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Making News: Back on NYC Radio Tonight on Ukraine, Inflation…& More!

18 Monday Apr 2022

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Uncategorized

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Frank Morano, inflation, Making News, North Korea, The Other Side of Midnight, Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia war, WABC AM

I’m pleased to announce that I’m scheduled to return tonight to Frank Morano’s “The Other Side of Night” radio show on New York City’s WABC-AM. The segment is scheduled to start at 1:30 AM EST (so yes, it’s technically Tuesday morning), and the agenda will be wide-ranging: Ukraine, inflation, North Korea (which has been posing new national security threats lately) – and maybe a little on the (not so hot) New York City pro sports scene thrown in!

You can listen live at this link.  But if your bedtime comes too early, as usual, I’ll post a link to the podcast as soon as one’s available.

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

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Will a Russian Victory Really Bring On a World at War?

15 Tuesday Mar 2022

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Our So-Called Foreign Policy

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Antony J. Blinken, Biden, China, Council on Foreign Relations, East China Sea, globalism, Japan, Kim Jong Un, national interests, North Korea, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, South China Sea, South Korea, Taiwan, The Wall Street Journal, Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia war, Vladimir Putin, war, Xi JInPing

Not only do American leaders seem pretty united on the need for the nation to do much more to help Ukraine defend itself from Russian invaders. They and the (overwhelmingly globalist) American political and chattering classes seem largely in agreement on one of the main consequences either of permitting Russia to win, or permitting him to win without inflicting major, lasting damage on Russia’s economy – a return to a world in which aggressive dictators like Russia’s Vladimir Putin will feel much freer than they have for decades to attack their neighbors.

That fear definitely has a troubling ring of reasonableness – and all the more so since, unlike previous historical eras in which such attacks and invasions were much more common, some of the actors possess nuclear weapons.

But there’s something these warnings are overlooking. However vivid such dangers are in principle, it’s hard to identify actual places around the world where potential conquerors have been bidng their time until receiving just the kind of signal that a Russian success in Ukraine allegedly would send.

If you doubt the prominence of this argument for greater U.S. involvement in the conflict, you haven’t been paying attention. For example, in his first public remarks after the invasion, President Biden claimed that “Putin’s actions betray his sinister vision for the future of our world — one where nations take what they want by force.”

In a speech a month earlier, his Secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken, asserted that one of the post-World War II global order’s guiding principles was a rejection of

“the right of one country to change the borders of another by force; to dictate to another the policies it pursues or the choices it makes, including with whom to associate; or to exert a sphere of influence that would subjugate sovereign neighbors to its will.

“To allow Russia to violate those principles with impunity would…send a message to others around the world that these principles are expendable, and that, too, would have catastrophic results.”

The conservatives on the Wall Street Journal editorial board, who don’t agree with the Biden administration on much of anything, similarly contended that “Whether the West admits it or not, the invasion is setting a precedent for what the world will tolerate in the 21st century.”

But check out this assessment of worldwide hot spots from the Council on Foreign Relations, often called the seat of America’s globalist foreign policy establishment. Where exactly are the Putins of tomorrow whose will to international power would be even be sharpened by a Russian victory in Ukraine?

Certainly not on the Korean peninsula or in the East China Sea. North Korea no doubt has designs on neighboring South Korea, but they’ve existed for decades. Ditto for China and Taiwan. It’s true that Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping might be emboldened by an inadequate U.S. and international response to Putin’s war. But not from any relief that global norms of behavior that had been holding them back had weakened, or that a Russian victory had set some a kind of precedent – with binding power? Because they take the idea of rule of law more seriously in their treatment of foreigners than they do in their treatment of their own people? Please.

Other than these Asian conflicts – which also include China’s expansionism in the South China Sea, but which also long predate the Ukraine war – where are the aggressors-in-waiting who may feel freer to attack their neighbors? Should we include the other East China Sea dispute, where China is involved, too – even though U.S. allies Japan and South Korea are also contesting each other’s claims to some miniscule islands?

More important, where are the global hot spots where current or potential territorial rivalries could explode into conflict that would imperil global peace and security – including America’s? Nagorno-Karabakh (on the border of Armenia and Azerbaijan, unless you’ve been following this tiff closely)? As Mr. Biden would say, “Come on, man.”

