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: 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?

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Demonization and Double Standards on Gas Prices

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Biden, demand, Democrats, Elizabeth Warren, energy, gas prices, inflation, oil, oil prices, sanctions, supply, Ukraine-Russia war, Vladimir Putin, {What's Left of) Our Economy

According to the reasoning of President Biden, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, and many other Democrats and progressives, Vladimir Putin, or Big Oil, or American gas station owners, or some combination of those three, have been getting nicer or less greedy and/or more patriotic (when speaking of the domestic actors). What’s the evidence? The average price of a gallon of gasoline in Anerica has fallen during this period.

After all, the President and his fellow Democrats have been saying since at least mid-spring March that prices at the pump had been soaring because the Russian dictator’s invasion of Ukraine (and resulting sanctions) has pushed up world oil prices, because the world’s oil companies have been earning “windfall profits,” and because U.S. gas station owners have been (unpatriotically) price-gouging.

Since mid-June, though, as Mr. Biden has just noted, gas prices are down. So the above culprits must have become less villainous. In fact, since several authoritative sources track these prices, it’s possible, depending on which one is considered most trustworthy, to know exactly how much less villainous.

Specifically, according to the GasBuddy.com website, national average pump prices are down 6.87 percent over the last month. So clearly, Putin, Big Oil, and gas station owners have collectively become 6.87 percent less heinous and/or avaricious and, in the case of U.S.-owned oil companies and the gas station owners, less unpatriotic.

The widely followed Lundberg survey says regular grade gasoline has become 4.14 percent cheaper during this period – so the Democrats’ culprits in its view haven’t become quite so benign.

They look better in Triple A’s eyes, though, since that organization calculates that pump prices are off by 6.74 percent.

Of course, the above analysis is the most childish and even self-serving form of nonsense. Gas prices, like prices of practically everything, depend on numerous interacting factors having nothing to do with foreign strongmen or corporate iniquity. World oil prices are the biggest single determinant, but these in turn are affected by national and global demand, which in turn results from the overall state of the economy, which in turn can be strengthened or weakened by fiscal policy (e.g., stimulus bills) and monetary policy (e.g., interest rates). Don’t, however, forget refining and pipeline availability, and even weather (as in bad hurricane seasons shutting down oil facilities in the Gulf of Mexico in particular).

Complicating matters further, these and other oil price determinants don’t affect retail gas prices all at once, as they understandably take varying amounts of time to work their way through a lengthy production and distribution system. Meanwhile, future supplies depend on private investors examining this multi-faceted and highly fluid landscape to judge whether committing capital to the oil industry is their best bet for maximum returns. And these calculations are inevitably highly uncertain given that any payoffs will inevitably be years off.

So it’s indeed childish to ignore the complicated and constantly interacting dynamics of an enormous industry that at bottom needs to keep wrestling with inevitably fluctuating supply and demand conditions. And it’s self-serving because for years the President and his party have clearly worked hard to reduce the role played by a fossil fuel like oil in the U.S. energy picture.

If you doubt that self-serving claim in particular, or any of the above analysis, ask yourself this: Are these oil industry critics remotely as likely to start praising the producers and the gas station owners (or Putin) for reducing prices as they’ve been to slam them for the price increases?

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

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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: 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: The Ukraine War is Creating Entirely New Nuclear Strategy Risks

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Biden, biological weapons, chemical weapons, deterrence, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear war, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, red line, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine invasion, Ukraine-Russia war, Vladimir Putin

The increasingly blustery way leading American politicians and chattering class members (mainly conservatives) have been talking about nuclear weapons and the Ukraine war is getting scary enough for me, and should be for you. (See, e.g., here.) Unless it’s OK that a major American city (or ten) may wind up looking like besieged and decimated Mariupol because playing chicken more boldly (but so far mainly verbally) with Moscow pushes above zero the odds of them getting hit by Russian warheads?

But something that worries me even more about these cataclysmic possibilities: For two main sets of reasons, the war could well create possibilities for nuclear weapons use that differ markedly from the scenarios that have dominated American planning for decades – and all the evidence indicates still dominates it today.

