US Foreign Policy | Past and Present

[Typhoon]

America threatening us for trade with China, China threatening us for backing Trump.

https://www.news.com.au/world/north-ame ... 2e5de041e2

The Chinese government has warned Australia to “distance” itself from the United States amid growing tensions between the two countries, saying it would be “extremely dangerous” for Canberra to get involved.

China is Australia’s largest trading partner, while the US is one of our key strategic allies. But Beijing says any show of support for the latter will deliver our economy a “fatal blow”.

“If the Trump administration plunges the world into a ‘new Cold War,’ forcing China to take countermeasures against the US and its allies, it would be extremely dangerous for Canberra to become a player in a diplomatic club led by the US, given Australia's high dependence on the Chinese economy,” an article in the Global Times said.

maybe we should increase ties with India and Pakistan to round out the clusterfuck.

And Japan. That was the bon mot "The Gold Coast. Beautiful one day, Japanese the next." could be resurrected.

[noddy]

That was the bon mot "The Gold Coast. Beautiful one day, Japanese the next." could be resurrected.

I think in modern Australia you would probably get a solid magority of folks willing to give it to you.

It must be top 10 of hideous places in Australia, a place to send the cruise ship type tourists interested in getting drunk at all the worlds (identical on the inside) tourist traps.

[Simple Minded]

America threatening us for trade with China, China threatening us for backing Trump.



maybe we should increase ties with India and Pakistan to round out the clusterfuck.

now yer talking Jack. if there is one thing we've learned in Merika, it's that diversity makes everything better. we can't get enough of it!

[Typhoon]

Free Bea | Obama’s Man in China Now Beijing’s Man in Washington

Former ambassador Baucus appears regularly on Chinese propaganda outlets.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

very tempted to put this in the political humor section:



. . .

I understand and appreciate the difficulty of your decision.

This reads as satire worthy of the Babylon Bee.

I'm gobsmacked that this article was written in earnest.

The nickname of the US State Dept is "Foggy Bottom" for a good reason.

One has to accord a certain respect to the former British Empire.

The British, unlike the Americans, had no interest in being liked, they expected to be obeyed.

The British also made an effort to understand the cultures of their colonies.
Who was fighting whom and why, which they used to great advantage by playing factions off of one another.

Nor did they harbour any illusions that "inside every wog was an Englishman dying to get out".

You are more charitable than I about this. I think we've long passed the point where naivety and ignorance explains the position.

It may not be outright malice,but the inability of these sorts of people (who filter in and out of think-tanks, lobbying, and gov't positions) to adapt or change is glaringly bad & dangerous.

[Typhoon]

very tempted to put this in the political humor section:



. . .

I understand and appreciate the difficulty of your decision.

This reads as satire worthy of the Babylon Bee.

I'm gobsmacked that this article was written in earnest.

The nickname of the US State Dept is "Foggy Bottom" for a good reason.

One has to accord a certain respect to the former British Empire.

The British, unlike the Americans, had no interest in being liked, they expected to be obeyed.

The British also made an effort to understand the cultures of their colonies.
Who was fighting whom and why, which they used to great advantage by playing factions off of one another.

Nor did they harbour any illusions that "inside every wog was an Englishman dying to get out".

You are more charitable than I about this. I think we've long passed the point where naivety and ignorance explains the position.

It may not be outright malice,but the inability of these sorts of people (who filter in and out of think-tanks, lobbying, and gov't positions) to adapt or change is glaringly bad & dangerous.

Spiked | The lethal folly of humanitarian interventionism

In fact, during the election campaign of 2000, it was George W Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleeza Rice, who famously wrote, ‘the 82nd Airborne wasn’t intended to take children to kindergarten’ – a criticism of what was seen as wasteful expenditure of US military power in Bosnia under Clinton. The neo-isolationist instincts of the first Bush administration were overturned by the terror attacks of September 2001, and the Bush administration’s responses to these attacks, in which the US ended up embroiled in Afghanistan long after al-Qaeda had been eliminated. This indicates just how deeply entrenched interventionist impulses were in Western states.

[Typhoon]

Greenwald | The New Ruling Coalition: Opposition to Afghanistan Withdrawal Shows Its Key Factions

An unholy union of the National Security State and the neocon-backed and corporate-funded Democratic Party are about to assume power: with media-supported internet censorship a key weapon.

[Parodite]

o8-OtyUb9ok

[Typhoon]

o8-OtyUb9ok

Quite.

More of the same observations.

The Spectator | Biden’s foreign policy picks seem dull. That’s why they deserve your attention

They represent a return to a failed consensus around foreign policy that has cost the United States dearly

The late US Senator Dirksen's observation, attributed, needs updating.

A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money.

