Our So-Called Foreign Policy: China’s Not Getting Biden’s (Vague) Message

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Asia-Pacific, Biden, Biden administration, China, Indo-Pacific, Japan, national interests, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Taiwan, Taiwan Strait, Vladimir Putin, Xi JInPing

Everyone old enough to read this post is way more than old enough to remember all the optimism that emanated from the last summit between President Biden and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping – because it took place just under two months ago.

In particular, as the White House stated, Mr. Biden

“reiterated that [the bilateral] competition should not veer into conflict and underscored that the United States and China must manage the competition responsibly and maintain open lines of communication. The two leaders discussed the importance of developing principles that would advance these goals and tasked their teams to discuss them further. “

In other words, Xi said that he bought in to this idea of a responsibly managed Great Power competition. And this conclusion quickly became the conventiona wisdom about the summit. As The New York Times argued, despite

“the deeply divergent views behind their disagreements, including over the future of Taiwan, military rivalry, technology restrictions and China’s mass detentions of its citizens….with the stakes so high, both Mr. Biden’s and Mr. Xi’s language represented a choice not to gamble on unrestricted conflict but to bet that personal diplomacy and more than a decade of contacts could stave off worsening disputes.”

And the U.S. Institute of Peace, a Congressionally-sponsored “independent” think tank, closely paraphased the President’s main claim: “Despite the differences between both countries, there appears to be a growing openness to the use of diplomacy to manage the relationship.”

Yet it’s already clear – from China – that these contentions aren’t aging so welll. Just consider what’s happened in the last month alone:

>In mid-December, China began stepping up naval and air drills near a chain of southern Japanese islands, including sending a carrier battle group that simulated an attack on this Japanese territory.

>Several days later, the Chinese teamed up with Russia’s Pacific fleet for a week of joint exercises that Moscow said [quoting Reuters here] “included practising how to capture an enemy submarine with depth charges and firing artillery at a warship.”

>On December 21, a Chinese fighter jet flew within 20 feet of a U.S. Air Force reconnaisance plane flying over the South China Sea.

>On Christmas Day, 47 Chinese military aircraft flew across the median line over the Taiwan Strait and into air space claimed by the island. Reportedly, the incursion was the largest in months.

>And on December 30, Xi and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, held a videoconference in which Xi promised “in the face of a difficult and far from straightforward international situation,” Beijing was ready “to increase strategic cooperation with Russia, provide each other with development opportunities, be global partners for the benefit of the peoples of our countries and in the interests of stability around the world.”

China predictably blamed U.S. provocations and Japan’s recently announced and dramatic military buildup for this dangerous sequence of events, but the more important point by far is this: The Biden administration continues its long-time habit (see, e.g., here) of speaking in terms of processes and procedures that can only reenforce the impression of America defining its interests in the Asia-Pacific region in dangerously vague ways, and China obviously keeps thinking of its objectives in much more specific, concrete ways. In other words, it’s time for much straighter talk from the United States.   

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Our So-Called Foreign Policy: A Republican Strategy Guru Who Ain’t

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China, Marc A. Thiessen, Mike Gallagher, national security, neoconservatives, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, priorities, Republicans, Russia, semiconductors, strategy, Taiwan, Ukraine, Ukraine War

Neoconservative pundit Marc A. Thiessen has just written that neconservative Congressman Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin is the type of Republican who he thinks should “guide the Republican Party into the next era and shape conservative public policy, from national security to health to education to the economy.”

I’m far from convinced, especially on the national security front that’s the focus of this column, since Gallagher’s expressed views seem like a formula for exactly the kind of global over-extension that’s backfired so disastrously on America in the past (Google “Vietnam” or “Middle East.”)

This Wisconsin Republican’s main problem is one that’s dogged not only neocons and their constant exhortations for the United States to play or resume playing globocop indefinitely, but many other American leaders, including those on the Left – who favor similarly open-ended U.S. involvement in all manner of foreign crises and problems but either on the cheap, or with all manner of aesthetically and morally pleasing substitutes for military power, or coercion of any kind.

It’s a failure or an refusal to base American strategy and security and prosperity on the only basis practical even for a superpower – as an effort to (a) secure or defend goals that will promote U.S. interests on net in specific, concrete ways –  like protecting countries or regions with important locations, or that possess needed resources; and (b) propose feasible approaches to generate the wherewithal needed to achieve those goals.

Put simply, a successful U.S. foreign policy needs to set priorities of some kind, and in an interview with Thiessen, Gallagher explicitly rejected these premises, at least when it comes to two current headline overseas challenges.

According to Gallagher,

“[T]his idea that, ‘Well, we can be tough on China, but we have to strike some grand bargain with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin in Europe because our resources are limited.’ I just think that reflects a naive view of the way the world is working right now.”