The first entails both Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine itself and the Russian dictator’s apparent decision to react to Ukraine’s stunning success to date in fighting back by raining maximum destruction on that country’s population. The second entails expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) membership right up to Russia’s borders after the Cold War ended and the old Soviet Union’s satellites became truly independent states and sought to join.

Simply put, the longstanding and existing scenarios have gone something like this: The Soviet Union (and now Russia) thinks about invading a NATO member (almost always the former West Germany) with its vastly superior conventional forces, but is deterred paradoxically by the very weakness of NATO’s conventional forces. The likelihood of these NATO forces getting overwhelmed and destroyed (along with all the NATO civilian personnel located nearby), would supposedly leave an American President no choice but to try to repel the attackers with nuclear weapons. The prospect that this escalation would turn into an all-out, world-destroying conflagration would be enough to prevent Moscow from attacking in the first place.

Today, however, the situation and possible nuclear scenarios are vastly different. After all, Putin has invaded not a NATO member – that is, a country whose security has been guaranteed by the alliance – but a country that hasn’t been permitted to join NATO. On the one hand, that’s comforting (except for the Ukrainians) because President Biden and other NATO leaders have ruled out the idea of direct military intervention in the conflict – precisely for fear that Russia could respond by attacking NATO units in Ukraine with nukes, or by attacking NATO forces and bases in members bordering Ukraine, or elsewhere in NATO-Europe, or even by striking the United States.

On the other hand, the very fact of heavy fighting in a country right next door to NATO members raises the possibility of the conflict spreading into those countries. This spillover could occur either by accident, or because Putin decides to attack the alliance’s extensive efforts to supply Ukraine. In turn, either such Russian operations could kill or wound NATO personnel who might be accompanying the weapons and other aid shipments as they travel through Ukraine, or Putin could decide to take out the facilities in Poland and other NATO countries from which these supplies are being sent into the war zone.

And don’t forget the spillover possibilities even from Russian attacks on Ukrainian forces inside Ukraine. Because Ukrainian resistance has been so effective (an outcome that so far was not only totally unexpected to the U.S. national security apparatus, but that contrasts strikingly with the longstanding assumption of Russian conventional military superiority that still underlies the alliance’s deterrence strategy), Moscow might need chemical or biological or nuclear weapons to regain the initiative. If these threshholds are crossed, the effects could, as noted here, easily blow beyond Ukraine’s borders and into NATO territory. And if NATO territory is affected, wouldn’t that qualify as an attack on a NATO member, or members, that would activate the alliance’s Article Five obligation that members view such a development as “an attack on all” – the core of the NATO treaty and the ultimate key to whatever deterrence power it’s assumed to have created?

Much more than the violations of international agreements that would result from these Russian moves, that’s why Mr. Biden and other NATO leaders have been warning Putin about “red lines” that he mustn’t cross by using these weapons of mass destruction. Yet the vague terms NATO has used to describe its promised responses so far make clear that alliance leaders haven’t yet decided how they actually would respond, and how to convey that message convincingly to Moscow. And yes, a Russian cyber-attack on a NATO member would trigger the same kinds of questions, uncertainties, and outright dangers.

As I’ve written repeatedly (notably here), the U.S. military doctrine that resulted and still prevails never deserved high marks for prudence, common sense, or even the basic test of a healthy sense of self-preservation. So it’s not like there’s a compelling case that Washington’s strategists today will come up with anything more sensible to handle these radically different challenges. And that’s all the more reason to try to put much more energy into stopping the fighting ASAP by cutting a deal that will surely fail to satisfy either Ukraine or Russia, but that ends, at least for the time being, the kind of reckless nuclear weapons talk that could all too easily lead to catastrophic nuclear weapons use – even if neither the United States nor its allies are actually attacked.     

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: How Strongly Does Most of the World Really “Stand with Ukraine”?

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General Assembly, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, The New York Times, Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia war, United Nations, Vladimir Putin

The New York Times deserves a lot of credit for running this article yesterday, which reported that, as the headline observed, “In Some Parts of the World, the War in Ukraine Seems Justified.” At the same time, there’s strong evidence that “some” greatly understates the case – to the point that it’s entirely unclear that the piece’s supposedly context-providing claim that “Most of the world has loudly and unequivocally condemned [Vladimir] Putin for sparking a war with Ukraine” holds much water.