I’m sure that there are flashpoints in sub-Saharan Africa that could eventually embroil entire regions in warfare. But it’s as cold-blooded as it is true that these are regions so chronically dysfunctional (and therefore largely disconnected from the wider world) that even complete chaos has no potential to spread much further – or inspire conqueror wannabees in regions of greater concern.

Closer to home for the United States, according to the Congressionally founded U.S. Institute of Peace, some small countries in Latin America have been quarreling with neighbors over territory since 1990, and if they did ignite conflict, refugees would of course come streaming to U.S. borders. But only once – in 1995 – did one of these feuds result in war (between Ecuador and Peru). And I’m glad I don’t have to make the argument that revanchists in either country are chomping at the bit to get a symbolic green light from a Russian victory in Ukraine.

The big takeaways here clearly are (1) that the world isn’t a tinderbox likely to burst into a series of truly dangerous international conflicts depending on the outcome of Russia’s war on Ukraine; and (2) that the potential conflicts that can affect the United States consequentially are and have long been driven by their own dynamics (including current and longstanding American approaches to these situations).

So as has been the case since Russian policy toward its neighbors became more belligerent, what should be driving the U.S. response should be examinations concerning the nature of concrete, specific U.S. interests that are or are not at stake. Claims that Ukraine’s continued independence and full sovereignty are all that stand between today’s relative calm among countries (if not in terms of civil conflicts) and an entire globe engulfed in war deserve the same fate as previous alarmist concotions like the domino theory – getting tossed onto what former President Reagan memorably called the “ash heap of history.”

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Biden’s Dangerously Loose Lips on Nuclear Weapons Policy

08 Monday Nov 2021

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Our So-Called Foreign Policy

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alliances, allies, Baltics, Biden, Biden administration, China, deterrence, globalism, no first use, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, semiconductors, South Korea, Soviet Union, Taiwan, Trump, Ukraine

As usual, headline news is coming so fast and furiously from so many different direections that lots of major developments get neglected (including by me). One of the most important pretty stunningly shows once again that those American leaders who most loudly proclaim themselves to be champions of the globalist approach to foreign policy, and of the U.S. security alliances they view as one of its greatest achievements (both for the United States and the globe at large) have once more been flirting seriously with ideas certain to destroy those alliances.

Specifically, I’m referring to recent reports (e.g., here) that the President Biden is considering endorsing a “no first use” (NFU) policy for America’s nuclear weapons arsenal.

The shift hasn’t yet been approved. A rethink hasn’t even been officially announced. And some of the anonymous sources who leaked this news to reporters (no doubt from inside the Biden administration, and no doubt as a trial balloon) claim that what’s being contemplated is changing to something similar to NFU but not identical to it.

But of course, trial balloons are floated precisely to evoke reactions to something that someone awfully high up in government (or whatever organization is doing the floating) thinks is a swell idea, and who’s confident that his or her boss thinks or would think so, too. Moreover, the difference between NFU and the variant being considered seems pretty academic at best.

Most important about this possible new Biden approach to national security is that it reveals this administration to be every bit as cynical and therefore unserious about the globalism and alliances it pretends to prioritize – and about its indignant and sanctimonious portrayals of the more skeptical views of critics like former President Trump as proof of their dangerous ignorance – as the Obama administration.

For as I explained five years ago when Obama entertained NFU right after slamming Trump literally as a foreign policy and specifically nuclear weapons know-nothing, even mulling such a new nuclear doctrine could undermine the very alliances that globalists like him exalted.

And the reason is simple: First use of nuclear weapons is the policy that for decades has enabled the United States to deter attacks on the allies credibly in the first place – and that has held these arrangements together. For long ago, Washington dismissed as impractical trying to match adversaries like the old Soviet Union, China, and North Korea in conventional forces. The first two could draw on populations that would always exceed America’s, and even when it came to relatively small antagonists like the latter, fielding such forces was considered too expensive to be sustained financially and politically.

Nuclear weapons, however, were relatively cheap, and American leaders judged that declaring their intent to respond to purely conventional attacks on allies by these countries by launching the nukes if non-nuclear forces proved inadequate would put the fear of God even in a nuclear superpower like the Soviet Union. And first use would even more effectively deter countries with tiny or non-existen nuclear forces of their own, like China and North Korea for decades.