Wonder if it will need to be updated to a quadrillion in the future.

[Typhoon]

UnHerd | China didn’t become more Western — the West is becoming more Chinese

This is surely the great irony, and supreme historical significance of Covid: for decades, America’s establishment, not least Biden himself, earnestly believed that globalisation would move China in a liberal direction. Instead, the wealth, ambition and power of the rival superpower unleashed by globalisation is forcing the West to become more statist just to keep up.

[Typhoon]

The Spectator US | Major Jewish groups split over Biden’s anti-Israel staffers

Oy vey.

[Doc]

The Spectator US | Major Jewish groups split over Biden’s anti-Israel staffers

Oy vey.

They shouldn't feel alone. Biden's cabinet picks hate most Americans

[Heracleum Persicum]

Folks, been absent since many years, forgot where you standing .. are we Trumpist or Bidenist ? ? LOLOL

From post I see and clips, looks 2me we Trumpist

Don't misunderstand, Heracleum Persicum no objection for either, they in reality can't do much, out of their hands

Just wanted to know where the board sympathy lies, not to hurt feelings

Any Xi enthusiast here ?

[Heracleum Persicum]

.

https://asiatimes.com/2021/02/biden-bui ... und-china/

.. “democratic security diamond”, namely a coalition of democratic powers to preserve the liberal international order and contain China.

and

China responds

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202102/1215965.shtml

The world has changed. If the US, which is highly strategically selfish, doesn't adjust itself to the situation, it will increasingly feel its loneliness.

MAGA

[Heracleum Persicum]

Afghanistan Buries Another Empire

https://www.theamericanconservative.com ... er-empire/

What would have been unthinkable 20 years ago is today a very real possibility : a Taliban victory.

" Make a running chronological leap over the invasion of Afghanistan, past Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, above Arab Spring revolutions come and gone, landing and skidding into the present day, and you find the Taliban not only not defeated but in their strongest position in 20 years. The group now claims to control 70 percent of Afghanistan’s territory"

Reminds one of Bush's Iraq "mission accomplished" stunt

Hand that space to mad mullahs and kiss good-bye

[Heracleum Persicum]

Therefore, if “Munich” is invoked in a future East Asian crisis, red lights should go flashing in our minds; we need to warn all involved “Beware of the Munich analogy !”

https://ari.nus.edu.sg/app-essay-yuen-foong/

[Heracleum Persicum]

.

Accurate article .. disaster for American foreign policy


https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles ... ium=social

Iran adopted “strategic patience” in response to Trump’s “maximum pressure,” but the longer Biden tarries, the more Iran’s leaders will be willing to use regional tensions and their country’s nuclear program and bomb-making capabilities to pressure the United States. For that reason, Biden must lead by example and move as quickly as possible to formally return to the nuclear deal, deferring U.S. demands for verification until U.S. and Iranian negotiators can agree on a precise sequence of steps that will bring both countries into full compliance with the accord.
..

One of the Trump administration’s last acts was to sanction an Iranian pharmaceutical company that is developing a COVID-19 vaccine.
..

With popular suspicion of and anger at the United States running so high, Tehran has little to fear from what ordinarily are the United States’ most powerful weapons: the ideals, values, and products—from democracy and freedom to Hollywood and social media—that so vex Iran’s hard-line theocrats. Maximum pressure during a deadly pandemic appears to have immunized the Iranian public against American soft power. And the more Iranians perceive the United States as a threat, rather than a lure, the more likely they are to support a nuclear program as a necessary deterrent.

Iran WAS (maybe still is) the only place in "all Middle East" where Americans can still walk freely on the street, even still do Hitchhiking.

That's probably the biggest asset America had in ME.

A real tragedy

[Typhoon]

WSJ | China's warning to Biden [paywalled]

A lecture in Alaska shows that adversaries sense U.S. weakness.

That was some tongue lashing a senior Chinese official delivered last week in Anchorage to top Biden Administration officials in their first meeting. This is the new reality in U.S.-China relations, as adversaries look to see if they can exploit President Biden as they did Barack Obama.

The two sides had agreed to two minutes of opening remarks each. Secretary of State Antony Blinken kept his short and hospitable, though he did say the U.S. has “deep concerns with actions by China, including in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, cyber attacks on the United States, and economic coercion toward our allies. Each of these actions threaten the rules-based order that maintains global stability.”

China’s director of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, Yang Jiechi, then went on a 20-minute tear (including translation) about the superiority of “Chinese-style democracy” and America’s sins. The latter included a reference to Black Lives Matter, human-rights problems, and that the U.S. “has exercised long-arm jurisdiction and suppression and overstretched the national security through the use of force or financial hegemony.”