If you’re skeptical, just look at the United Nations General Assembly vote condemning the Russian dictator’s invasion and demanding its immediate end and the total, unconditional withdrawal of Moscow’s forces from all of Ukraine’s “internationally recognized borders.”

Yes, the resolution voted on was sponsored by 90 of the 193 UN members and backed by 141 – more than the two-thirds required for adoption. And yes, only Russia and four other equally reprehensible dictatorships (including satellite state Belarus and client state Syria) voted “No.”

But 35 countries abstained and 14 UN members didn’t vote at all. And the abstaining countries represented a huge share of the world’s estimated population of nearly eight billion. Between China and India alone, we’re talking more than 35 percent of the global total. (These and the population figures below come from the reliable Worldometers.info website.) 

And you can add to these abstainers’ ranks Pakistan (221 million), Bangladesh (167 million), Vietnam (97 million), Iran (84 million), South Africa (59 million), Uganda (45 million), Sudan and Algeria (44 million each). The non-voters, meanwhile, included Ethiopia (115 million).

Do the math, and these countries’ populations sum to just under 3.7 billion. That’s nearly 47 percent of the global total – and it doesn’t even include Russia’s 146 million people

No one’s saying that most of these countries’ governments are democracies that represent the popular will (although India’s clearly is). Indeed, some of their people have publicly protested Russia’s aggression. (See, e.g., here and here.)

But nothing indicates that these demonstrators mirror majority opinion in these countries or even close, for whatever reason – ranging from the kind of sympathy for Russia reported in the Times piece to ignorance or apathy. That is, maybe big shares of these populations haven’t heard about the war to begin with, or if they have, pay little attention to its developments because they’re too preoccupied with struggling to eak out a living.   

By the same token, nothing indicates that Putin’s war enjoys broad, much less deep, support in these countries, let alone in any others, either. And it’s surely significant that the countries that have condemned the invasion account for a strong majority of the global economy. That’s even the case for the smaller group of countries that have imposed various kinds of sanctions.

The UN votes, however, do make clear that, however tempting and inspiring it is to think that  “most of the world” really does “loudly and unequivocally” Stand with Ukraine, as the Times contends, the reality is a lot more complicated.

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

Tags

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Im-Politic: Major U.S. Ukraine Policy Puzzles on the Home Front Remain Unsolved

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Biden, Democrats, gasoline, Iran, Iran deal, Iran nuclear deal, JCPOA, oil, oil prices, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, rural areas, Russia, sanctions, taxes, Ukraine, Ukraine invasion, Ukraine-Russia war, Vladimir Putin

Maybe you readers can help me out here, because I am really confused about what President Biden and other Democrats are saying about the biggest political and ethical issues surrounding his Ukraine war-related decision to ban oil imports from Russia and its likely effect on gasoline prices.

On the one hand, Mr. Biden and his party have portayed the higher oil prices as a sacrifice that Americans should be proud to pay in order to support Ukraine’s unexpectedly stout resistance to the Russian invasion, and one that the nation will agree to pay.

On the other hand, these Democrats have taken to blaming the higher pump prices on the Russian aggression itself, to the point of pushing the social media hashtag #PutinPriceHike.

Unquestionably, the Russian dictator’s decisions are ultimately responsible for the recent shake up in the global oil market that’s driven up prices for oil and all its derivatives (like gasoline) the world over. But now that he’s taken these steps, it seems that some fundamental consistency should be displayed in the Democrats’ case for the response they favor. For example, they could tell the public something like, “Yes, our response to the Russian attack will raise the price of oil. But higher pump prices are a sacrifice we should be proud to make for the cause of global security and freedom.” Why haven’t they?

Something else noteworthy about the stance of the President and his party. The effect of higher oil prices is the epitome of a regressive tax. In other words, because Americans at all income levels will face the same percentage increase when they pump gasoline (and when they heat their homes, if they rely on oil). So the bite on household budgets is deepest for the poorest and shallowest for the richest of us.

