Following Up: The Democrats’ Trump/Ukraine/Impeachment Hypocrisy is Now Complete

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Adam Schiff, Alexander Vindman, Biden, Bill Taylor, Bob Mendendez, Democrats, Donald Trump, Eric Swalwell, Fiona Hill, Following Up, foreign policy, globalists, impeachment, Jeanne Shaheen, Mainstream Media, Marie Yovanovitch, Nancy Pelosi, national security, natural gas, Nordstream 2, Russia, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

As known by RealityChek regulars, I’ve devoted two posts lately (here and here, and here) to the puzzling matter of President Biden’s policies toward the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline. The reason: For months during the last half of the Trump administration, any number of leading Democrats and globalist U.S. diplomats and other officials had justified the first effort to impeach the former President largely because he allegedly threatened key U.S. national security interests by hinging American military aid to Ukraine to its government’s cooperation in investigating charges against Mr. Biden (then a likely Democratic presidential candidate and therefore political rival) and his family.

Indeed, the first Article of Impeachment expressly stated that Trump “compromised” and “injured” national security for precisely this reason.

Mr. Biden never explicitly accused Trump of comprising American security by weakening ties to a supposedly crucial ally. But he certainly insinuated comission of this “high crime or misdemeanor” by charging that Trump “betrayed this nation.”

So I believed it was worth spotlighting that the Biden administration had for months been moving toward a decision that would both unquestionably endanger Ukraine and enrich Vladimir Putin’s Russia – whose apparent designs on Ukraine have prompted the United States (including the Trump administration) to provide it with various kinds of weapons and other military supplies to begin with. That decision: nixing significant sanctions on companies building the pipeline, which would transport Russian natural gas directly to Europe, in the process bypassing the previous transit route through Ukraine and enabling Russia to avoid the need to pay literally billions of dollars’ worth of tolls to its neighbor. And yesterday, the Biden administration made the move official.

For the record, I don’t consider Ukraine a vital or even important ally of the United States (for reasons explained, e.g., here). But Americans were told consistently during the first Trump impeachment hearings and actual proceedings that it was, making at least ironic a Democratic administration’s pursuit of a policy bound to enrich the country threatening Ukraine – and at Ukraine’s expense.

And at least as interesting, during the period that Mr. Biden has made his Nordstream intention clear, and since the final decision was announced, it’s become clear that most of the Democratic and diplomatic voices that touted Ukraine’s centraility to America’s own safety didn’t believe their own claims either. And ditto for the Mainstream Media news organizations that breathlessly reported and even endorsed them.

How do I know this? Because none of Trump’s main accusers along these lines seems to have had anything to day about Mr. Biden’s unmistakably anti-Ukraine decision. And my charge is easily verifiable. Just Google “Nordstream” and any of the following names: Alexander Vindman, Marie Yovanovitch, Fiona Hill, Bill Taylor, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell. In various roles, these folks were leading the charge to dump Trump because of his Ukraine record and the related claim that he was a ” Manchurian” candidate and then President who won the presidency by accepting Putin’s help during the campaign in return for doing the Russian dictator’s bidding.

And do you know what these Google searches come up with? Not a peep of protest about Mr. Biden’s Nordstream decision. Incidentally, some of these figures have been commenting some on Ukraine-related issues. Vindman, for example, co-authored a Washington Post op-ed piece in March urging the West as a whole to toughen its stance against Russia’s “blatant violations of human rights and unrestrained repression of opponents both at home and abroad.” He urged Germany “in particular [to] reconsider its business ties to Moscow — specifically the Nord Stream 2 natural-gas pipeline which is nearing completion” and the United States and the United Kingdom to strengthen existing Nordstream sanctions. But nothing about Biden indifference to the matter even though it was already becoming apparent – and certainly nothing since.

Three weeks later, after the President imposed sanctions on Russia for cyberattacks and election meddling, Schiff – the lead House impeachment manager in 2019 – noted that “While appropriate, sanctions alone will not be enough to deter Russia’s misbehavior. We must strengthen our own cyber defenses, take further action to condemn Russia’s human rights abuses, and, working in concert with our Allies and partners in Europe, deter further Russian military aggression.” But he said nothing about Nordstream at all.

At least as important, I can’t find a single instance of a Mainstream Media journalist even seeking the Nordstream views of either figure, or of their other impeachment-period Ukraine-philes.  

Some Democrats have condemned the Mr. Biden’s Nordstream decision – notably, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Menendez of New Jersey and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire. But although both voted to remove Trump from office in part because his Ukraine actions jeopardized national security (see here and here), neither mentioned taking any punitive measures against Mr. Biden even though in the long run his Nordstream decision could undermine Ukraine’s independence far more than Trump’s brief suspension of the arms aid.     

It’s true that the Ukraine national security charge wasn’t the only accusation leveled against Trump in 2019. He was also impeached for violating the law in holding up the military assistance Congress approved for the country.  But as pointed out in this post, nothing in the statute in question regards such presidential actions as impeachable. Certainly they’re far from the first course of action. Instead, the law specifically instructs Congressional plaintiffs to bring a lawsuit in a U.S. District Court.

As for the claim that Trump abused the power of the Presidency by launching an official investigation of a political opponent for purely political reasons, the revelations since of Hunter Biden’s activities in Ukraine during his father’s vice presidency show how premature – to put it kindly – that conclusion was.   