Mr. Yang added: “So we believe that it is important for the United States to change its own image and to stop advancing its own democracy in the rest of the world. Many people within the United States actually have little confidence in the democracy of the United States.” As we’ve noted, the Chinese like to echo the woke U.S. media critique of America.

Mr. Blinken responded that the U.S. “acknowledges our imperfections, acknowledges that we’re not perfect, we make mistakes, we have reversals, we take steps back” but then make progress again. This is true enough, but needlessly defensive after a foreigner’s public assault on U.S. interests and values.

This is only one meeting, but it was a tone setter for the world’s most important bilateral relationship. Word is leaking that the private exchanges from the Chinese side were as tough as the public remarks. The Chinese are making clear that, after the Trump years, Beijing wants a return to the policy of Obama accommodation to China’s global advances.

This means feeble objections to China’s cyber and intellectual property theft. It means ending the U.S. policy of building an alliance of democracies in Asia that counters Chinese aggression. And above all, it means ending criticism or sanctions against China for violating its treaty with Britain over Hong Kong, threatening an invasion of Taiwan, or imprisoning Uighers in Xinjiang reeducation camps.

In its first two months the Biden Administration has been strong in its rhetoric on all of this. Mr. Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan orchestrated a series of well-done meetings with Indo-Pacific allies in advance of the Anchorage meeting. They also struck a deal on financing U.S. troop deployments in South Korea.

But the real challenge will be how well it responds to the aggressive designs of adversaries in Beijing, Moscow and Tehran. The hard men in these capitals recall how they were able to advance when Mr. Biden’s liberal internationalists were last in power under Mr. Obama. Russia grabbed Crimea, invaded eastern Ukraine and moved into Syria. China snatched islands for military bases in the South China Sea and stole U.S. secrets with impunity. Iran spread terrorism via proxy throughout the Middle East and fleeced John Kerry on the nuclear deal.

These regional powers are looking to see if this new U.S. Administration is Obama II. The renewed courtship of Tehran to return to the flawed 2015 nuclear deal is a sign of weakness. Vladimir Putin will surely take some action against U.S. interests in response to Mr. Biden’s affirmative response last week to a question of whether the Russian is a “killer.”

The biggest test will be China, which is growing in confidence that it has the strategic advantage over a declining America. If you don’t believe that, read Mr. Yang’s comments in Anchorage. The thinking of the powers in Beijing today is not unlike that of the Soviet Union in the 1970s when American decline was in vogue and the Communists sought to advance around the world. Except China today has far more economic strength.

The future of Taiwan may be the most fraught challenge. As a locus of global semiconductor production, the island is crucial to U.S. economic interests as well as being a democratic ally. Chinese President Xi Jinping has made clear that retaking Taiwan is a priority, and China’s military is building a force capable of a quick-strike invasion. Mr. Xi will be eager to trade promises about climate change for U.S. acquiescence over Taiwan.

This is a dangerous moment as the world’s rogue powers look to test the Biden Administration’s resolve. The Anchorage lecture is a warning to take seriously.

[Doc]

WSJ | China's warning to Biden [paywalled]

A lecture in Alaska shows that adversaries sense U.S. weakness.

That was some tongue lashing a senior Chinese official delivered last week in Anchorage to top Biden Administration officials in their first meeting. This is the new reality in U.S.-China relations, as adversaries look to see if they can exploit President Biden as they did Barack Obama.

The two sides had agreed to two minutes of opening remarks each. Secretary of State Antony Blinken kept his short and hospitable, though he did say the U.S. has “deep concerns with actions by China, including in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, cyber attacks on the United States, and economic coercion toward our allies. Each of these actions threaten the rules-based order that maintains global stability.”

China’s director of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, Yang Jiechi, then went on a 20-minute tear (including translation) about the superiority of “Chinese-style democracy” and America’s sins. The latter included a reference to Black Lives Matter, human-rights problems, and that the U.S. “has exercised long-arm jurisdiction and suppression and overstretched the national security through the use of force or financial hegemony.”

Mr. Yang added: “So we believe that it is important for the United States to change its own image and to stop advancing its own democracy in the rest of the world. Many people within the United States actually have little confidence in the democracy of the United States.” As we’ve noted, the Chinese like to echo the woke U.S. media critique of America.

Mr. Blinken responded that the U.S. “acknowledges our imperfections, acknowledges that we’re not perfect, we make mistakes, we have reversals, we take steps back” but then make progress again. This is true enough, but needlessly defensive after a foreigner’s public assault on U.S. interests and values.

This is only one meeting, but it was a tone setter for the world’s most important bilateral relationship. Word is leaking that the private exchanges from the Chinese side were as tough as the public remarks. The Chinese are making clear that, after the Trump years, Beijing wants a return to the policy of Obama accommodation to China’s global advances.