He did explain that

“for those of us who want to continue to support the Ukrainians and deliver a massive loss to the Russians … we have to do a better job of tying the threat posed by Russia to the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party. And it’s really teasing out the fact that for at least a decade, if not longer, these countries, who at times have interests that diverged and at times were outright hostile, at least in the present day, have locked arms to wage a new Cold War against the West….”  

As for “the ultimate aim of China in particular”? That’s “to destroy the capitalist system led by the United States and make way for the ultimate triumph of world socialism with, you know, Chinese characteristics.”

I have no quarrel with Gallagher’s assumption of deep and dangerous Chinese hostility to the United States. And he has, in my view correctly and cogently, identifed several branches of China’s strategy that seek to weaken America from within, like propaganda spreading (which – I assume – he understands requires strong, overwhelmingly domestic policy responses).

But the other stuff – if you think about it logically, it simply doesn’t matter. That is, whether or not the Chinese and Russians are in cahoots, and however sweepin their aims, because different countries’ and regions’ importance to the United States varies dramatically (since they’re all so different in their characteristics), it’s inevitable that some of the targets of this “new [joint] Cold War” that they’re supposedly waging will significantly affect America’s fortunes, and some won’t.

And what Gallagher doesn’t come to terms with is 

>(a) all the evidence cited by opponents of current U.S. Ukraine policy (like me), that Ukraine’s fate is irrelevant to America for reasons ranging from its tragic location right next to Russia and its lack of any assets needed by America to the continued refusal of the United States and its allies to admit it into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (which implicitly acknowledges Ukraine’s  marginality); and

>(b) all the evidence that Taiwan is of vital importance – because of its matchless ability to manufacture the advanced semiconductors that are keys to ongoing U.S. security and prosperity, and therefore to America’s ability to keep fending off Chinese ambitions to control the island and this knowhow.

In Gallagher’s defense, he’s a strong proponent of the much bigger defense budgets that the United States would need to field the forces and weapons needed to resist both Russia’s Ukraine aims and China’s Taiwan aims.

But that higher spending will take many years to shore up American battlefield capabilities further, and Gallagher himself believes that the United States can’t defend Taiwan now, and doesn’t foresee success for another five years.

Worse, in the meantime, it’s being reported, including by a bipartisan Congressional commission, that “[t]he diversion of existing stocks of weapons and munitions to Ukraine and pandemic-related supply chain issues has exacerbated a sizeable backlog in the delivery of weapons already approved for sale to Taiwan, undermining the island’s readiness.”

So current American priorities could well be exactly backwards, and even if not, contrary to Gallagher’s blithe prior assertion, American resources are now in fact severely limited.

To top if all off, Gallagher also told Thiessen that by 2025 (if the Chinese haven’t already invaded), the President then should declare that “defending Taiwan [is] our most urgent national security priority….” But what about Ukraine? By then it’ll be No Big Deal? Or it’s safe to assume that conflict will be over? Nothing from Gallagher on that. But he did add that “by the way, I don’t think [keeping Taiwan secure] would cost that much money.”

Thiessen introduced Gallagher as someone who “has a bachelor’s degree from Princeton, a master’s degree in security studies from Georgetown University, a second master’s in strategic intelligence from the National Intelligence University and a PhD in international relations from Georgetown — all of which mean he’s deeply overqualified for any national security position.”

To me, what he’s really done is unwittingly reveal some of the institutions you want to avoid like the plague if you hope to develop a U.S. foreign policy strategy worthy of the name.

Glad I Didn’t Say That! A New Low Point for Biden Energy Policy

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Amos Hochstein, Biden administration, clean energy, climate change, energy, fossil fuels, Glad I Didn't Say That!, green energy, natural gas, oil, Russia, sanctions, shale, Ukraine, Ukraine War

“The White House’s chief energy adviser has described as ‘un-American’ the refusal of US shale investors to ramp up drilling, even as Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine causes havoc on global oil and gas markets.”                                                      – — — —

Financial Times, December 11, 2022

 

“The longer-term solution, [he said] was not to invest in more natural gas supply but to cut consumption of fossil fuels themselves….”             

Financial Times, December 11, 2022

 

(Source: “Biden adviser calls Wall Street opposition to shale drilling ‘un-American’,” by Derek Brower, Financial Times, December 11, 2022, Biden adviser calls Wall Street opposition to shale drilling ‘un-American’ | Financial Times (ft.com))

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Will China Dupe Washington Again?

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Biden, China, energy, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Paracells, Russia, South China Sea, Spratlys, The New York Times, U.S. Navy, Ukraine, Xi JInPing

Well, that didn’t take long. Just two weeks after President Biden’s face-to-face meeting with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping in Bali, Indonesia raised hopes of improved Sino-American relations, Beijing is acting like it’s determined to dash them.