Aa a result, given the outsized role played by the Ukraine charge’s substance, the indifference shown this year to that country’s fate by Trump’s 2019 prosecutors strengthens the case that the first impeachment pretty thoroughly abused power itself.  The one silver lining (and it’s not negligible):  At least the Democrats and other Never Trumper globalists aren’t beating the Ukraine war drums for now.

Im-Politic: Our Dysfunctional Watchdog of Democracy

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Anthony S. Fauci, Barry Meier, Biden, Buzzfeed.com, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, democracy, Donald Trump, facemasks, Im-Politic, journalism, lockdowns, Mainstream Media, masks, Russia, Steele dossier, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Thomas Jefferson, Trump-Russia, Wuhan virus, Yellow journalism

A New York Times article posted this past weekend strongly reinforces a suspicion that I’ve held for some time about the title of most worrisome – because largely neglected – existing threat to American democracy. It’s not demagogues who get elected to high (or even the highest) public office. It’s not white supremacists or Antifa. It’s not voter fraud or voter suppression. It’s not Russian leader Vladimir Putin. It’s not even the kind of disinformation and misinformation and even election interference that he and other foreign dictators (like China’s Xi Jinping) have engaged in.

Instead it’s our own Mainstream Media – including the gargantuan social media platforms that have come to play such a huge role in determining what news Americans see, watch, and hear.

Why are these news organizations so dangerous? For two main reasons. First, their democracy-subverting activities are much more subtle and therefore harder to identify than those of the above culprits. Second, their ever-growing partisanship and arrogance is destroying what has long been relied on as the nation’s fail-safe mechanism – a watchdog press.

To be fair, this idea has always been problematic, even though throughout U.S. history, prominent Americans have made statements like “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost” (Thomas Jefferson) and “Democracy Dies in Darkness” (the Washington Post).

Yes, despite the bedrock Constitutional system of separation of powers, it’s been essential for some influential force outside government to “guard the guardians.” But embedded in the very consequent need for private ownership (to ensure that the press can independently monitor the government) is the danger that these owners will solely or mainly use their power to further their own particular interests, not society’s.

All of which is to say that we’ve long had a national conundrum to deal with. But it doesn’t seem unreasonable to conclude that, once journalism clearly exited its sensationalistic “Yellow” phase and (probably in the years following Wold War II), started acting like a profession that needed to embody and uphold standards of accuracy and objectivity, the major media met its watchdog responsibilities fairly well – over both government and the private sector.

What the author of the Times piece, former journalist Barry Meier, makes clear, is that there’s not only more reason than ever to fear that the commitment to objectivity is rapidly weakening (and these fears have been amply justified lately, as I’ve reported here). There’s also more reason than ever to fear that the kind of commitment to accountability watchdogs must accept – inevitably entailing an acknowledgement of legitimate outside criticism and the imperative of correcting mistakes – seriously is fading as well.

These worries have been triggered by two specific observations made by Meier about the Mainstream Media’s handling of the charges that former President Trump colluded with Russia to ensure victory in the 2016 election. As Meier recounts, these accusations were supercharged by reports that a former British super-spy had uncovered evidence that Trump’s personal misbehavior had exposed him to Russian blackmail, and resulted in his turning into a latterday Manchurian Candidate who would be forced to do Moscow’s bidding.

The infamous “Steele dossier” that supposedly made this case was published by a website called Buzzfeed.com in January, 2017 – shortly before Trump’s inauguration – and although no serious efforts at confirmation or even finding any supporting evidence were made, “countless articles, television shows, books, tweets and blog posts about it appeared.” (The dossier also formed part of the basis of the FBI’s request to a special U.S. court to spy on the Trump campaign in 2016, and Bureau Director James Comey’s March, 2017 disclosure that this investigation was continuing poured additional fuel on the Trump Russia fire.)

By 2019, Meier goes on, the Steele dossier had been exposed as a bogus hatchet job. But by that time, of course, the collusion firestorm had dominated the Trump presidency, along with equally offbase news coverage of his administration, and surely compromised its ability to govern effectively.

Why this prolonged media focus? In large measure, as Meier explains, because “It was easy for many journalists to believe that Mr. Trump would do anything to win, even — given his stance with…Putin — collude with Russia.” Indeed, as the author observes, they picked up this ball and ran with it even though “Steele said that his information needed to be confirmed….”

This flagrant anti-Trump bias was bad enough. Much worse, though was the media’s response once the dossier had been debunked. In Meier’s words:

“[A] few reporters who had written about the dossier had backed away from it. ‘Some people have wanted to maintain that the dossier is checking out when, as far as I can tell, it hasn’t,’ said Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News. He was in the minority. When Erik Wemple of The Washington Post wrote a series of columns about the media infatuation with the dossier, most journalists he contacted either defended their work or ignored his inquiries.”

Even though Meier, Isikoff, and Wemple all work for Mainstream Media organizations themselves, these revelations are more disturbing because they cast doubt on these news organization’s willingness, either individually or collectively, to admit that a major preoccupation of theirs that shaped American politics for years was an utter crock. And in a similar vein, they’re grounds for great skepticism that these same media will produce accurate post-mortems on the actual actions by governments or by individual politicians that conformed with this Get Trump obsession.     

The reason for this reluctance is obvious: Their credibility – their most precious asset, even in this hyperpartisan era – would be devastated. But if these powerful companies won’t self-correct or correct the records of others – and in some systematic, comprehensive way that can make a difference, not in dribs and drabs – especially on a matter of this importance, then their watchdog reputation gets thrown out the window.

