’s not yet clear whether such steps would be enough to appease Russia – which has demanded a formal guarantee on the NATO issue, among others. And the AP report, which looks like a standard Washington trial balloon, doesn’t exactly square with Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s public insistence yesterday that “One country can’t exert a sphere of influence over others.”

But the evident decision of Biden administration officials to float compromise ideas along with the President’s ruling out of military options at least signals a welcome American awareness that its leverage and stakes in this part of the world are severely limited, and that ringing declarations of support for principles like “international law” and “territorial integrity” can often create more and more serious problems than they solve.

As also mentioned at the start, however, the Ukraine news isn’t all good. My first ongoing concern: President Biden is still talking about responding to an invasion of Ukraine by sending “more American and NATO troops into the [alliance’s] eastern flank…where we have a sacred obligation — to defend [those countries] against any attack by Russia.”

Mr. Biden is correct about U.S. treaty obligations. But as I wrote last week, this move, which could deploy large numbers of western forces very close to large numbers of Russian forces, is also a great recipe for an accidental war that, like a deliberately entered conflict, could go nuclear.

The administration and the U.S. main allies (see, e.g., here) are calling economic sanctions against Russia the main focus of their retaliatory plans, and that’s certainly less dangerous, at least in the short run, than military steps. But for two teasons, that doesn’t mean “completely safe.” First, these economic measures could push Russia and China closer together (as I mentioned last week). And as I didn’t mention, but was worried about nonetheless, such an alliance, or quasi-alliance, creates the possibility of the United States fighting two simultaneous wars against two formidable military powers – over Ukraine and over Taiwan.

It would be comforting to think that the President and his advisors are worried about this prospect, too, and further, recognize that unlike Ukraine, Taiwan’s security has become a U.S. vital interest because of its world leadership in semiconductor manufacturing technology. But even despite Mr. Biden’s reported interest in accommodating important Russia-related Ukraine concerns, I wish I saw more and more public signs of such priority-setting.

Second, I’m not so sure that all of America’s European allies would go along with all or even most of the U.S. sanctions. After all, with the worst of winter still surely on the way, they depend heavily on Russian exports of natural gas. And Germany, in particular, seems determined to increase this reliance ith its involvement in constructing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

Berlin seems to be having second thoughts about this project. But Ukraine has officially accused Germany of blocking some of NATO’s efforts to supply it with weapons supplies. So it’s anyone’s guess where the policy of Germany’s new government is actually headed. And unfortunately, that’s my main conclusion so far about the Biden administration’s approach, too.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Biden’s Anti-China Coalition is Flunking an Olympian Test

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allies, Australia, Beijing Olympics, Biden, boycotts, Canada, China, European Union, Germany, Indo-Pacific, Italy, Japan, multilateralism, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, semiconductors, South Korea, Taiwan, United Kingdom, Winter Olympics

One of President Biden’s main foreign policy aims has been to create an international coalition to resist continually mounting belligerence by China, and to curb the massive, decades-long flows of foreign capital and technological knowhow that have done so much to strengthen and enrich the People’s Republic. And whatever promise is held by this anti-China strategy has become vitally important lately because of Beijing’s intensifying intimidation campaign against Taiwan, whose autonomy has become a vital U.S. interest due to its world leadership in semiconductor manufacturing processes.

That’s why it’s so discouraging to report that, as of this morning, so few of the allies on which Mr. Biden is counting have been willing even to take so limited a step as joining the U.S. diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics scheduled to be held in China’s capital Beijing in February.

Australia and the United Kingdom signed on this morning. And a bit later, so did Canada. But so far, that’s it. According to this Reuters article, Japan is considering not sending cabinet members to the Games but South Korea isn’t even thinking about this step. The New York Times reports that New Zealand had previously decided not to send any officials to China but cited CCP Virus-related health concerns as the reason; that the European Union’s (EU) European Parliament has passed a resolution backing a boycott barring “verifiable improvement” in China’s human rights situation, but one that’s non-binding; that the EU’s separate policymaking arm has declined to support the U.S. action; EU member France is hiding behind this EU skirt so far; fellow EU member Italy has said it’s not on board; and Olaf Scholz, the new leader of another EU member, Germany, clearly doesn’t want to be.

It’s not that joining the American initiative will produce any meaningful changes in China’s behavior. Indeed, official foreign participation in and attendance at Olympics isn’t exactly the norm.

It’s true, moreover, as The Times mentioned, that many of these countries and the EU collectively have imposed human rights sanctions on China; that some have begun thinking about how to shield their economies from Beijing’s power and influence (see, e.g., here and here); and that some have begun to increase their own defense spending in response to China’s own buildup and provocations (see, e.g., here and here), or become more active militarily in the Indo-Pacific region (see, e.g., here).

At the same time, boosting military budgets and even sending warships on port calls and other East Asian missions is a far cry from credibly pledging to come to the U.S.’ and Taiwan’s aid if China moves against the island. (It’s also important to note that an American military response, or at least a prompt one, is far from certain, either, since the United States is not yet obliged by treaty to come to Taiwan’s defense.)

And if countries are reluctant to take even a symbolic step like diplomatically boycotting the Beijing Olympics, which doesn’t even entail further sanctions, can they really be counted on to enter hostilities against China?

President Biden is fond of saying that “America is back” in its role as free world leader following an alleged Trump administration abdication. But leaders by definition need followers, and when it comes to confronting China meaningfully, it’s not clear right now that he has many that are reliable.