Even when Beijing and Pyongyang built nuclear forces big and capable enough to call this U.S. bluff successfully at least in theory (because they could now wreak impressive nuclear destruction on the American homeland, too), American leaders put their trust in NFU. And if indeed protecting allies was the overriding priority of U.S. foreign policy, this judgement was at least defensible.

A NFU policy, though, or even trial balloons, could bring disastrous consequences. Either would risk emboldening the enemies of the United States and its allies by signaling that Washington would at the least hesitate to play its most formidable military card. Just as important, it’s hard to imagine a worst recent time than the present for indulging in such speculation. After all, not only does the United States no longer enjoy overwhelming nuclear edges over China and North Korea. But China and Russia have displayed ever greater interest in establishing or reestablishing effective control over small neighbors like Ukraine and the Baltic states and of course Taiwan.

In addition, a NFU policy or talk thereof could frighten allies into bailing on the United States and cutting the best deals they could with Moscow or Pyongyang or Beijing while they still had the chance. Alternatively, because sizable American forces remain right at or near the front lines at all three of these flashpoints, the absence of a first use policy could result in them getting caught up in unwinnable battles even if a U.S. President wanted to stay on the sidelines.

Finally, when we’re talking about Taiwan, of course, we’re talking about the place that now makes the world’s most advanced semiconductors – products that are central to both future American prosperity and national security. So as is not the case with Russia’s neighbors or even South Korea (an impressive semiconductor manufacturer in its own right), adopting NFU could result in the loss of a genuinely vital U.S. interest.

I’ve long favored fundamental changes in U.S. alliance and overall foreign policy and national security strategy. But that’s not the point here. If you like alliances, it’s really pretty simple: At a minimum, you either keep first use, or you greatly beef up U.S. conventional forces, or you convince the allies to fill whatever non-nuclear military force gaps you face, or you do all three or some combination of them. If you adopt NFU and fail to take offsetting steps on the conventional force front, be ready to kiss these arrangements goodbye.

From all accounts (see, e.g., here) the allies themselves recognize this. So does China. What’s scary is that even if the supposed adults-in-the-room and master strategists in the Biden administration eventually realize the stakes involved (as their Obama predecessors eventually did), they may have greatly undermined the nation’s safety – along with boosting the risks of conflict the world over.

Glad I Didn’t Say That! Biden’s Losing North Korea Bet

26 Wednesday May 2021

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Glad I Didn't Say That!

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Antony J. Blinken, Asia-Pacific, Biden, CCP Virus, China, coronavirus, COVID 19, Glad I Didn't Say That!, Indo-Pacific, Kim Jong Un, North Korea, nuclear weapons, sanctions, Wuhan virus

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken “suggested China was also concerned about North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. ‘China has a real interest in helping to deal with this,’ [he] said. ‘So we look to Beijing to play a role in advancing what is in, I think, everyone’s interest.’”

– The New York Times, March 18, 2021

 

“North Korean trade with China is springing back to life, easing pressure on Kim Jong Un whose economy has been battered by sanctions and border closures owing to the coronavirus pandemic.”

– Financial Times, May 26, 2021

 

(Sources: “North Korean Threat Forces Biden Into Balancing Act With China,” by Lara Jakes and Choe Sang-Hun, The New York Times, March 18, 2021, North Korean Threat Forces Biden Into Balancing Act With China – The New York Times (nytimes.com) and “Chinese trade provides boost to North Korea’s battered economy,” by Edward White, Financial Times, May 26, 2021, Chinese trade provides boost to North Korea’s battered economy | Financial Times (ft.com))

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Biden’s Latest Nod to Trump-ism – Israel-Palestinians Policy?

25 Tuesday May 2021

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Our So-Called Foreign Policy

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Abraham Accords, Antony J. Blinken, Biden, Binyamin Netanyahu, Blob, China, diplomacy, Donald Trump, Gaza, globalism, Hamas, Israel, Jared Kushner, Middle East, North Korea, occupied territories, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Palestinians, tariffs, Trade, two-state solution, West Bank

As known by RealityChek regulars, one of the leading – and most surprising – features of the Biden administration is a tendency to continue certain Trump administration policies that the current President, and much of the globalist bipartisan policy Blob decried as dangerously naive, xenophobic, short-sighted, isolationist, protectionist [feel free at this point to insert your own scornful epithet].