And as far as I’m concerned, good riddance. But if the big national media can’t be relied on to play this role responsibly, who or what can? And can a democracy worthy of the name long survive without actors that can credibly set the record straight before the archives are fully open to historians years and even decades from now?

Moreover, we’re getting an example of how such flawed Mainstream Media performance could be a literally fatal flaw – and on mass level.  Specifically,  evidence has appeared throughout the CCP Virus pandemic that sweeping lockdown- and mask-wearing-centric mitigation strategy pursued in most of the country at the behest of the public health establishment was completely and tragically mistaken. (See, e.g., here.)  America’s major national news organizations have obviously bought in to the stay-at-home and mask-up claims, as shown, for example, by their near canonization of leading lockdowns proponent Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the federal government’s head immunologist and now President Biden’s top medical adviser. 

I’d like to believe that if conclusive evidence emerges invalidating this virus-fighting approach, and supporting measures with potentially greater effectiveness during future pandemics, the news would be trumpeted all over the Mainstream Media even if the federal government tried to hush it up.  But as of now, expressing the hope that the real story might become known looks like nothing so much as practicing quackery.  

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Biden’s Real Afghanistan Mistake

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Afghanistan, Biden, border security, Democrats, Donald Trump, jihadism, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Putin, Russia, September 11, Tajikistan, Taliban, terrorism

Isn’t President Biden supposed to be a foreign policy whiz? If so, why has he just stuck the United States with the worst of all possible worlds with his announcement Wednesday that all American military forces would be withdrawn from Afghanistan by September 11?

Mr. Biden’s big mistake isn’t promising to pull all the troops out by a date certain. It’s definitely a mistake, for all the (obvious) reasons noted by critics. Specifically, it tells the fanatic Taliban insurgents that if they just wait a few more months, the only obstacle they’d have left to taking over the country (and gaining the capacity to give the world’s jihadists all the kinds of advantages they enjoyed from the support of a sympathetic sovereign state, a la before the first September 11) will be the current, clearly ineffective Afghan government and its military. (America’s allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – NATO – have stated that they’re withdrawing their troops, too.)

But as I’ve written previously (see, e.g., here), the reestablishment of a national terrorist base in Afghanistan need not expose the United States to devastating terrorist attacks once again. The reason? Because “fighting ’em there so we don’t face ’em here” has always been sounder in theory than in reality. After all, “fighting ’em there” means chasing extremist groups around the Middle East for as long as that completely dysfunctional region keeps producing them – i.e., a very long time. 

At the same time, I’ve continued, there’s always been a way to prevent “facing ’em here” – by more effectively securing America’s borders, so that they can’t get “here” to begin with.

And here’s where we come to the President’s biggest mistake: Not only is he pulling the troops out of Afghanistan without improving border security. He’s pulling them out while substantially weakening border security with his raft of Open Borders-friendly immigration policies. So jihadists soon will both be free to resume organizing and training in Afghanistan and face a much easier challenge slipping back into the United States.

What he should be doing instead (and Donald Trump didn’t emphasize this crucial combination, either) is what I’ve been recommending for years: Pursuing the goal of keeping the Taliban off balance by keeping small contingents of U.S. and allied special forces units in Afghanistan to conduct harassment and disruption operations while putting into place the tough measures needed to make America’s borders truly secure. Once the latter have been completed, the American soldiers could safely leave. This strategy is much more promising than any tried to date because not only is controlling the Middle East intrinsically difficult – at best – but controlling America’s own borders is clearly far easier.

Interestingly, Mr. Biden himself clearly recognizes that the U.S. military’s Afghanistan mission hasn’t been accomplished completely enough to justify a complete withdrawal. That’s why he promised to “reorganize our counterterrorism capabilities and the substantial assets in the region to prevent reemergence of terrorists — of the threat to our homeland from over the horizon.” and to “hold the Taliban accountable for its commitment not to allow any terrorists to threaten the United States or its allies from Afghan soil.”

What’s missing so far, though, is any explanation of how he’ll “refine” America’s strategy “to monitor and disrupt significant terrorist threats” that could emanate from that country. The monitoring part arguably could work, given the remote surveillance capabilities of the U.S. military and intelligence community. But the disruption part? Without U.S. troops on the ground? Good luck with that, along with holding the Taliban accountable in any meaningful way. For the nearby bases that would be needed to host the American force that the President presumably believes would be on call to do the disrupting etc – at least in a timely way – simply aren’t available.

(Actually, there’s one intriguing possibility: Tajikistan, which borders the eastern Afghanistan region where jihadists have been strongest. But as the afore-linked Politico article notes, it’s “heavily dependent on Russia economically,” and Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s cooperation would be needed. Since its own ill-fated Afghanistan war decades ago, it’s been obvious that Moscow is also strongly opposed to any increase in Islamic extremists’ presence near its own southern borders. But the President and the rest of his party seem to equate any cooperation with Russia with – alleged – Trump-style collusion, so that option seems to be out unless his party’s Never Putin-ers relent.)

As the Politico piece observes, Mr. Biden is putting all of America’s Afghanistan chips on what national security types call an “offshore counterterror approach” – and has long advocated this strategy since his vice presidential days. What’s supremely ironic is that the best offshore counterterror approach by far has always entailed focusing tightly on the entirely feasible task of securing America’s own borders – and that the President has been bent on achieving exactly the opposite.