Not that the expressed hopes were especially high. Mr. Biden himself said he aimed “to ensure that the competition between our countries does not veer into conflict, whether intended or unintended.  Just simple, straightforward competition. It seems to me we need to establish some commonsense guardrails” to “manage the competition responsibly” (as the White House put it in post-meeting statement).

But this morning EST, the Chinese military announced that it had “Organised sea and air forces to follow, monitor, warn and drive away” a U.S. warship that had sailed into waters Beijing claims near a group of islands in the South China Sea.

China’s claim has been rejected by international legal authorities, and the United States Navy regularly sends ships into the area to reflect its “continued commitment to….every nation’s right to fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allow.” The Navy added that “At the conclusion of the operation,” the destroyer “exited [China’s] excessive claim area and continued operations in the South China Sea.”

The point here is that China’s reactions to what the United States calls “Freedom of Navigation Operations” represent exactly the kind of opportunity for a conflict-igniting accident or miscalculation that President Biden’s guard rails idea seeks to avoid – and that China isn’t especially interested.

Also today, China declared its readiness to “forge a closer partnership” on energy with Russia – surely a sign of Beijing’s continued defiance of U.S. and European efforts to deny Moscow resources for financing its invasion of Ukraine.

As also reported by the Associated Press, President Biden “has warned Xi of unspecified consequences if Beijing helps [Russia] evade sanctions,” but this announcement indicates that any “Spirit of Bali” doesn’t extend in Xi Jinping’s eyes to helping end this dangerous conflict. In fact, I suspect it reflects China’s ongoing happiness that Washington is tying up so many military resources to aid Ukraine’s resistance that it’s degrading America’s ability to counter China’s ambitions in Asia – and especially a possible invasion of Taiwan, the global leader in manufacturing the world’s most advanced semiconductors.

Early during the Cold War, then Chinese dictator Mao Zedong devised a strategy called “fight fight talk talk.” As explained by the New York Times,

“The idea was that even as you seek opportunities to make gains on the battlefield, to expand your territory and gain in strength, you keep on negotiating even though you have no interest in a compromise solution and intend to win complete victory. The talk-talk part of the strategy gives mediators the sense that they are doing something useful, while, by holding theoretically to the possibility of a negotiated solution, you deter great- power military intervention in support of your adversary.”

As Times reporter Richard Bernstein explained, when it came to U.S. efforts to negotiate a deal between China’s nationalist forces and the Communists, the strategy was “a brilliant success.” Here’s hoping that President Biden doesn’t ignore the new hints that China is following the same course today – and that Beijing isn’t interested in conducting a “responsible competition.” It’s interested in winning.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: U.S. Ukraine Policy Dangerously Flunks the Logic Test

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alliances, deterrence, Nancy Pelosi, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine War, vital interests, Vladimir Putin

There must be some kind of psychic connection between my good buddy Ace (so nicknamed because he’s actually flown in U.S. Air Force fighters), and Nancy Pelosi.

Just the other day, he made what I thought was the genuine genius point that the most important question surrounding U.S. policy toward Ukraine is one that’s never, ever, been asked: If Ukraine has indeed become a vital interest of the United States (a category into which, as I’ve repeatedly stated, e.g. here, it was never placed even during the depths of the Cold War), why wasn’t it admitted into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) long ago? Even stranger, why the continuing NATO cold feet of so many U.S. leaders who are so fond of claiming the vital importance of ensuring Ukraine’s success?

And hot on the heels of Ace’s questions, the House Speaker on Friday declined to endorse Ukraine’s request not just for inclusion in the decades-old Atlantic alliance, but for “accelerated accession” that would speed up a process that’s normally pretty complicated in normal times.

Yes, that’s the same Speaker Pelosi who had previously sounded pretty adamant about the need to stand with Ukraine “until the fight is done” because its fight for freedom ”is a fight for everyone.”

But as pointed out in the same news report that quoted Pelosi’s more temperate later remarks, even though these are anything but normal times in Europe, there’s no shortage of reasonable-sounding reasons for continuing caution. Specifically:

“The West fears that Ukraine’s immediate entry into NATO — which requires the unanimous approval of all 30 member-nations — would put the U.S. and Russia at war due to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine as well as its forced annexations announced Friday.”

I wrote “reasonable-sounding, ”however, very deliberately. Because if you give the matter even a little serious thought (as Ace has), it becomes clear that such rationales make no sense at all.

In the first place, even though Ukraine remains outside NATO, the Western aid that’s helped Kyiv’s forces resist Russia so effectively has created a powder keg situation in Ukraine’s neighborhood (by stationing large numbers of U.S. troops right next door) that could all too easily ignite war between the two aforementioned nuclear superpowers anyway.