Higher oil prices will also surely kneecap any Democratic hopes of improving their political performance in rural America. After all, residents of the nation’s small towns and farming areas use much oil for transportation than their urban counterparts. So do the enormous number of voters in the suburbs, who played such a big role in Mr. Biden’s victory in 2020.

And let’s not forget an mammoth irony about higher U.S. and world prices for oil – as well as natural gas, another major Russian export. As has been widely observed, without steps that dramatically reduce the volume of Russian sales  globally, the more importers pay per barrel, the more revenue flows into Vladimir Putin’s treasury – and war machine. The same goes for Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, along with Iran if the President succeeds in his apparent aim of negotiating a deal aimed at preventing Tehran from building a nuclear weapon in part by lifting economic sanctions on its economy.

Whatever you think of President Biden’s approach to the Ukraine war, it should be clear that it can’t succeed for any length of time until firm support on the home front is secured. These unsolved puzzles and outright contradictions make clear how far his administration remains from achieving that essential goal. 

Following Up: Ukraine Coming to its Senses?

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ABC News, Biden, David Muir, Following Up, Fox News, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia war, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky

I’m interrupting preparing my regularly scheduled same-day report on the new official U.S. trade figures (for January) to report on a potentially game-changing development in the Ukraine crisis: President Volodymyr Zelensky told ABC News last night that he’s no longer insisting that his country retain the right to become a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

As you may remember, just yesterday, my post made the case that Zelensky’s former position – a main reason cited by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin for his invasion of Ukraine – resulted in part from the alliance’s long-time policy of treating Ukraine as a member in all but name, to the point of conducting joint exercises with Kyiv’s armed forces. At the same time, by declining to admit Ukraine officially, NATO studiously avoided formally committing to come to Ukraine’s defense if attacked. So I concluded that the alliance irresponsibly created unrealistic expectations on the part of the country’s leadership regarding its options as a next-door neighbor of a much bigger, stronger, unfriendly power.

But Zelensky’s statements last night strongly indicated that he’s stepping off that primrose path down which NATO and most recent U.S. Presidents have led Kyiv.

Specifically, he told ABC News‘ David Muir: “I have cooled down regarding this question a long time ago after we understood that … NATO is not prepared to accept Ukraine.,”

He added, “The alliance is afraid of controversial things, and confrontation with Russia.” And given the strong opposition voiced by President Biden and NATO’s leaders to sending military forces to Ukraine to help fight the Russian invaders, or to establish a No-Fly Zone over Ukraine (specifically for fear of igniting direct conflict with Russia), it’s hard to argue with his assessment.

Nor is Zelensky’s position totally out of the blue. In a development I’d missed, three days ago Ukraine’s top negotiator with Russia (and leader of Zelensky’s party in Ukraine’s parliament, told a Fox News reporter that

“The response that we are getting from the NATO countries is that they are not ready to even discuss having us in NATO, not for the closest period of five or 10 years. We would not fight for the NATO applications, we would fight for the result, but not for the process.  

“We are ready to discuss some non-NATO models. For example, there could be direct guarantees by different countries like the U.S., China, U.K., maybe Germany and France. We are open to discuss such things in a broader circle, not only in bilateral discussions with Russia, but also with other partners.”

Those specific ideas sound pretty far-fetched to me, but the signal of flexibility on this crucial bone of contention was unmistakable. So was the scorn displayed in David Arakhamia’s reference to security “guarantees that NATO is afraid of.”

Oddly, (or maybe not so oddly, given the Mainstream Media’s strongly globalist bias on foreign policy issues), these remarks by Ukrainian leaders have gone almost entirely unreported so far. Nor were they mentioned by President Biden this morning when he announced a ban on imports of oil and other energy products from Russia.

Let’s hope that the President’s silence stems from caution and information-gathering that are entirely understandable given the new Ukraine stance’s potential for peacefully ending Europe’s worst and most dangerous security and humanitarian crisis since World War II, rather than embarrassment over evidence that his own stubbornness and fecklessness (along with that of his predecessors and other NATO leaders) on the issue deserve some blame for its outbreak.

P.S. I’ll post the trade report tomorrow!