Following Up: A Lippmann Gap Still Could be a Big Threat to Biden’s Foreign Policy

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allies, America First, Biden, China, defense budget, Donald Trump, Following Up, Lippmann Gap, Russia, Theodore Roosevelt

Late last month, I worried here that President Biden could open up a dangerous “Lippmann Gap” in U.S. foreign and national security policy by proposing a defense budget incapable of supporting his expansive ambitions. Yesterday, the administration came out with its first official budget request, and although it lacks the detail to justify firm conclusions, I’m still worried.

The nub of the problem is this: The President has repeatedly announced his intention to reverse course from his predecessor’s America First strategy and return U.S. foreign policy to its decades-long pre-Trump sweeping global activism and engagement. And since Mr. Biden’s “America is back” declarations clearly entail at the least a determination to fill an allegedly vital gap left by Donald Trump, and probably to pursue an even more expansive agenda, logic and common sense alone dictate that he request much more defense spending than at present.

It’s true that Pentagon budget and the military forces it supports are by no means the only tools available to the nation to carry out its international aims. It’s also true that defense spending can be made more effective without boosting overall spending levels by spending existing funds more efficiently and wisely. The latter’s potential won’t start to be revealed until the more detailed budget request is made later this year.

But for now, what is known is that Mr. Biden will ask for some 1.6 percent more for the Defense Department proper for the coming budget year (fiscal 2022) than the resources allotted to the Pentagon during the Trump administration’s final year (fiscal 2021). When adding in national security funds not provided to the Department itself (mainly for maintaining the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile – which is handled by the Energy Department), the Biden increase is also about two percent over the funding appropriated during the final Trump year.  (This figure is calculated from here and here.)

Knowledgeable observers of defense spending may note that these Biden fiscal 2022 requests are considerably bigger than the Trump fiscal 2021 requests. These sought just 0.1 percent more for the Pentagon itself than was spent in 2020, and 0.34 percent more for that larger national security budget including the non-Pentagon money. (These figures are found here and calculated from here and here.) 

But Mr. Biden charged that the Trump national security agenda was sorely inadequate. So it’s natural that he’d want more military spending than his predecessor. What’s noteworthy, however, is that the Biden request isn’t that much more. In fact, if inflation takes its expected course this year, this latest military spending proposal will leave the Defense Department and the other agencies responsible for national security with less money when adjusting for rising prices than they spent last year.

Moreover, even in terms of “top-line” spending figures, this Biden request is hardly the last word. The Democratic Congress is practically certain to make further cuts.

Again, wiser spending could fill some of this gap. But what the Biden administration has said about its priorities isn’t all that encouraging, either. Just one example (but a big one): The administration stated yesterday that its military spending request “prioritizes the need to counter the threat from China as the [Defense] Department’s top challenge. The Department would also seek to deter destabilizing behavior by Russia.”

It’s still possible, as suggested above, that moving funds into U.S. China- and Russia-related accounts from lower priority accounts could accomplish these aims even though overall outlays decline in real terms. But in the very next sentence, we learn that the administration isn’t confident that these moves would be the answer (assuming they’re even being contemplated). For it claims that

“Leveraging the Pacific Deterrence Initiative and working together with allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, DOD [the Defense Department] would ensure that the United States builds the concepts, capabilities, and posture necessary to meet these challenges.”

That is, help from allied countries supposedly will be crucial to countering the Chinese and Russian threats. But not only have these countries skimped on their own defense for decades. For the time being, the President has decided not to press them overly hard to share more of the defense burden (as documented in my original “Lippmann Gap” post).

To repeat: I’m not calling for more U.S. military spending. In fact, I’d like to see Pentagon budgets shrink. But this position reflects my judgment that the nation can be adequately safe and sound by doing less in the international sphere. As long as President Biden wants to do more – not only than me, but also than Donald Trump – the only responsible policy would be to boost military spending. Anything else amounts to inverting former President Theodore Roosevelt’s approach of speaking softly and carrying a big stick – which history teaches never, ever ends well.

Following Up: Biden’s Cave-In on Ukraine, Russia, and Germany and Why It Matters

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Adam Schiff, alliances, allies, America First, Angela Merkel, Democrats, Donald Trump, energy, Eric Swalwell, Following Up, Germany, impeachment, NATO, natural gas, Nord Stream 2, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Russia, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

Earlier this month, I wrote about the weirdness of the Biden administration’s seemingly blasé attitude toward Ukraine’s security, given the President’s long record of support (including military aid) for its independence from an expansionist Russia, and especially given the determination of the entire Democratic party to impeach Donald Trump largely because his allegedly blasé attitude toward Ukraine security treasonously endangered America’s own security.

Today I can report that the situation has grown even weirder – and in the process, raised major questions about the administration’s view of smooth alliance relations as a top foreign policy priority, and about its adults-in-the-room reputation itself for foreign policy competence itself.

As explained in my March 17 post, the issue at hand is the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, That’s a natural gas transport project that the Trump administration opposed because it threatened to, among other problems, increase Europe’s energy dependence on Vladimir Putin’s Russia, provide this aggressive autocrat with a big new source of revenue and therefore of funds for his military, and ace Ukraine itself out of natural gas earnings, thereby weakening its economy and ultimately its ability to defend itself.