Now on top of tariffs, China trade and economic strategy, and North Korea policy, there’s a sign that the Biden approach to the Israel-Palestinian conflict can be added to the list. My evidence? Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken’s remarks this morning on the latest eruption after a meeting in Jerusalem with the Jewish state’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.

The most specific policy statements Blinken made focused tightly on the need for reconstruction aid for Gaza – where Israeli military strikes aimed at stopping Hamas rocket attacks inflicted serious damage – as well as the need “to work to expand opportunity for Palestinians in Gaza and in the West Bank, including by strengthening the private sector, expanding trade and investment, and other means. Assistance and investment like these will help foster a more stable environment that benefits Palestinians and also benefits Israelis.”

By contrast, there were only the most glancing references to resuming diplomatic efforts to bring lasting peace to the region – principally, Blinken’s report that he and Netanyahu discssed “other steps that need to be taken by leaders on both sides to set a better course for their shared future. As President Biden has said, we believe that Palestinians and Israelis equally deserve to live safely and securely; to enjoy equal measures of freedom, opportunity, and democracy; to be treated with dignity.”

And beyond that – nothing. Not even a mention of a negotiated two-state solution that President Biden continues to support as the end goal of U.S. diplomacy.

That looks awfully Trump-y because a focus on economic development in Israel’s occupied territories to ameliorate their populations’ pressing day-to-day needs and create credible hopes for decent living standards and further progress, and an unmistakable deemphasis on returning Israeli and Palestinian leaders to some kind of bargaining table, was a definite hallmark of the former President’s approach to dealing with the conflict. The idea was that the promise and growing reality of prosperity on the West Bank and in Gaza was the best hope for reducing the appeal of violence and creating the conditions in which realistic compromises could – some day – be accepted.

Indeed, Trump’s peace plan conspicuously began with a purely economic proposal – a fund raised from private investors in the Persian Gulf states and other countries that would spend $50 billion over ten years on infrastructure and development projects in the occupied territories. As the plan’s main author, Trump son-in-law and White House advisor Jared Kushner explicitly stated upon its unveiling, “Today is not about political solutions — we will get to them later.”

And although Mr. Biden just issued a re-endorsement of two-state, it’s more than a little interesting that during his Senate confirmation hearings, Blinken acknowledged that “Realistically it’s hard to see near-term prospects for moving forward on that.” That’s hardly a sign of perceived urgency. Perhaps more revealing: The numerous recent articles (all pre-dating the latest Middle East fighting) reporting Mr. Biden’s determination to deemphasize the Middle East as a U.S. foreign priority to begin with – and evidence the administration was following through in official policy declarations and staffing decisions.

Not that this relative indifference marked a significant change in candidate Biden’s campaign positions. In fact, he praised the Trump “Abraham Accords” that normalized relations between Israel and several Arab countries. And although Mr. Biden did charge that Trump’s strong pro-Israel tilt had made a negotiated Israel-Palestinian settlement “even more difficult,” his campaign’s main foreign policy statement didn’t even mention the issue. (Perhaps that’s because he reserved his more detailed – and somewhat more critical – verdict for his campaign’s articulation of a policy toward “the Jewish community.”)

But the foreign policy Blob’s judgement were much harsher – largely because Trump was seen to be recklessly ignoring the Palestinians’ legitimate aspirations and the supposedly obvious reality that not only was peace between Israel and the Palestinians was impossible without taking the latter’s interests seriously, but that meaningful progress toward pacifying and even stabilizing the entire Middle East was as well. (See, e.g., here and here).

It’s an exaggeration to say that the President has now repudiated this pre-Trump conventional wisdom on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. But he’s clearly in no rush to embrace it. And given his other adoptions of Trump-ian stances, it strikes me as evidence that not only is Mr. Biden moving away from pre-Trump globalism, but that the days of this strategy dominating American foreign policymaking writ large are numbered themselves.    

Glad I Didn’t Say That! Biden Going Trump-y on North Korea, Too

20 Thursday May 2021

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Glad I Didn't Say That!

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Biden, Donal d Trump, East Asia, foreign policy, geopolitics, Glad I Didn't Say That!, Kim Jong Un, national security, North Korea, nuclear weapons

“What has [President Trump] done? He’s legitimized North Korea. He’s talked about his good buddy, who’s a thug, a thug. And he talks about how we’re better off. And they have much more capable missiles, able to reach us territory much more easily than they ever did before.