This means feeble objections to China’s cyber and intellectual property theft. It means ending the U.S. policy of building an alliance of democracies in Asia that counters Chinese aggression. And above all, it means ending criticism or sanctions against China for violating its treaty with Britain over Hong Kong, threatening an invasion of Taiwan, or imprisoning Uighers in Xinjiang reeducation camps.

In its first two months the Biden Administration has been strong in its rhetoric on all of this. Mr. Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan orchestrated a series of well-done meetings with Indo-Pacific allies in advance of the Anchorage meeting. They also struck a deal on financing U.S. troop deployments in South Korea.

But the real challenge will be how well it responds to the aggressive designs of adversaries in Beijing, Moscow and Tehran. The hard men in these capitals recall how they were able to advance when Mr. Biden’s liberal internationalists were last in power under Mr. Obama. Russia grabbed Crimea, invaded eastern Ukraine and moved into Syria. China snatched islands for military bases in the South China Sea and stole U.S. secrets with impunity. Iran spread terrorism via proxy throughout the Middle East and fleeced John Kerry on the nuclear deal.

These regional powers are looking to see if this new U.S. Administration is Obama II. The renewed courtship of Tehran to return to the flawed 2015 nuclear deal is a sign of weakness. Vladimir Putin will surely take some action against U.S. interests in response to Mr. Biden’s affirmative response last week to a question of whether the Russian is a “killer.”

The biggest test will be China, which is growing in confidence that it has the strategic advantage over a declining America. If you don’t believe that, read Mr. Yang’s comments in Anchorage. The thinking of the powers in Beijing today is not unlike that of the Soviet Union in the 1970s when American decline was in vogue and the Communists sought to advance around the world. Except China today has far more economic strength.

The future of Taiwan may be the most fraught challenge. As a locus of global semiconductor production, the island is crucial to U.S. economic interests as well as being a democratic ally. Chinese President Xi Jinping has made clear that retaking Taiwan is a priority, and China’s military is building a force capable of a quick-strike invasion. Mr. Xi will be eager to trade promises about climate change for U.S. acquiescence over Taiwan.

This is a dangerous moment as the world’s rogue powers look to test the Biden Administration’s resolve. The Anchorage lecture is a warning to take seriously.

A lecture in Alaska shows that adversaries sense U.S. weakness.

It seemed to me overcompensation for internal weakness for a domestic audience. Something about bad foundations and bad unemployment rates.


https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/ ... ean-132047

Sunk: How China's Man-Made Islands Are Falling Apart and Sinking Into the Ocean

[Typhoon]

I don't think that one can infer much about the future of PR China solely from the quality of their artificial island construction in the Spratlys.

[Miss_Faucie_Fishtits]

Daddy's home.......'>......

2DH4v6FnbvM

[Doc]

I don't think that one can infer much about the future of PR China solely from the quality of their artificial island construction in the Spratlys.

I agree it is just a note that they do have real issues that they haven't overcome. Despite the image of Technological advancement they are far behind in areas. For Example they are not able to build modern engines for their ships. Currently they are getting their gas turbines from the Ukraine.

They sent the message in Alaska that the CCP was no longer going to follow international rules. Their "Wolf Diplomacy" is not going to serve them well unless they can convince the world that their dominance of the world is inevitable. I disagree that it is, but they have the ability to cause a lot of harm in the foolish self serving actions they apparently feel duty bound to take.

Taiwan is today's 1938 Czechoslovakia .

[Doc]

Daddy's home.......'>......

2DH4v6FnbvM

That is quite a change from:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/06
/09/maher_im_hoping_for_a_crashing_economy_so_we_can_get_rid_of_trump_bring_on_the_recession.html#!

Maher: I'm "Hoping" For "A Crashing Economy" So We Can Get Rid Of Trump, "Bring On The Recession"

[Doc]

https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/obama-redux-in-asia

Obama Redux in Asia
Carrying the Obama administration’s baggage back to the White House

[Typhoon]

I don't think that one can infer much about the future of PR China solely from the quality of their artificial island construction in the Spratlys.

I agree it is just a note that they do have real issues that they haven't overcome. Despite the image of Technological advancement they are far behind in areas. For Example they are not able to build modern engines for their ships. Currently they are getting their gas turbines from the Ukraine.

They sent the message in Alaska that the CCP was no longer going to follow international rules. Their "Wolf Diplomacy" is not going to serve them well unless they can convince the world that their dominance of the world is inevitable. I disagree that it is, but they have the ability to cause a lot of harm in the foolish self serving actions they apparently feel duty bound to take.

Taiwan is today's 1938 Czechoslovakia .

Perhaps.

There's a history behind ever situation.

Fred Reed | War with China? What Fun!