So why is Nord Stream 2 being built? Two main reasons. First, lots of big German (and other European) companies have been involved in its financing and nearly finished construction, and will profit from its operation. (See here and here for good summaries.) Further, the German government is obliged to cover the multi-billion dollar losses that would result from cancellation. Second, Chancellor Angela Merkel;s government views the project as a means of keeping Germany, and Europe in general, economically engaged, influential, and therefore at peace with Russia.

The Germans also say they need the new gas because of its plans to de-nuclearize and de-carbonize its economy. Berlin also has the option of filling the looming energy supply gap by purchasing more gas from the United States than at present.  But Germany seems more impressed by the fact that higher transport costs make the U.S. product more expensive than Moscow’s.

You’d think, therefore, that Germany would be facing heavy pressure to cancel the pipeline from the Biden administration and especially from the impeachment enthusiasts in the Democrats’ Congressional ranks – like California’s Adam Schiff, the lead House manager for the first Trump impeachment trial, who described Ukraine’s sovereignty and safety as nothing less than a vital interest of the United States.

Not a peep about Nord Stream has been heard from Schiff or from other Trump impeachment hard-liners, like California Democratic Congress Member Eric Swalwell – confirming suspicions that their main concerns all along during both the Trump-Russia collusion and impeachment dramas were somehow ousting Trump for purely partisan or possibly simply deranged reasons, not safeguarding America’s security or democracy.

But Mr. Biden’s stance is more puzzling and disturbing – the latter since Presidents matter so much more than individual legislators. As my earlier post noted, his administration has seemed more relaxed about Nord Stream even though it, too, has claimed to harbor major concerns about Ukraine’s fate.

In fact, as recently as a few days ago, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken declared that “President (Joe) Biden has been very clear, he believes the pipeline is a bad idea, bad for Europe, bad for the United States, ultimately it is in contradiction to the EU’s own security goals, It has the potential to undermine the interests of Ukraine, Poland and a number of close partners and allies.”

Yet just this morning, when asked whether Washington could (and by extension, actually would) do anything to stop Nord Stream 2, Blinken “Well, ultimately that is up to those who are trying to build the pipeline and complete it. We just wanted to make sure that our … opposition to the pipeline was well understood.”

In other words, “La de dah.”

Such quick and complete turnabouts by America’s top diplomat are disturbing in and of themselves, but the real problems with the Biden Nord Stream stance go far beyond the impotence claimed (and therefore advertised) by Blinken.

After all, avoiding a showdown with Germany on the pipeline would be understandable and even smart if Mr. Biden really didn’t view Ukraine’s security, and/or Russia’s aims and power, as terribly important in the first place, or if (as I offered as a possibility in my previous post), this decision reflected some broader administration conclusion that relations with Russia should be improved in order to outflank the stronger and more dangerous Chinese.

But not only is the President a strong believer in deterring Russian designs on Europe. He recently seemed to go out of his way to antagonize Putin by calling him a “killer.”

So the most reasonable conclusion to draw is that, at least for now, Mr. Biden is so determined to keep America’s wealthiest European ally happy that he’s given it a veto on a matter he himself has deemed a major U.S. interest. Worse, he seems indifferent to Trump’s (correct) complaint that Germany evidently has no problem with enriching Moscow while continuing to rely on the U.S. military to defend it from Russia. This doesn’t necessarily leave the President guilty of carrying out an “America Last” foreign policy. But it makes you wonder how far he’ll drift from from putting America First.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Return of the Lippmann Gap?

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alliances, allies, Biden, burden sharing, China, defense budget, Democrats, Donald Trump, Europe, globalism, Japan, Lippmann Gap, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, progressives, Russia, soft power, South Korea, Walter Lippmann

No, it’s not the title of a newly discovered Philip Roth novel. Instead, the ”Lippmann Gap” is a phrase coined by scholars to describe the result of a country’s aims in foreign policy exceeding the means available to pursue them.

It was named after the twentieth century journalist, philosopher, and frequent adviser to leading politicians Walter Lippmann, who called attention to its frequency and dangers in his classic 1943 book, U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic. (P.S. In this post, I described a major flaw in Lippmann’s thinking, but he was right about the importance of establishing a sustainable relationship between a country’s ambitions and its ability to realize them.)

Troublingly for Americans, and for other countries that have long relied on the United States for protection, evidence has emerged that the gap could soon return in a big way under the Biden administration – whose principals, including the President, are typically described as diplomatic “adults in the room” making the welcome return to power after the dangerous tumult of the Trump years.

The evidence consists of reporting (see here and here) that the administration later this spring will submit a defense budget request that seeks no new funding over last year’s levels. Of course, this reporting may turn out to be inaccurate. Or the Biden-ites could still change their plans even if it is currently accurate. In addition, negotiations with Congress, which needs to approve these plans, could result in some increases.

Moreover, a flat defense budget request is by no means necessarily bad news for anyone, except for whichever defense contractors lose expected sales to the Pentagon. For example, the Defense Department has long been notorious for wasteful spending. And adopting different priorities, or more efficient weapons and other equipment, could well provide America and at least most of its allies with just as much “bang for the buck” as previously, as changing circumstances produce a shift in deployments from missions judged to have lost some of their importance to missions seen to have become more significant. In fact, I’ve long favored major cuts precisely because the nation spends way too much seeking objectives – like shoring up the defense of Western Europe – which haven’t been necessary in decades, and indeed in theory create greater dangers than they can address.