– Presidential candidate Joe Biden, October 22, 2020

 

“The U.S. administration of President Joe Biden will build on a 2018 summit agreement with North Korea, White House Asia czar Kurt Campbell said Tuesday, extending overtures to Pyongyang after completing a months long policy review on the North.”

– Yonhap News Agency, May 19, 2021

 

(Sources: “Donald Trump & Joe Biden Final Presidential Debate Transcript 2020,” October 22, 2020 , Rev.com, Donald Trump & Joe Biden Final Presidential Debate Transcript 2020 – Rev & “U.S. will build on Singapore agreement with N. Korea: Campbell,” by Byun Duk-Kun, Yonhap News Agency, May 19, 2021, (LEAD) U.S. will build on Singapore agreement with N. Korea: Campbell | Yonhap News Agency (yna.co.kr) )

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

11 Thursday Mar 2021

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Our So-Called Foreign Policy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

11 Monday Jan 2021

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Our So-Called Foreign Policy

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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.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Out of the Mouths of Generals

05 Saturday Dec 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Our So-Called Foreign Policy

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alliances, America First, Associated Press, Blob, China, deterrence, globalism, Jim Mattis, Joe Biden, Mark Milley, North Korea, nuclear umbrella, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Poland, South Korea, Soviet Union, tripwires, Trump

Here’s one that genuinely justifies that over-used term, “You can’t make this up.”

Practically ever since President Trump assumed office, his globalist foreign policy critics have been attacking his claims that maintaining the status quo with U.S. security alliances couldn’t be a top priority of American foreign and national security policy. In this vein, they contemptuously derided as “transactional” his belief that rather than viewing these arrangements as vital ends in and of themselves, Washington needed continuously to make sure that they were creating at least as many benefits as problems for the nation.

Indeed, fetishizing alliances was so deeply embedded in the consciousness of the globalist bipartisan U.S. foreign policy Blob that Jim Mattis, the retired Marine Corps General who served as the first Trump Secretary of Defense, based his resignation largely on the argument that the President did not share his “core belief…that our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships.”

So imagine my surprise upon reading an Associated Press story Thursday reporting that U.S. Army General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff (the nation’s top military office), has recommended that Washington – obviously meaning the probably incoming Biden administration – should reconsider “permanently positioning U.S. forces” overseas in instances where these servicemen and women are not actively engaged in combat.

Now it’s true that Milley, at least reportedly, was never especially tight with Mattis in particular. But in this age of political generals and admirals, he couldn’t have risen through the ranks this high had he dissented significantly from the globalist line. And Milley has spoken of the need for U.S. alliances in pretty urgent terms himself.

But there he was this past week, giving a speech on the future of warfare that not only called for more selectivity in creating and maintaining an American military footprint abroad, but basing this proposal largely on his unhappiness – and this is the real shocker – that the so-called forward deployment of these units has usually been accompanied by the families of soldiers, sailors, and airmen, and therefore places them in harm’s way.

His position is a shocker because, as I’ve explained before, stationing spouses and children so vulnerably has been a linchpin of globalist strategy toward alliances. They play a crucial role in turning the units they’re linked with into genuine tripwires – forces whose likelihood of defeat at the hands of much larger and stronger invaders like the Soviets or the North Koreans would give an American President little choice but to use nuclear weapons to avert disaster.

Of course, this approach didn’t stem from itchy nuclear trigger fingers in Washington. Quite the opposite: The working assumption was that the high probability of U.S. nuclear weapons use would deter conventional military aggression to begin with. And the probability that their attacks would wind up killing American non-combatants as well as troops was seen as an even stronger forcing event for nuclear weapons use – a situation that, in strategic parlance, would make this contingency more credible, thereby further inhibiting (or, again using strategy-ese, deterring) enemies from striking.

Skeptical? This is exactly why countries like Poland have been urging recent American Presidents to replace the policy of rotating various U.S. units in and out of their lands with big, permanent deployments. And weirdly and alarmingly, Mr. Trump has taken some steps in this direction.