It’s true that the decision of the United States and Ukraine’s other allies to combine these deployments with hemming and hawing on NATO membership has so far produced a favorable outcome: Moscow’s been frustrated without nuclear weapons being used, much less a world-wide conflagration resulting.

At the same time, this needle-threading act could fail at any minute – which surely explains President Biden’s oft-stated declarations from the get-go that U.S. troops will not be sent into combat in Ukraine. He’s obviously determined minimize that dreadful possibility.

But all this prudence becomes completely inexplicable – at least if you value coherent thought – upon remembering what the word “vital” means in this instance. It’s describing an objective so important (Ukraine’s survival in its current form) that failure to achieve it would (at least at some point down the line) end America’s very existence, either as a physical entity or as an independent country. Even those who aren’t literalists presumably fear that failure to protect a vital interest will leave the United States only the most nightmarish shell of its present self.

To their credit, U.S. leaders who spearheaded the creation of the nation’s major alliances and supported their maintenance have put the country’s money where its mouth is. They have not only promised to use nuclear weapons against nuclear-armed adversaries to protect alliance members whose security is seen as vital. As I’ve often explained (e.g., here), they’ve deployed U.S. forces in “tripwire” configurations aimed at practically forcing Washington to push the fatal buttons and risk America’s nuclear destruction if non-nuclear defenses crumble.

Those policies have aimed above all to deter aggression, and despite the apocalyptic dangers they’ve raised, have been eminently sensible because a thoroughly respectable case ca be made, based on specific, concrete considerations, for the paramount importance of these allies.

For example, it is wholly plausible that the subjugation by hostile powers of places like Germany and Japan and Taiwan could produce intolerable consequences for the United States. In particular, each of those countries possesses technological and industrial prowess and assets that a country like China or Russia could harness to exercise control over the main dimensions of American life.

The point is not whether you or I personally agree or not. Rather, it’s that such fears are anything but crazy.

By contrast, there’s nothing specific and concrete that Ukraine boasts that I can think of – or, more revealingly, that any of its supposed champions have brought up – that Russia could use to achieve anything like the above results.

And this observation leads directly to the second logically loony flaw in America’s Ukraine policy – the one identified by Ace: If in the minds of U.S. leaders Ukraine actually was so all-fired important to begin with, or became so at some point before the Russian invasion (which the President has just declared must be resisted “unwaveringly”), why wasn’t it admitted to NATO right then and there, complete with the nuclear defense guarantee?

Not that any such move would have guaranteed that Russia would have kept hands off. But given that dictator Vladimir Putin hasn’t yet attacked any NATO members in Ukraine’s immediate vicinity or anywhere else, and that Mr. Biden’s vow throughout the entire crisis that the alliance will defend “every inch” of its members’ territory, surely is one reason why, wouldn’t admitting Ukraine before Moscow moved been a no-brainer?

Instead, the United States and the West have danced around this question for more than thirty years – and counting – practically from the moment Ukraine declared its independence from the collapsing Soviet Union in August, 1991. What’s been the problem during this entire period?

I mean, the place is supposed to be vital! In other such instances, that’s why the United States has even contemplated using nuclear weapons at all. And yet so far, Mr. Biden’s clear bottom line, even during the invasion’s early days, when his own administration assumed Zelensky’s government to be doomed, has been that U.S. forces will stay out as long as the combat stays inside Ukraine. In other words, he’s wavered. And almost inevitably, this position has sent Putin the message that Washington and the West ultimately don’t view that country as worth accepting the risk of national suicide.

So thanks to Ace, it must by now be evident that the United States has long believed that it could secure a vital interest with half measures (never a good habit to fall into) or that America should expose itself to an existential threat on behalf of an interest that’s short of vital.

And the folks who believe in either position are supposed to be the post-Trump adults in the room? And will be in charge of Ukraine strategy and the rest of American foreign policy for at least two more years?

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Other Scary Ukraine War Threat

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energy, energy prices, global financial crisis, globalism, hunger, Lehman Brothers, Lehman moment, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Taiwan, Ukraine, Ukraine War, Vietnam War, vital interests, Western Europe

Take it from me – the words “Lehman” and “moment” are words that no one should ever want to see in the same sentence ever again. Yet they’ve been making a collective comeback lately (see, e.g., here, here, and here), signaling in the process that the determination of the United States and other countries to help Ukraine achieve its goal of expelling Russia from the territory it’s lost could backfire disastrously.

This specific risk has emerged not because the conflict could spread beyond Ukraine’s borders and embroil the big new concentrations of U.S. and other NATO military forces right next door – and therefore all too easily escalate to the nuclear level. It’s also emerged because of the growing economic hardship and potential political instability in major world regions created by the disruption of global energy and food trade triggered by Russia’s invasion and the sanctions it’s triggered.  