But there’s no reason to think that such considerations would be driving forces behind a reported Biden defense spending freeze, or near-freeze. And this is where the Lippmann Gap comes in. Because there’s every reason to believe that Mr. Biden intends to expand America’s foreign defense commitments on net, and because in at least one major reason of concern, the main potential enemy (China) keeps strengthening its militaty and has been acting more aggressively in recent years, and because a major object of China’s expansionist aims, Taiwan, has become the manufacturer of the world’s most advanced semiconductors – the computer chips that serve as the brains of an explosively growing number of civilian and defense-related products.

What other conclusions can one draw from the President’s repeated globalist assertions that “America is back,” and that in particular, it means to reassure allies around the world that allegedly become unnerved about U.S. reliability after four years of being (rightly, in my view) harangued by Trump attacks on their own skimpy defense spending, and threats to leave them in the lurch unless their alleged free-riding ends? (P.S. – not only weren’t these threats carried out, but as I noted in this article, in some noteworthy ways, the former President actually bolstered America’s alliance-related foreign military deployments.  Mr. Biden, meanwhile, has decided, at least for now, to let Europe’s members of NATO – the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance – Japan, and South Korea all off the burden-sharing hook, as made clear here, here, and here.)

Indeed, a flat or even reduced Biden defense budget request might come about in part from pressure from Democratic progressives to cut spending significantly. Fifty House members of his party have just urged him to reduce the defense budget “significantly.” And their rationale has nothing to do with the aforementioned potentially sensible reasons for cuts. Their case for a smaller U.S. military emphasizes that

“Hundreds of billions of dollars now directed to the military would have greater return if invested in diplomacy, humanitarian aid, global public health, sustainability initiatives, and basic research. We must end the forever wars, heal our veterans, and re-orient towards a holistic conception of national security that centers public health, climate change and human rights.”

I’m all for many of these particular aims, and also strongly support developing new definitions of national security and how to achieve and maintain it. But the Biden administration seems likeliest not to redefine national security significantly, but at most add these new domestic-oriented objectives on to the existing list of traditional goals. Therefore, if the progressives get even some of what they want, the effect inevitably would be to assume that “diplomacy, humanitarian aid, global public health, sustainability initiatives, and basic research” can substitute adequately for military force in carrying out an American foreign policy agenda that’s growing, not contracting.

Whether or not I believe this (I don’t), or you the individual reader believes, this is beside the point. U.S. adversaries seem unlikely to be impressed with these forms of what political scientists call “soft power.” Hence China keeps boosting its own military budget, and Russia responded to Obama administration Europe troops cuts by invading Crimea and attacking Ukraine.

U.S. allies are reacting skeptically, too. For example, European leaders evidently worry that Trump’s election revealed a strong popular U.S. desire to shed many global defense burdens that the Biden victory hasn’t eliminated. Therefore, there’s been increasing talk, anyway, in their ranks about reducing reliance on U.S. hard power by building up their own. And as I’ve repeatedly written, that would be great for Americans. But it’s sure not part of any Biden plans that have been made public.

A defense budget request fully reflecting the President’s bold “America is back” vow wouldn’t make me especially happy. But it would be far better than one that reopens or widens (depending on your views of current U.S. capabilities) a Lippmann Gap – and indicates to both domestic and global audiences that he really means to carry out globalism on the cheap.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Is Biden Going Trump-y on Russia and Ukraine?

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Adam Schiff, alliances, Atlantic Council, Biden, China, Democrats, Donald Trump, energy, Frederick Kempe, Germany, globalism, impeachment, natural gas, Nord Stream 2, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

Something weird’s going on with the Biden administration, Ukraine, and Russia, and it could eventually put lots of Democrats in an awfully awkward position.

I’m old enough to remember when helping the eastern European country maintain its independence against Russia’s aggression was considered so important by leading Democrats, along with U.S. foreign policy establishmentarians, that it justified impeaching Donald Trump. For allegedly he illegally slow-walked Congressionally approved military aid to the Ukrainians – allegedly because he wanted to force Ukraine’s government to help him dig up political dirt on then soon-to-be Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

As a result, for months, Americans heard again and again how critical Ukraine’s security was to America’s own security, and how Trump’s actions therefore endangered U.S. national security. In the words of lead House impeachment trial manager Adam Schiff (D-California):

“[T]he military aid that we provide, Ukraine helps to protect and advance American national security interests in the region and beyond. America has an abiding interest in stemming Russian expansionism and resisting any nation’s efforts to remake the map of Europe by dent of military force, even as we have tens of thousands of troops stationed there. Moreover, as one witness put it during our impeachment inquiry, the United States aids Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia over there and we don’t have to fight Russia here.”

Mr. Biden has never gone quite this far in public, either as former President Obama’s vice presidential point man on Ukraine, as presidential candidate, or as chief executive himself. Nonetheless, he continually pressed his former boss to provide more and better weapons to the Ukrainians than Obama was willing to approve, indicating he, too, considered Ukraine’s security closely related to America’s own.

Indeed, last year, his campaign issued a statement declaring that “Ukraine’s success will contribute to a more stable and secure Europe, which is in America’s interest.”

More recently, however, President Biden has been sending out significantly different signals. For example, his statement last month marking the seventh anniversary of Russia’s “illegal invasion of Ukraine,” he pledged to “stand with Ukraine against Russia’s aggressive acts” and condemned Moscow for violating “international law, the norms by which modern countries engage one another,” but didn’t draw any direct connections between Ukraine’s fate and America’s.