I’ve concluded that, although the creation of such so-called nuclear umbrellas was defensible during the Cold War, when it was used to protect genuinely vital regions like Western Europe and Japan, and when its use in Asia was aimed at prospective foes that lacked nuclear retaliatory forces, it’s recklessly dangerous today. For the Soviet Union is an increasingly distant memory, many major U.S. allies are amply capable of their own defense, Asian adversaries have become able to strike the American homeland with their own nuclear weapons, and the security of South Korea in particular is no longer crucial for the United States’ own safety and well-being (as opposed to Taiwan, which, as I’ve recently argued, has moved into this category because of its world-class semiconductor manufacturing capability).

Not even the America First-y President Trump has gone remotely this far in actually changing U.S. alliance policy. Yet there was Milley, including in his remarks the statement that if war came with North Korea, “we would have a significant amount of non-combatant U.S. military dependents in harm’s way….I have a problem with that.”

The General didn’t make the needed follow-on case that the presence of these civilians has turned these alliances into “transmission belts of war” that could easily go nuclear and bring on the incineration of entire American cities. But an administration that followed his recommendations would greatly reduce this unnecessary potential danger.

So whether Milley recognizes the full implications of his stance or not, all Americans should hope that he keeps pushing this position as he continues as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs past Inauguration Day, and that even some of the globalist enthusiasts of the Biden administration start listening.

Following Up: It’s Fish-or-Cut-Bait Time for the U.S. Alliance with South Korea

28 Tuesday Jul 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Our So-Called Foreign Policy

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alliances, allies, America First, burden sharing, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, deterrence, globalism, North Korea, nuclear war, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, South Korea, The National Interest, tripwire, Trump, Wuhan virus

Just last week, I posted about how U.S. grand strategy in East Asia is heavily reliant on dangerously unreliable allies. So what a pleasant surprise to yours truly that the very day afterwards, polling data was published making clear just how fitting my description is of South Korea – a longtime bulwark of the American military position in the region. Just as important, the findings also confirm both (1) that the longtime strategy – which has largely continued during the Trump years – could result in American troops finding out during combat that forces and facilities they were relying on for support aren’t available after all; and (2) that coddling this fecklessness risks needlessly entrapping the United States into a nuclear war.

Although almost completely uncovered in the American media, the U.S.-South Korea alliance has been nearing a crossroads for months, as President Trump has insisted that the Seoul government pay more of the costs of stationing American forces on South Korean soil, and the South Koreans have responding with a mixture of grudging concessions at negotiations over the subject, and outright indignation. And in a July 23 National Interest post, a team of scholars from Western Kentucky University showed that a majority of the South Korean public feels exactly the same way.

There’s no question that, as a fully sovereign, independent country, South Koreans and their government have every right to hold whatever opinion they wishes about its security relations with the United States. But of course, Americans and their government are entitled to the same views, and it would be entirely reasonable to regard South Korea’s opinions and policies as complete – and dangerous – outrages.

As the Western Kentucky researchers show compellingly, numerous polls, as well as a recent survey of their own, show that strong majorities of South Koreans want the U.S. military to remain in their country because they believe that these forces are crucial to their own country’s security. But they’re also decidedly reluctant to accommodate the U.S. requests to shoulder more of the defense burden.

From an American standpoint, these attitudes would be understandable if any combination of the following conditions still described South Korea – it’s a poor country that can’t afford to defend itself adequately, or it’s already spending on its down defense to the max, or it doesn’t face very serious security threats to begin with. These conditions might also warrant cutting the South Koreans some slack when it comes to their resentment of President Trump’s allegedly heavy-handed approach to the issue – which the polls show tend to increase their unwillingness to pay more of the costs of hosting U.S. forces. After all, no one likes being bullied.

Here’s the problem, though, from an American standpoint: None of these conditions hold. And none are close to holding. For as of last year, South Korea was the world’s twelfth biggest economy, with total output of about $1.63 trillion. The gross domestic product of highly secretive North Korea’s is estimated at about $20 billion. That’s 0.01 percent of the South’s total. (Here‘s a handy source for the data.)

South Korea’s military spending isn’t real impressive, either. Both in absolute terms and as a share of its economy, it’s gone up. But as of last year, it was still only 2.7 percent of its gross domestic product. By comparison, the United States spends 3.4 percent of its economy on the military. (For both figures, click on this link.)