The phrase “Lehman moment” refers to the time when the national and global financial systems and economies nearly collapsed because so many of the world’s major banks and other lenders had engaged in such reckless practices, and because they were so interconnected that the failure of one – America’s Lehman Brothers – threatened to topple the whole house of cards that had been created.

Today’s Lehman moment is feared to be coming in Europe’s energy sector – also dominated by huge, closely connected institutions and also endangered by contagion. But this time the culprit hasn’t been greedy executives or asleep-at-the-switch regulators. It’s been the price of natural gas. The Russian invasion of Ukraine itself, the duration of the fighting, Russian supply curbs and threats of cut-offs have pushed it so high that many European utilities have been forced to buy the increasingly scarce fuel on the very expensive spot market and sell it to customers at the much lower prices stipulated by the contracts they’ve signed. (See here for a useful explanation of all of the above.)

As with the original Lehman moment, government bailouts are likely to save the day – at least for the foreseeable future. But the costs are shaping up to be astronomical, and even if they’re paid by all of the continent’s well- and less well-off countries alike, enormous national debts are sure to grow. Moreover, Europe’s near-term energy, and overall economic, future looks so grim because major shortages and towering prices this winter seem both inevitable and bound to bring on a serious recession and all the suffering and anxiety that accompany such downturns.

That sure sounds like a formula for even more political instability than Europe has already seen lately, including a loss of public faith in national and regional establishments and institutions of all kinds, and a further strengthening of the sort of political movements – on the right end of the political spectrum in particular – that globalists keep warning are grave dangers to the democracy and even the peace the continent has enjoyed until Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

Nor is Ukraine War-rooted turmoil confined to Europe. As the Biden administration has just warned, “protracted conflicts – including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine” have been developments that have “disrupted global supply chains and dramatically increased global food prices.” As a result, “world leaders [need] to act with urgency and at scale to respond…and avert extreme hunger for hundreds of millions of people around the world.”

Sub-Saharan Africa, one of the areas of greatest risk, has (rightly) never been seen as a high U.S. foreign policy priority. The other area, though, is the Middle East, which has become much less important even to America’s economic well-being because of the energy production revolution at home, but which continues to attract considerable attention from globalist U.S. leaders.

Hence the backfire risk – and a gigantic irony. Globalist backers of the current Ukraine strategy justify it as necessary to protect what they call a “rules-based international order” they believe has been essential for preventing great power conflict, as well as for promoting impressive degrees of prosperity and democracy around the globe. I’d give far more credit to the balance of nuclear terror that’s prevailed for nearly all of that period, but that’s not the main point.  The main point is that, along with great power conflict, the widespread international turbulence being fueled by the duration of the Ukraine War per se is another major geopolitical nightmare that globalism has striven to avert.  

It’s true that incurring great risks to protect specific, concrete interests the U.S. considers vital – like the security of Western Europe and, more recently, Taiwan (because of its leadership in manufacturing the world’s most advanced semiconductors) – by definition are worth running. This logic also holds for objectives like fostering and maximizing stability the world over, even though they’ve always been more dubious because they’re so much gauzier and less realistic. For whatever the damage possible from attempting to safeguard any of these interests, the term “vital” means that failure can generate even greater dangers – particularly national survival and independence.

But running such risks on behalf of Ukraine’s independence – which was never seen as remotely vital U.S. interest even at the height of the Cold War, which was habitually described as a Manichean struggle for the entire world’s future – is a different matter altogether, and indeed makes no sense at all.

During the Vietnam War, a U.S. Army officer is supposed to have told a reporter after one battle that “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” The Lehman moment references and mounting signs of tumult in several major regions long seen by Washington as bearing at least significantly and even vitally on America’s safety and well-being indicates how close U.S. Ukraine policy – even if it simply prolongs heavy but geographically contained fighting – is moving toward achieving that absurdly self-destructive goal.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Could the West Blink First on the Anti-Russia Sanctions?

Tags

energy, fossil fuels, G7 Summit, Group of 7, inflation, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, sanctions, Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia war, Vladimir Putin

Quite a few years ago, I fretted here that one big obstacle could appear before too long to any U.S. government ambitions to squelch cyber attacks from rogue states with cyber retaliation of its own: Some of the main rogue states (like Iran and North Korea) and larger aggressors (like Russia and China) were likely to have a higher pain threshhold than America’s because they were so much poorer and their populations so much more used to hardship. So in any prolonged cyber duel, Washington could well be forced to cry “Uncle” before its adversaries.

Fast forward to today, and this very problem seems to be plaguing the U.S. and  overall free world/western policy of punishing Russia for its invasion of Ukraine with various kinds of economic sanctions.