More concretely, Mr. Biden has been looking pretty slow-walking-ly himself on an issue vital to Ukraine’s prosperity: preventing Russia and Germany from completing a natural gas pipeline that would bypass that country, deprive it of billions of dollars worth annually in badly needed revenues from transit fees from existing pipelines across its own territory, heighten its vulnerability to Russian gas blackmail (as candidate Biden noted himself last year), and increase Europe’s energy dependence on Vladimir Putin’s regime to boot. His press secretary has called the Nord Stream 2 project a “bad deal for Europe.” But the project is nearly finished, and his administration isn’t displaying much urgency. As State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters blandly, “we are always looking at pipeline activity that would be sanctionable, so if we see activity that meets that threshold we are prepared to follow the law.”

Not that the administration doesn’t have some good reasons for caution on the Nord Stream 2 project. After all, improving relations with allies like Germany, which were strained by Trump’s “transactional” approach, is a top Biden priority.

Perhaps more important, and revealing, Mr. Biden might be reacting to signs of ever closer ties between Russia and China, since responding to the latter’s rise and increasingly aggressive behavior is also a U.S. priority now. Indeed, just last weekend, leading think tanker Frederick Kempe, whose Atlantic Council sees the world in precisely the kinds of globalist ways as the President, cited growing Sino-Russian cooperation as one reason for America moving away from an indiscriminately anti-Moscow hard line to “a more strategic approach” that would “combine more attractive elements of engagement with more sophisticated forms of containment alongside partners.”

During his first presidential campaign, Trump responded to complaints about his supposedly excessive and even corrupting regard for Russia by asking “If we could get along with Russia, wouldn’t that be a good thing, instead of a bad thing?” and noting possible benefits like defeating ISIS jihadists in the Middle East. No remotely comparable statement has come from the Biden administration, but its deeds on the Ukraine-Russia front are starting to send a similar message. Expect the silence from the Democrats’ ostensible Ukraine hawks and Russia hawks to be deafening.

Making News: Back on National Radio Tonight, a New Podcast…& More!

Tags

Angela Merkel, Cato Journal, CCP Virus, China, collusion, coronavirus, COVID 19, election 2020, Germany, Gordon G. Chang, Joe Biden, journalism, Making News, manufacturing, Market Wrap with Moe Ansari, natural gas, Nord Stream 2, presidential debate, recession, recovery, reshoring, Russia, stimulus package, Ted Galen Carpenter, The John Batchelor Show, Trade, trade war, Trump, Trump-Russia, Wuhan virus

I’m pleased to announce that I’m scheduled to return to national radio tonight when I guest on The John Batchelor Show.  The subjects for John, co-host Gordon G. Chang, and me will be China, trade, manufacturing, and the election.

The pandemic is still forcing John and Gordon to pre-record segments, so I’m not yet sure about air-time.  But it seems that you can listen live to the show on-line at this all-purpose link starting at 9 PM EST.  And of course, if you can’t tune in, I’ll post a link to the podcast as soon as one’s available.

In addition, yesterday, I was interviewed on the popular Market Wrap with Moe Ansari radio show on the election (including the debate!), trade policy, the future of the entire U.S. economy, the fate of CCP Virus relief legislation, and a surprising recent example of collusion with Russia.  To listen to the podcast, click here and then on the show with my name on it.  My segment starts at about the 23:38 mark.

Finally, my friend Ted Galen Carpenter has just published in the Cato Journal a fascinating piece on the history of U.S. news coverage of U.S.-China relations – which certainly has seen its ups and downs in recent decades.  It was great, moreover, to see Ted cite two of my writings along the way.  Here’s the link.

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

Glad I Didn’t Say That: So Who Exactly is Colluding with Russia?

Tags

allies, Angela Merkel, energy, Germany, Glad I Didn't Say That!, Nord Stream 2, Russia, The New York Times, Trump, Vladimir Putin

““President Trump, for reasons that remain one of the top mysteries of his administration, has largely closed his eyes to Mr. Putin’s serial transgressions….”

—The New York Times, September 22, 2020

““The surest sign of European anger [over Russian trangressions] would be cancellation of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, a gas conduit from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea. But the project is nearly completed, and Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, is reluctant to take a step that would be costly for Europe and that would look like bowing to threats from the Trump administration, which has demanded cancellation of the pipeline.

– The New York Times, September 22, 2020

 

(Sources: “Vladimir Putin Thinks He Can Get Away With Anything,” The New York Times, September 22, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/22/opinion/vladimir-putin-navalny-poisoning.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage )

Im-Politic: The Globalist Never Trump Blob Shows its True Colors

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America First, Biden, Blob, Byron York, democracy, election interference, globalism, globalists, Im-Politic, Michael McFaul, Never Trumper, Russia, Senate Intelligence Committee, social media, The American Conservative, The Atlantic, Trump, Twitter, Washington Examiner

If you believed that you’d been wronged on social media because someone had erroneously described your tweet on purpose, wouldn’t you stand by that tweet or post? Apparently not if you’re Michael McFaul. At least not for a while.