It can still be argued –as the Western Kentucky researchers maintain – that the South Koreans are already being more than generous in funding the U.S. military presence, and that a change in Trump attitude would likely induce more cooperation. But their defense burden-sharing views – as has been the case with so many others – weirdly ignore how the most valid standard by far is not whether the South Koreans (or any other U.S. ally) are paying as much as the United States for their defense or slightly more or slightly less or whatever. The most valid standard is whether they’re paying as much as is needed (adjusted for their capabilities of course) to defend themselves on their own. And the reason could not be more obvious: For all the talk of “common defense,” it’s their security that’s most at risk, not the United States’. (See my contribution to this anthology – from 1990 – analyzing this largely off-base burden-sharing debate.) 

And nowhere is this difference starker than on the Korean peninsula – on which South Korea is right next door to a North Korean regime that is widely described as dangerously aggressive or utterly deranged. Yet whatever you think of North Korea, nothing could be clearer than that it poses a much greater danger to South Korea than to the United States.

This observation, of course, brings us to the most completely unacceptable feature of this situation for Americans: It’s precisely because South Korea is flagrantly free-riding in defense matters that tens of thousands of U.S. troops need to be stationed right at the Demilitarized Zone dividing the peninsula, and why nowadays (as opposed to the period during which North Korea had no nuclear capabilities) their presence could well result in the U.S. homeland being hit by a North Korean nuclear warhead.

That’s because, as I’ve repeatedly explained, the mission of these U.S. forces isn’t to contribute a successful conventional military defense of South Korea.  They’re too weak – even with the help of the South Koreans.  Instead, their mission is to serve as a nuclear war tripwire – to prevent (or in the parlance of strategists “deter”) a North Korean attack in the first place by creating the danger that a U.S. President will respond to their imminent destruction by turning the conflict nuclear.  But however important South Korea is, is it really worth the complete destruction of a major American city, or two, that would result from a successful North Korean retaliation?

That this question has been evaded continuously by the U.S. government ever since North Korea’s nuclear forces began nearing intercontinental capabilities is appalling enough. That it’s still being evaded by a President supposedly devoted to America First principles – and now that Americans have had months of experience with the upheaval caused by a virus that for all its dangers can’t directly destroy any of the country’s infrastructure and the rest of its physical plant – is nothing less than masochistic. Indeed, compared with these nuclear issues, America’s legitimate gripes about finances are wildly misplaced, unless they’re seeking to pressure Seoul to become militarily self-sufficient – which they aren’t.

There’s one consideration that could overrule all these objections: If President Trump concluded that South Korea’s security was a vital American interest, and therefore by definition worth putting America’s very survival on the line for. But revealingly, no such utterances of the kind have issued from the administration. And if they had, of course, then the United States would automatically lose all its leverage in the defense costs talks with South Korea, as Seoul could be confident that America would (as so memorably pledged in former President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 Inaugural Address) “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship” to keep it free – and, incidentally, prosperous.

And here’s the icing on this cake: The public opinion findings presented by the Western Kentucky authors suggest that South Koreans on the whole aren’t so completely terrified by the threat from the North as Americans suppose them to be. For example, the authors’ own survey found that only 70 percent agreed that they were “concerned about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.” And the authors report that “South Koreans were only mildly concerned about North Korea using military force against them ….”

Does this sound like an ally that’s certain to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Americans if military tensions in its own neighborhood approached the boiling point? That would promptly increase the preparations needed for imminent conflict? Or one that would keep hemming and hawing until the shooting actually started – and even afterwards attaching more importance to showing good faith to the North in hopes of halting the conflict than in mounting the most effective defense possible, much less helping the United State seize the initiative when the opportunity came? Anyone who believes that staunch South Korean backing can simply be assumed in any of these circumstances simply hasn’t been paying attention, and would be backing a policy sure either to produce calamitous defeat, or to push Washington to use nuclear weapons as a Hail Mary – and risk North Korean retaliation in kind.  

Finally, to return to a point made earlier: South Korea is a sovereign, fully independent country that’s completely entitled to pursue its own policy course. And if it’s not worked up about a North Korea threat to respond enough to give a joint defense of its territory a reasonable chance of success, it’s not for Americans to complain. Instead, it’s for them to either put their collective shoulder to the wheel and commit fully to defend the South come what may – or take the hint, get out of Dodge ASAP, and make sure they don’t have to pay the consequences if South Korea is wrong.

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