It’s not that Russia’s economy hasn’t suffered from these measures. But headlines and news developments like this have become awfully common in recent weeks:

>”U.S.-Led Alliance Faces Frustration, and Pain of its Own, Over Russia Sanctions”;

>”Pressed by domestic economic challenges and a desire to see European nations contribute more to Ukraine’s defense, U.S. lawmakers appear more wary of committing further military aid for Ukraine or slapping new sanctions on Russia”;

>”French energy giants tell households to ration supplies ahead of looming winter shortage”; and

>”Japan tells business and public to save power to avert Tokyo blackout”

And accompanying these reports have been news items and findings like:

>”Russia’s economy is weathering sanctions, but tough times are ahead”;

>“Why Russia’s Economy Is Holding On”;

>”Russia’s ruble hit its strongest level in 7 years despite massive sanctions”; and

>Revenue from Russia’s fossil fuel exports “exceeded the cost of the Ukraine war during the first 100 days….”

As indicated, Russian stoicism isn’t all that’s at work. The country’s immense fossil fuel deposits, the world economy’s continued crying need for them (preventing the sanctions from being global in scope), and the high prices oil in particular has been fetching ironically because sanctions have crimped overall global supply, have enabled Moscow to keep its economy a going concern. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, clearly certain that he’d antagonize many foreign powers with his expansionism plans, has also been working for years to insulate his country from just these punitive measures. (See, e.g., here.)

But by the same token, for many years, Putin’s imperial ambitions, the massive amounts of resources they’ve commanded, the curbs on personal spending required to build a fortress economy, and the pervasive corruption he’s needed to tolerate (and even encourage) to keep potential rivals placated (and of course feather his own nest) have produced a dismal failure of an economy by virtually every important non-security-related measure. (See here and here for two especially insightful analyses.) And yet there’s absolutely no sign that conditions that western populations would find completely unacceptable have remotely immiserated the Russian people enough to spark any kind of revolt.

Moreover, considering this situation in light of the recent statement by Jens Stoltenberg, head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that the Ukraine conflict could last for “years,” it’s easy to see why the mounting energy shortages and historic inflation they’ve helped feed could tip the odds surrounding the current economic conflict of wills in Moscow’s favor.

And it’s no discredit to the American character to venture that U.S. resolve seems particularly vulnerable precisely because economic sacrifices continue to be demanded on behalf of a country whose fate has never been and is not now a vital security or economic interest.

To me, there’s an obvious message being sent by these trends and circumstances – along with the steady transformation of Eastern Europe into a genuine powderkeg that could all too easily explode into a nuclear World War Three: It’s becoming more important than ever to end this conflict and its clearly unforeseen, tremendous collateral damage ASAP, even if the outcome isn’t ideal from Ukraine’s standpoint.

But that’s not what the heads of government of the Group of Seven (G7) major industrial powers think.  They’ve just declared at their current summit in Germany, “We will continue to provide financial, humanitarian, military and diplomatic support and stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes” – even though before too long these leaders may start running out of followers.   

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Ukraine War Has Entered a New Phase. Will U.S. Policy?

Tags

Antony J. Blinken, Biden, diplomacy, Lloyd Austin, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia war, Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Remember the wonderful opening lines of the first installment of Peter Jackson’s masterful film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings trilogy? In case you’re not a fan of J.R.R. Tolkein’s Middle Earth writings, they went like this: “The world is changed:  I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, I smell it in the air.”

They came to mind to me today upon reading some of the big national media headlines on the course of the Ukaine war.

Like this from The New York Times: “As Russia Forges Ahead, Europe Recaluclates.”

And this from The Wall Street Journal: “Ukraine Fears Defeat in East Without Surge in Military Aid.”

And this plea from a Washington Post opinion column: “We can’t let Ukraine lose. It needs a lot more aid, starting with artillery.”

In fact, this theme began appearing even before this morning.

Like the Los Angeles Times’ claim that “Momentum shifts in Ukraine war as Russia advances in the Donbas.”

And then there’s the news that’s been dribbling out from Kyiv on Ukrainian casualties – numbers that had been very closely held. But on May 31, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that his country’s military was losing up to 100 killed and 5oo wounded each day. Just over a week later, Zelenskyy aide Mykhalo Podolyak pegged the daily battlefield deaths at between 100 and 200 – which presumably means a higher wounded count, too.

Don’t get me wrong: None of this means that Ukraine is doomed to defeat at the Russian invaders’ hands. But it sure looks like we’re a long way away from the heady days of just one and two months ago, when

>U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was declaring that the Biden administration and most of the rest of the world believed that Ukraine “can win” the struggle;

>when Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken endorsed the goal of ensuring that the Ukraine invasion turned into a “strategic defeat” for Russia; and

>when Defense Department spokesman John Kirby stated that “We want Ukraine to win this fight [with Russia] and we are doing everything we can here, at the Department of Defense, to make sure they have the capabilities to do that.”