And his activity on Twitter in the last few days is worth highlighting because even though you haven’t heard of him, McFaul is a card-carrying member of the bipartisan globalist U.S. foreign policy Blob. A recent tweet of his, moreover, epitomized the views of this group of current bureaucrats, former officials, Mainstream Media journalists, and think tankers that even President Trump’s partial implementation of a fundamentally different foreign policy strategy he calls “America First” poses such a mortal danger to both national and international security that any means justify the end of defeating it.

In addition, McFaul’s reaction to criticism also adds to the thoroughly Orwellian spectacle that’s been staged this last week by these and Never Trumpers in politics in (a) charging (based entirely on anonymous sources) that Mr. Trump has privately expressed contempt for Americans servicemen and women who have risked their lives for their country; (b) claiming that this unsubstantiated report, published Thursday in The Atlantic, proves the President’s contemptible character; and (c) insisting that some or all of the Atlantic piece’s allegations have been confirmed because they’ve been repeated by other anonymous sources to other journalists. (BTW, for all anyone knows – and for all these other journalists know – the sources they’re using may be the same accusers.)

As indicated above, McFaul is not your every day, garden variety tweeter. He’s considered a leading academic authority on Russia who served in the Obama administration for five years, including two as ambassador to Moscow. He’s got nearly 517,000 followers. He also tweets a lot: 85,000 to date! (Almost as much as yours truly!) And if you spend more than thirty seconds on his feed, you’ll see that he really doesn’t like the President or his policies.

Which is his right. It’s also his right to have tweeted the day the Atlantic article came out that “Trump has lost the Intelligence Community. He has lost the State Department. He has lost the military. How can he continue to serve as our Commander in Chief?”

But Washington Examiner political correspondent Byron York was just as entitled to respond on Twitter the following morning (Friday) that “This tweet has disturbing undertones in our democratic system. Trump is commander-in-chief because he was elected president, and he will remain commander-in-chief as long as he is president, for a second term if re-elected.” 

McFaul, not surprisingly was outraged. He tweeted back to York that evening : “Byron, you know DAMN well that I was not advocating a coup! You know damn well that I support democracy 100%, at home and abroad. Of course Americans voters, including 2 million federal workers, determine who the CiC is. I tolerate such nonsense from trolls. But from you? Wow.”

But here’s an even bigger “Wow.” When you clicked on the York cite of the original tweet, Twitter told you it was no longer available. McFaul had deleted it.

The plot sickened yesterday afternoon when McFaul himself evidently recognized how feckless his actions looked. He sent out the following Tweet, which added a sentence to the original: “Trump has lost the Intelligence Community. He has lost the State Department. He has lost the military. How can he continue to serve as our Commander in Chief? Our soldiers, diplomats, and agents deserve better. We deserve better. #Vote.”

Which returns us – and him – to Legitimate Opinion-Land. But McFaul needed prompting, as several of his followers and others had previously asked him why he deleted the original if was so indignant over York’s comments. Moreover, McFaul is hardly inarticulate. Why didn’t he include this qualifier in the original?

Even stranger: In a follow up tweet, McFaul stated “I retweeted with a clarifying sentence. 50,000 + people understood exactly what I meant. But trying to be more precise to the handful who I confused or deliberately distorted my views. But I know @ByronYork personally. There’s NO WAY he could believe that I’d support a coup.” In other words, lots of furious backtracking for a confused or mendacious handful.

Or was it a handful? Shortly before that tweet, McFaul had told his followers “Im deleting this tweet below. It has been misunderstood –whether deliberately or unintentionally — too much. Here is what I meant to say: If you believe Trump has not served our country well as Commander in Chief, vote him out of the job in November. https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1302071499914842112”

At the same time, McFaul’s clear and ongoing belief in the fundamental illegitimacy of Mr. Trump’s presidency can’t legitimately be questioned. Just late last month, in an on-line op-ed , he wrote that a recent Senate Intelligence Committee report had shown that:

“Far from a hoax, as the president so often claimed, the report reveals how the Trump campaign willingly engaged with Russian operatives implementing the influence effort.”

Even worse, in his eyes,

“[S]ome of the most egregious practices from the 2016 presidential campaign documented by the Senate investigation are repeating themselves in the 2020 presidential campaign. Once again, Putin wants Trump to win and appears to be seeking to undermine the legitimacy of our election. Just like in 2016, Putin has deployed his conventional media, his social media operations and his intelligence assets to pursue these objectives.

“Most shockingly, Trump and his allies have decided to — again — play right along.”

To McFaul’s credit, he at least acknowledged that “China, Iran and Venezuela now in the disinformation game” as well. (For details on China’s massive efforts, see my recent American Conservative article.)

He added that “it will be up to American voters to decide when and how cooperation with foreign actors during a presidential election crosses the line,” but indicated that the main reason was “Because waiting for criminal investigations or more congressional hearings will be too late….”

Most ominously, McFaul continues to maintain that the President has remained loyal to Putin, not once criticizing him in public and often undermining policies from his own administration to contain and deter Putin’s belligerent behavior abroad.”

In contrast, Democratic nominee Joe Biden “has affirmed that his campaign will not use information or accept assistance provided by foreign actors….In addition, Biden has assured Americans that he would retaliate in response to any foreign interference.”

So when McFaul declares that “Trump and Biden’s contrasting positions on Russian interference in American elections are clear. Whether voters care about these differences, however, is not as obvious,” it sounds to me that if the President is reelected, the de-legitimization campaign by McFaul and the rest of the Blob will continue. You don’t have to call that a coup to recognize it’s not democratic politics-as-usual, either.