And the apparent shift in the war’s momentum, especially in Ukraine’s east, adds urgency to questions that understandably receded in importance when a victory by Kyiv seemed much more plausible.

Principally, President Biden recently stated that his goal was moving “to send Ukraine a significant amount of weaponry and ammunition so it can fight on the battlefield and be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.” Yet how will he reconcile the likelihood that the continued heavy combat bound to result from these efforts on the one hand, with the determination he expressed on the other hand — in the same article — to keep the war within Ukraine’s borders and thereby avoid a direct U.S.-Russia military confrontation that could all too easily escalate to the nuclear level?

How will he decide when Ukraine is armed well enough to negotiate successfully? And how does the President’s reference to arming Ukraine to maximize its chances in peace talks dovetail with his position that his “principle throughout this crisis has been ‘Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.’ I will not pressure the Ukrainian government — in private or public — to make any territorial concessions. It would be wrong and contrary to well-settled principles to do so”?

From a purely tactical standpoint, if Ukraine continues refusing even to consider compromises on territory or on sovereignty, (which could include the issues of membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or the European Union) then how important — let alone successful — could any negotiations be?

From a broader standpoint, does Mr. Biden really believe that Ukraine should call all the shots related to this crisis once the conflict enters the diplomatic phase? And why would he keep deferring to Ukraine even though he’s implicitly acknowledged that the United States has its own crucial interests – chiefly avoiding a wider war and direct superpower conflict – that aren’t necessarily identical with Ukraine’s goals? 

At the same time, it’s possible that the President doesn’t believe that the war is in a new phase at all.  And he may be right. If that’s the case, though, he’d be well advised to level with the American public, because the kind of lengthy stalemate and lack of an exit strategy this conclusion implies means that there’s no exit strategy for the surging oil and gasoline prices, consequently worsening overall inflation, and higher federal spending brought on by the conflict, either.      

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Glimmers of Hope on Ukraine?

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Biden, Blob, chemical weapons, cyber-war, David Ignatius, Donbas, EU, European Union, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear war, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia war, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky

As known by long-time readers of RealityChek (see, e.g., here and here), I’m no fan of David Ignatius. Literally for decades, the Washington Post pundit has veritably personified the Blob – that mainly New York City- and really mainly Washington, D.C.-based mutually reenforcing network of current political leaders and senior bureaucrats, Congressional staff, former officials, other hangers-on of various kinds, consultants, think tankers, academics, and journalists who have long championed globalist U.S. foreign policies despite the needless national security and economic damage they’ve caused.

Not so incidentally, they keep moving in an out of public service so continuously that they’ve not only blurred the crucial lines between these spheres, but they’ve more than earned the term “permanent (and of course unelected) government.”

So imagine my surprise when I opened my Washington Post Thursday morning and discovered that Ignatius had written what may be the most important American commentary yet on the Ukraine War. His main argument is that President Biden and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin have each decided on a set of goals that could reduce the chances of the conflict spilling across Ukraine’s borders, and especially into the territory of neighbors that enjoy a strong U.S. defense guarantee. This chain of events could all-too-easily lead to direct U.S.-Russia military conflict that could just as easily escalate to the all-out nuclear war level.

But the goals identified by Ignatius are encouraging because they indicate that both Mr. Biden and Putin have retreated from dangerously ambitious objectives they’ve referred to throughout the war and its prelude. For the U.S. President, this means a climb-down from his administation’s declarations that Russia can’t be allowed to establish anything close to a sphere of influence that includes Ukraine, and that would prevent it and potentially any country in Eastern Europe from setting its own defense and foreign economic policies.

For Putin, this means confining his aims to controlling the eastern Ukraine provinces with large Russian-speaking populations, not the entire country

Ignatius’ most convincing evidence regarding the American position is Mr. Biden’s statement on Thursday that with its growing military support for Ukraine, the entire western alliance was  “sending an unmistakable message to Putin: He will never succeed in dominating and occupying all of Ukraine. He will not — that will not happen.” As Ignatius pointed out, this statement, “though resolute in tone, left open the possibility that Putin might occupy some of Ukraine, in the southeastern region where Russian attacks are now concentrated.”

Moreover, this Ignatius observation matters considerably in large measure precisely because the author is so well plugged in to the staunchly globalist Biden administration. If he’s putting points like this in print, the odds are good that it’s because he’s heard them from genuinely reliable sources, and even because those sources are using him as a vehicle for trial balloon floating.

Ignatius’ most convincing evidence regarding the Kremlin’s position is Putin’s statement the same day that the Russian forces that have virtually destroyed the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol have “sacrificed their lives so that our people in Donbas [the aforementioned eastern Ukraine region] live in peace and to enable Russia, our country, to live in peace.”

Those last words in particular suggest that Putin now believes a Russia-dominated Donbas can serve as an acceptable buffer between Russian territory and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that expanded its membership in the 1990s and early 2000s to countries directly bordering Russia.

On this issue, though, big questions remain: Would Putin permit what’s left of Ukraine join NATO (in which President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he no longer interested) or the European Union (which Ukraine still wants)? Or would Moscow let a rump Ukraine do what it wished on these defense and economic fronts? At the same time, the very uncertainty created by these Russian and Ukrainian (and now U.S.) statements makes clear there’s a deal that can be struck before Ukraine experiences much more suffering.

But as Ignatius himself notes, this week’s Biden and Putin positions are anything but guarantees against disastrous escalation. The reason? As I’ve written, the longer the fighting lasts and especially the more intense it becomes, the likelier spillover gets – whether from air raids to artillery strikes to the spread of toxic clouds from exploded chemical or even nuclear weapons, to cyber attacks (e.g., by Russia against U.S. or other western computer systems intended to interfere with the Ukraine weapons supply effort or with the West’s intelligence sharing with Kyiv).

So the Biden and Putin statements may be necessary developments for securing a non-disastrous end to the Ukraine war, but they’re hardly sufficient. Some serious form of outside pressure looks to be essential — either President Biden on Zelensky, or (seemingly less likely) China on Putin. Without it, Americans — and Ukrainians — arguably are left with hoping for the best, a strategy with an historically unimpressive record of success.        

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: U.S. Allies are Standing (A Tiny Bit) with Ukraine

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alliances, allies, burden sharing, EU, Europe, European Union, free-riding, Kiel Institute for the World Economy, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia war

Even a long-standing critic like me of the record of U.S. allies in Europe in sharing the burden of their own defense found the graphic below to be quite the stunner. It makes clear that, so far, countries that for decades have been deadbeats and free-riders when it comes to fielding armed forces capable of defeating first Soviet and then post-Soviet Russian aggression, are behaving just as selfishly and miserly in supporting Ukraine’s resistance to the Kremlin’s invasion – and presumably keeping themselves safe from attack or bullying by Moscow.

The graphic comes from a leading German think tank – the Kiel Institute for the World Economy – and it shows that between the February 24 start of the invasion of Ukaine through March 27, the United States, in the words of the Institute’s research director, “is giving significantly more than the entire [European Union], in whose immediate neighborhood the war is raging.”

The specific amounts of combined financial, humanitarian, and military assistance (in euros) , according to Kiel: the United States, 7.6 billion; all European Union countries combined, 2.9 billion; EU institutions (like the European Investment Bank, 3.4 billion. Adding the United Kingdom (not an EU member) increases the European total by $712 million euros – and would still leave this figure below that of U.S. aid in all forms.

True to RealityChek‘s long-time insistence that data be presented in context, the Europeans come off somewhat better when these aid figures are presented as percentages of total economic output. After all, it’s completely unrealistic to expect even the most vigilant very small economy to donate as much in absolute terms as a much larger economy, all else equal.

But as the Kiel graph beow shows, most of the Europeans don’t come off that much better.

In fact, except for Estonia, Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia, and Sweden, the United States holds the lead according to this measure, too. And remember: Poland and Slovakia are right next door to Ukraine, Estonia and Lithuania border Russia, and Sweden is located just across the Baltic Sea to them. As for the rest of Europe, I’ll just circle back to the point made by the Kiel Institute research director: It’s their “immediate neighborhood”! So their relative efforts should be exponentially greater than America’s, as should those of the countries even closer to the fighting.

Moreover, it’s easy to understand why European military aid has been so modest. These countries have been skimping on their militaries for decades. But as a result, they should be compensating by providing much greater amounts of economic and humanitarian assistance.

These figures are damning enough as examples of continued European fecklessness. But they’re even more important because the continent’s free-riding means that for the foreseeable future, American military forces will keep playing a predominant role in any response to the Ukraine invasion. And even if President Biden sticks with his pledge to keep U.S. troops out of the fighting in Ukraine, their very presence in the vicinity of a conflict could expose the U.S. homeland literally to mortal danger. 

For as I’ve noted, if the war spills over borders into the countries where the American units are based, and that enjoy a legally ironclad promise of protection by the United States and the rest of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), U.S. and Russian forces will almost surely wind up shooting at each other, and the prospect of escalation to the all-out nuclear war level becomes terrifyingly real. 

A Europe willing and therefore at some point able to defend itself would reduce this danger to acceptable levels. But as the Kiel data show, because the Europeans remain protectorates much more than genuine allies, this point looks as far off in the future as ever.